Why did the Labour government close so many coal mines?

[Longcol]

At the time the Wilson government was closing pits we needed more coal than we could produce and had started to import it. The closures were purely economic. Under Wilson a mine closed every week.

The reason was the industry was loosing £1.2 million every day.

 

264 pits closed between 1957 and 1963. 346,000 miners left the industry between 1963 and 1968. In 1967 alone there were 12,900 forced redundancies.

 

Those mines were exhausted to all intents and purposes - especially in places like Durham and Scotland. Indeed in the 60's some of the mines in South Yorks (especially Doncaster area) opened up new faces and had a large influx of miners from other regions. And before that going back to the 20's all the miners in the Doncaster coalfield came from areas where the pits had been exhausted - Lancashire, Chesterfield area, Pontefract etc etc etc.

[AndiiMSc]

I think they closed them for the same reason that subsequent governments did. The mines productivity was very poor and it was far cheaper to import coal from more efficient producers. The secondary benefit was that imported coal was a reliable supply that didn't try to hold the country to ransom and cut off supply.

 

The unions didn't oppose it because the government was the one they wanted in power.

 

Hi Dingus,

 

I loved reading your discussion thread, and would be very interested to know, "having checked out the stats it appears that far more pits were closed when Harold Wilson was Prime Minister that when Thatcher was in no10", where you found these.

 

I am using Maggie Thatcher as an example for my dissertation on Women in Leadership Roles, and as she seems to hold some contention currently, it would be good to have some referenced facts to back up what I have to say.

 

Look forward to hearing from you.

[I1L2T3]

Uneconomic mines were closed in the 60s, 70s, 80s. Nothing wrong with that no matter whether it was Thatcher or whoever.

 

All parties mismanaged the industry over the years. None had good relationships with the unions.

 

One interesting perspective is how many jobs were lost. Callaghan ditched about 10,000 jobs. Thatcher about 190,000. Wilson took the hatchet out too with 200,000 jobs going.

 

The difference is that Wilson reduced the industry by about 40%. Thatcher's approach threatened to reduce it almost to nothing, in the eyes of the unions that is. Maybe it's not Thatcher's fault that little was left of the industry but the unions perceived that they were fighting for survival.

 

---------- Post added 13-04-2013 at 19:28 ----------

 

Hi Dingus,

 

I loved reading your discussion thread, and would be very interested to know, "having checked out the stats it appears that far more pits were closed when Harold Wilson was Prime Minister that when Thatcher was in no10", where you found these.

 

I am using Maggie Thatcher as an example for my dissertation on Women in Leadership Roles, and as she seems to hold some contention currently, it would be good to have some referenced facts to back up what I have to say.

 

Look forward to hearing from you.

 

You might find this useful

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/historical-coal-data-coal-production-availability-and-consumption-1853-to-2011

 

Loads of interesting data in it

[GrapeApe]

I know some folk around here like to carp on about Thatcher wrecking the mining industry, but having checked out the stats it appears that far more pits were closed when Harold Wilson was Prime Minister that when Thatcher was in no10. The rate of pit closures when Callaghan was PM was also higher.

 

So why the bias. Whilst the last Labour Government was in power more than half the mines in the UK closed and yet no one round here raises an eye brow about it.

 

Why?.

 

There is nothing wrong with closing down the filthy industry that took the lives and health of thousands of men over decades. The issue I have with the Tory decimation of heavy industry is that they did it on a grand scale with absolutely no regard to the consequences for the communities who relied on those industries for their very existence. Mines and steel works closed with nothing to replace them. Money, jobs and hope sucked out of towns and villages across Wales and northern England

 

The Tories vindictive hatred of unions and their members overshadowed everything and we will see the consequences for generations to come.

[AngryDog]

The thing that gets me, is that alot of these people jumping on the Thatcher band wagon, having parties etc, probably werent even directly affected in a negative way with anything that she did.

 

Me, I have too much going on in my life to care too much..

 

And I understand the irony of my posting on this thread

[Chris_B_1983]

Closing them was the only option. Repeated industrial action by unions, and workers on strike who ostracized the ones who actually wanted to work (scabs etc) meant that coal supply was always going to be unpractical and unreliable in the Uk.

[I1L2T3]

The thing that gets me, is that alot of these people jumping on the Thatcher band wagon, having parties etc, probably werent even directly affected in a negative way with anything that she did.

 

Me, I have too much going on in my life to care too much..

 

And I understand the irony of my posting on this thread

 

I was impacted by it.

 

I was a teenager when she got in. My dad had been a miner in the declining Flintshire coalfield before I was born. He retrained into an economic sector that saw big changes under Thatcher. In both cases times were tough for my dad. I remember the 80s as being unremittingly grim as my dad struggled to adjust. He did in the end but it was tough. I have to be honest - my family was really poor. I know what it's like to live in poverty and I know what it was like to leave school when Thatcher was in power. I did OK. I know a few people who didn't.

 

I'm not jumping on any bandwagon. I've always detested what Thatcher stood for. And what she did.

 

---------- Post added 13-04-2013 at 20:07 ----------

 

Closing them was the only option. Repeated industrial action by unions, and workers on strike who ostracized the ones who actually wanted to work (scabs etc) meant that coal supply was always going to be unpractical and unreliable in the Uk.

 

Closing some of them was the only option because they were uneconomic.

 

There may also been a case for a managed decline of the industry. There wasn't any sound economic case was the way the Tories managed it.

[AngryDog]

I was impacted by it.

 

I was a teenager when she got in. My dad had been a miner in the declining Flintshire coalfield before I was born. He retrained into an economic sector that saw big changes under Thatcher. In both cases times were tough for my dad. I remember the 80s as being unremittingly grim as my dad struggled to adjust. He did in the end but it was tough. I have to be honest - my family was really poor. I know what it's like to live in poverty and I know what it was like to leave school when Thatcher was in power. I did OK. I know a few people who didn't.

 

I'm not jumping on any bandwagon. I've always detested what Thatcher stood for. And what she did.

 

And I never said that you were. Clearly you were impacted by it, but many who have jumped on the band wagon werent.

[I1L2T3]

And I never said that you were. Clearly you were impacted by it, but many who have jumped on the band wagon werent.

 

I would say they are impacted. All of us are.

[buck]

Coal fired the Industrial Revolution. It made the trains run, made ships capable of crossing the Atlantic in a week, warmed your houses, but you couldn't run a car or a motor cycle, or fly a plane on it, so eventually it had to give way to other more portable fuels like oil and petrol. Today some ships run on nuclear power. Here in America, many homes are heated by natural gas, which is cheap and plentiful though it can be dangerous to use if not handled carefully. There will always be a need for coal use in certain places but never again what it was.