Mining disaster
By Frank Noakes
LONDON — The British government will officially announce a plan, already leaked, to close 30 of the remaining deep mined coal pits here, from October 12.
Twenty will close immediately, costing 20,000 miners their jobs. A further 5000 will be thrown out of work later. The remaining 20 pits, currently employing 16,000 miners, are earmarked for privatisation.
In 1977 there were 239,000 jobs on the coalfields. It is estimated that for every mining job lost another two will go from outside the industry.
The Guardian newspaper in a recent editorial explained: "The newly privatised electricity industry is dominated by two near-monopoly generators who have ordered gas-fired stations to replace coal: partly as an anti-Scargill insurance and partly to avoid the 1988 legislation requiring power stations to install gas de-sulphurisation equipment. They admit that existing coal capacity could generate electricity more cheaply than new gas-fired stations."
Coal requirements will be slashed by more than half. Thousands of jobs will go and whole communities with them in some places. In the larger towns, community workers expect to see unemployment top 20%. In Mansfield, economic development officer Philip Asquith says that already the local job service offers only 436 jobs for an unemployed population of 8051.
The National Union of Mineworkers will discuss its response to the plan at its annual conference on October 15. NUM leader Arthur Scargill says, "Such butchery of the British coal mining industry would represent a catastrophe not only for Britain's miners and their communities, but also for the British economy, which is already on the verge of collapse".
Consumers will foot the bill for this irrational move through increased charges. Already, nuclear power is subsidised by £1.2 billion per year, which is passed on to consumers via an 11% increase in the cost of electricity. British Coal is requesting £1 billion for redundancy payments in the hope of buying peace. Ironically, the pits are very profitable and with the recent devaluation of the pound are even more competitive with imported coal.
The deal is seen as "a bitter betrayal" in
Nottinghamshire, home of the breakaway Union of Democratic Miners, which has supported the government and opposed the NUM. Many of its members refused to support the 1984-5 national miners' strike; now they face the bleak future that Scargill and the NUM warned of during that strike.