What future for coal?

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DEMOLITION THE slump and the consequent blitz on manufacturing industry mean that there isn't the same demand for coal as a staple raw material for production. That's part of the reason why there are such massive unsold stocks of coal.

Between 1965 and 1979 coal stocks were always below 30 million tonnes. In 1980, stocks were 38 million, in 1981 43 million, in 1982 53.3 million.

Investment has been increasingly concentrated in areas like Nottinghamshire, which has massive reserves of accessible coal.

South Wales and Scotland, broadly nearer geological exhaustion, have been gradually run-down. The South Wales area has made an operating loss every year since 1976.

Whilst NUM leaders have called for more investment, that investment has been concentrated in labour saving technology.

Since the early "70s, the NCB have developed Mine Operating System (MINOS), a standardised computer system for surface control of all mining operations. This has tremendous implications for jobs.

The NCB argue that the implication of a MINOS subsystem, Face Information Digested On Line (FIDO) could mean that half of today's miners could produce the same amount of coal.

The introduction of new technology is related to the introduction of the new super-pits at Selby and the Vale of Belvoir. Selby will be able to produce almost the entire production of Scotland and South Wales employing a tenth of the labour force. Arthur Scargill estimated that the NCB strategy involved the closure of 95 pits with the loss of between 70,000 and 100,000 jobs.

WE COULD see that the Such a strategy required a man with a strong stomach for butchering to implement it. One man immediately cam to Mrs Thatcher's mind, a man who believed completely in the Thatcherite vision of the free market; a man who was instinctively anti-union whilst on the Board of BL he had persistently urged Michael Edwardes to victimise Alan Thornett - and a man with a superb track record of job mutilation. That man was lan MacGregor.

In his previous job at the British Steel Corporation, MacGregor was like a starving fox in a well stocked hen coop. Former NCB chair Norman Siddall was still protesting at the end of 1982, *I'm not here to cut the industry back.' So out he went and in came MacGregor, who had cut the workforce in steel from 166,000 when he put on his apron, to 90,000 in December 1982 when he left for the next abattoir.

The structure was ready for Ian the Knife. The Tories had tricity Generating Board (CEGB) - the NCB's biggest customer — to give orders to the nuclear industry rather than use far less expensive coal — a decision aimed at further weakening the miners' bargaining power.

Just seven weeks after retreating on its attempt to speed-up closures, the Tory government in March 1981 announced big improvements in the pit redundancy schemes.

And control of the mines Will not only mean closure and speed up. There is a bigger prize. The Tory aim is privatisation.

They want to hand the mines over to a group of hard-nosed vampires who will make the old coal owners appear pillars of indulgent philanthropy and whose regime will, by comparison, make working in the mines in the 1920s and '30s a passage in paradise!

Examples of typical manpower savings schemes which have been introduced over the years are:

*mechanisation at the face and in drivages to eliminate hand filling.

*Double/treble shifting high productivity coal faces reduce the number of faces.

*Elimination of men transfer points.

*Remote control of pumping and ventilation.

*Elimination or reduction of hand picking in coal preparation.

*More automation in washeries.

Then the real 'restructuring' can get under way. Oil and gas are running out. Enough coal lies beneath Britain's surface to last another 300 years. Coal has a future.

The question is what sort of future. A future of the most ruthless exploitation seen since the dawn of capitalism? Or a future where the workers will own and control and plan the industry and its resources in the interests of the community — a capitalist future or a socialist future?

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future EEP

DANGER oUT

coal JOHN HARRIS