LAST week a report by merchant bankers Rothschilds on the coal industry was leaked.
Commissioned for the Department of Energy, i proposes the near-destruction of the British coal incustry, reducing the number of pits to 14 and the number of miners 10 just 11,000.
Rothschilds' proposals are in the context of the long-tem plan to privatise coal production in Britain. breaking up Brtish Coal.
This wil certainly be on the Tories' agenda if they win the next election. Despite claims by Energy Minister John Wakeham that nothing has been decided, the destrucson of the domestic coal industry nas been a long-term Tory objecPlans to destroy the coal industry have nothing to do with economics and everything to do with poitics and the class struggie. Plans to defeat the miners, the infamous 'Ridey plan", were already in place when Thatcher came to power. Alter the defeats suffered by the Heath government at the hands of the NUM in 1972 and 1974, the Tories were determined to crush the miners once and for al.
Ironicaly, at least haif the pits in Nottinghamshire. the centre of scabbing during the miners strike and home of the scab Union of Democratic Mineworkers, will be But coal wil stil be by tar the most important fuel for the new PowerGen and National Power. But it wil be imported coal, from parts of the world where labour is cheap.
Imported coal will be complemented by the nuclear industry. which far from being run down is being beofed up through the building of Sizewell B and possibiy other nuclear plants.
Despite daims that it is more economic to import coal, the cost of building ports and port facilties to handle imported coal, and the enormous costs of the nuclear industry far outweigh the costs of relying on domestc coal.
The decision to try to cut the industry to the bone and to privatise what is left has nothing to do with economics, and everything to do with trying to finally eliminate the industrial power of the miners.