WHEN IT comes to pit closures, past Labour goverments make Michael Heseltine look like an amateur.
Not for nothing did Lord Robens, former Labour MP and head of the old National Coal Board in the 1960s, once boast: "Under Labour we shut pits at a faster rate than when the Conservatives were in office... a pit closure almost every week for four years was achieved."
It was Atlee's first post-war Labour administration which undertook nationalisation of 1947, fulfilling the demand of senerations of miners. The move was literally greeted with rejoicing across the coalfields.
No official strikes The 1947 National Union of Mineworkers conference even carried a resolution declaring: "There are now no opposing sides in the industry The NUM would not make any strike official, and unofficial ones faced prosecution.
Yet the expropriators had not exactly been expropriated; instead, they were given comfar in excess oi their assets.
Moreover, Labour governand Conservative governments ause rive since prioritised profitability over monies sops ana she socially necessary production of The Conservative Party four years later commenced wiuescale curbacks in the industry. Over the next nine A new Bill for Labour? years, the workforce fell from 700,000 to 517,000 while the number of pits was cut from over 850 to under 600.
Yet the right-wing dominated NUM in this period did not look to industrial action to save lobs. They based their strategy on the eventual return Of a Labour government Just a few months before the first Wilson administration in 1964, unions were led to believe that Labour wanted the industry to produce 200m tons of coal a year.
But once in office, new miniNUM's right wing old guard: Gormley with ster of power Fred Lee denied any commitments had been Lee told NUM conference in 1965: "Coal has a future, there Is no occasion for alarm ... but efficiency, costs, and the resulting prices are absolutely paramount."
Shortly afterward, plans for British Coal to produce 170m By 1967, the figure was slashed to 140m. But spending on nuclear power was boosted massively.
It was in this period that miners began the depressing stalinist Mick McGahey process of moving from pit to pit and even area to area as the closures came in thick and fast.
A wave of unofficial strikes against Labour's policies in 1969 and 1970 were the precursors of national strikes in 1972 and 1974, which sparked off the events that the Heath government from offlee.
The 1974 Labour government realised the miners' massive socia! weight and offered a compromise in the shape of the so-called Plan for Coal A ten year programme meant the construction of new pits and the extension and interventionism and social conservatism may or may not be modernisation of others. 'Joint production drives' and productivity schemes' were designed to increase productivity by 4 per centa year. Achieving such tarmore job losses Prime minister Harold Wilson said at the 1975 NUM conference: "What the government is asking for the years ahead, what the right to ask, the duty to ask, is not a year for self but a year for The NUM leadership took the bait and consistently tried push through wage deals linked to r roductivity. In Sep tember 1974, for instance, 61.5 per cent of miners rejected one such incentive scheme in a national ballot.
By 1977, Labour's pay policy desperately sought to hold the line at a wage increase of under 10 per cent, a figure far less than inflation. NUM leader loe Gormley again tried to sell the membership. an incentive scheme in order to play ball with the government.
Despite being rejected at the union's annual conference, the package was put to a national vote at the leadership's insistence. The then secretary, Tony Benn, argued that the scheme should be given a "fair trial" on the grounds that is managed to the evils past piecework schemes, which set safety standards"
Nevertheless, it was again rejected. Ignoring democratic expressions o! miners' wishes, the government, the Coal Board and the NUM nevertheless went acad with local productivity schemes.
By introducing massive differentials wages between areas and breaking the unity forged in 1972 and move largeiy created the divisions that became so tragically evident in the great strike of 1984-85.
By the end of the last Labour government, coal output had urther slipped from i17m to had cosed with the loss of .. 105m tons, and 23 more further 11,000 jobs.
Part two of this article will examine Labour's rote in the 1984-85 miners' strike