THE FIGHT against pit closures is close to being defeated, and there is little point in pretending otherwise. The Tories' stalling tactics achieved exactly what they were designed to achieve. Public anger has been defused.
Meanwhile, the High Court mas overtunice as previous Tul ing that it was illegal and irrational" to shut the first ten pits in British Coal's closure programme.
Cuts are now likely to prove far more savage than anything envisaged last year. We could now witness the scenario outlined in the leaked Rothschild report of 1991, which predicted just 12 pits and a workforce of 10,00 09 I9V3 Over 16,000 of Britain's 40,000 miners have quit in the last eight months, largely as a result of BC's bully-boy tactics. At Grimethorpe, enhanced redundancy money additional £800013,000 was put on the table, and miners told to take it or leave it. They voted 140 to 40 to take it.
Now 1200 miners have gone at Parkside and Trentham, the first compulsory redundancies since nationalisation in 1947. The two pits were singled out because they resisted closure. Further job losses will come thick and fast.
Some 20 deep mines - 18 of them on last October's original hit-list of 31 - will be offered to the private sector licensees over the next few wooks.
Asser-strip king Lord Hanson may put in for the best. Other interested parties include RJB Mining and Edwards Energy. But experts predict takers for six of them at most, with the rest to close.
Of the 30 remaining BC collieries, 12 were ostensibly 'repricyco in we marca wiie paper, when trade secretary Michael Heseltine seemingly promised £500 million to enable threatened pits to find new marSenior Whitehall sources had any intention of paying. The money is condional on National Power and PowerGen taking more BC coal on top of their existing five-year contract. This is all but excluded.
Scargill: made modest call for day of action "The two commanies together have a 34 million ton stockpite and starcholders, incing the government, want this reduced to improve cash-flow. Even if they bought more, BC itself has 11 million tons in stock, with the 12 pits adding 1 million tons a month. Moreover, existing priwould also be in the running.
Until earlier this year, charged generators 180p a gigajoule, a price that has now dropped to 150p and falling. BC s offering extra supplies for just 90p a gigajoule, but the European spot market price is around The root of the problem - a "free market' rigged by the dash to gas, mucicar power. the French interconnector and low world coal prices - remains in place.
Class-wide fight A class-wide fightback could have forced political concessions from the government. But the labour movement leadershin. from day one. derailed the mobilisation which alone could As the storm broke last October, Congress House subsumed the coal question into a non-specific TUC "Jobs and Recovery Campaign'. An emergency commitice on pit closures was the union most affected - Arthur tional Union of Mineworkers.
In November, the TUC general council met in Doncaster, convening outside London for the first time ever. Normen Will lis, TUC general secretary, deMESS