On 20 May, the House of Commons decided to nationalise the British coal industry; £529 million was required for post-war reconstruction of mines, £229 million of which was paid as compensation to the mines’ owners. The costs had to be covered from the country's budget. Coal mining was transferred to the National Coal Board.
The British coal industry, which was at its peak before the First World War (3270 mines, 292 million tons of produced annually) fell into decline by the end of the Second World War. Coal as a source of energy had almost been replaced by oil products which were used by most of the world's military and merchant fleets.
The basis of a huge historical period known as "the economy of coal and steel" in the mid-Forties was becoming a thing of the past. British coal could not compete even in a shrinking market: the close seams were depleted, the mechanisation of miners' labour was minimal compared with the United States and, even by the standards of defeated Germany, the equipment was outdated.
It became a social time bomb: 700,000 people were involved in the industry, but the number of mines had dropped to 958, and production declined to 200 million tons and continued to fall. The National Coal Board tried to soften the industry's being wound down. But for the next 40 years it was surviving on meager government subsidies. In the context of the 1981 crisis, Margaret Thatcher's government had to “restructure” the industry, practically starting its liquidation.
According to trade unions, the Eighties became, "the largest class struggle of the century in Great Britain" - dozens of strikes and demonstrations, stand-offs with the police under the leadership of the National Union of Miners occurred in the country but led nowhere.
On 3 March 1985, after the biggest and longest strike, the National Union of Miners agreed to return to work without any conditions. The confrontation resulted in 20,000 workers being dismissed and in the closure of 100 unprofitable mines. In the winter of 2015, the country's last deep coal mine, the Kellingley Colliery in West Yorkshire, was closed.
Source:
Pravda, No. 120 (10202), 22 May 1946
