coal: with support like this...
WORKERS, APRIL 2003 ISSUE
AHEAD OF THE GOVERNMENT’S White Paper on Energy the government announced a £60 million support package to the coal mining industry. This is not in fact a generous gesture, but more a sop or bribe, accessed from EU funds, which won't fool the mining communities for one second.
The government has tied the short-term survival of 4 deep mines – Maltby, South Yorkshire – 520 jobs, Harworth, Nottinghamshire – 590 jobs, Ellington, Northumberland – 430 jobs and Tower, Wales – 400 jobs, to the demise of the Selby complex. 2,000 jobs destroyed in Selby equals 2,000 saved elsewhere. For every one direct mining job lost, seven related jobs will go.
The government rejected the NUM’s plan for saving Selby and has now come out with the usual trite and cosmetic assistance packages. There will be a Selby Coalfield Task Force. The great and the good will oversee regeneration. There will be money for training. There will be advisers and counselling. There will be job fairs. There will be a jobs telephone hot-line. There will be careers advice and of course redundancy money. All the actions which have been repeated after every pit closure or steel closure or textile mill shut down will be entered into and the cracks will be papered over and the whitewash lavishly applied.
UK Coal, the largest (but rapidly shrinking) deep mining coal company, estimates that only 8 deep-mine pits will survive in Britain. Without the government's assistance package they would have shut two out of the four named pits. All the above four pits may well still be shut anyway.
The government has made sympathetic noises about generating electricity from clean coal technology. Unfortunately the test bed for this was at Grimethorpe in Yorkshire, which was promptly closed when the coal industry was privatised.
On costs of production per tonne mined, the British coal industry cannot compete with subsidised foreign coal imports. Coal from South Africa, the USA and Eastern Europe will ensure that the home grown market-driven energy business will go bankrupt. The government will not worry as the international energy business players can fill any gap!
The British coal industry will soon be reduced to scavenger status – picking over the easily accessible coal from open cast or surface mining. There will be more pits to visit as museums – Beamish or Caphouse – than there will be working mines.