2013 - the year the crown finally fell from the head of King Coal

摘要

Time was when King Coal ruled supreme. The National Coal Board didn't simply have an industry, it possessed an empire. That majesty was sadly lost in the 1980s after the disastrous series of strikes and confrontations with the government of the time, led by Margaret Thatcher. Since then, miners have had to stand by helplessly as one pit after another has been closed down in the name of 'efficiency, economy, environmental issues or geological factors'. That brought us to a situation at the end of 2012 in which there were just five deep mines (compared with 1,647 in 1947 and still 170 in 1984!) plus a number of opencast operations. It couldn't get much worse, you might have thought - yet, ironically, in the very month that Mrs Thatcher was laid to rest, most of what was left of the British coal industry went with her.