Why did Thatcher close Englands coal mines when they were still profitable and then buy foreign fuel?
I include Wales and Scotland togther with England and say Britains’s coal-fields, sadly, were not profitable. Prior to Mrs T the coal industry was subsidised by the government owning it. The major coal customers eg the power stations were also nationalised and everyone paid a subsidy to the coal industry through their electricity bill. This fed though into prices and the UK was a country with relatively high inflation. Mining is a horrible, dangerous and dirty industry which was artificially kept going as a sort of branch of the social services. I know in the ‘romance of coal’ all those Welsh miners go off to the pits happily singing but in reality few would have liked their sons to follow them down there. The industry was recognised as having no significant future in the UK. The correct thing to have done would have been to run down the industry in a controlled way as was done in Europe but Thatcher inherited an industry which was far too big because of over-dependence on coal as a pr
