Apart from their manifesto, the Con-
servatives have published no overall
plan for privatisation . The first in-
dication that a nationalised industry
is under threat usually comes when
one or other senior party ideologue
floats a proposal . In this article, Dex-
ter Whitfield documents the indica-
tions that the National Coal Board, or
its more profitable parts, is amongst
the industries that the government
plans to privatise - but only if the
power of the National Union of Mine-
workers can be broken .
PRIVATISATION has been on a hidden
agenda throughout the miners strike .
`Private funds may be sought for NCB
expansion' (The Times 5 May 1984) and
`Coal mines for the miner' (Financial
Times 17 September 1984) are two re-
cent headlines concerning the threat of
privatisation of the National Coal Board
(NCB). However, there has been very little
public comment by either the National
Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the NCB,
or the government on plans to privatise
the pits, nor has there been much media
discussion .
This lack of discussion could
later have catastrophic results both for the
miners and other public sector workers . It
also disguises the fact that 15% of coal
production is already privately owned
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Table 1
UpforSale: TheMulti-Billion TransferList
Estimated
Potential
Market Value
£ millions
Total
£22,970 million
Source : Stockbrokers reports, etc .
The sale of British Airways, British Ship-
builders warship yards, and the Royal
Ordnance Factories is already underway.
Stockbrokers have `valued' many of these
services but none has yet put a figure on
the potential `market value' of the NCB .
Coal privatisation
guaranteed the advance sale of most of 7
these stocks . The board considered set-
ting up a separate coal trading company
with private shareholders which would
have made deals with banks to finance an
agreed level of coal stocks . The scheme
foundered on Treasury opposition to the
NCB using a backdoor method of increas-
ing borrowing without government sanc-
tion .
The full or partial privatisation of the NCB
is usually included in lists drawn up by the
financial institutions of nationalised in-
dustry and public services being consi-
dered or prepared for sale (see Table 1) .
NUM tactics
The NUMS tactics have been to keep the
strike centred on pit closures . During the
first nine months of the strike there was
no serious attempt to nationally and pub-
licly counter the government's or the
NCB's apparent privatisation plans . Yet
the NUM were not unaware of the threat
of privatisation . The second of a series of
briefing booklets `Hands off the pits - no
privatisation of coal' issued by the union
as part of its Campaign for Coal succinct-
ly explained why the government was im-
posing privatisation and its effects on
workers and users . `There is already dis-
turbing talk of the peripheral coal fields
being allowed to go to the wall with pri-
vate capital invited for stakes in the lucra-
tive central coalfield . It is not at all incon-
ceivable that Selby, paid for and de-
veloped at tremendous cost to the tax-
payer, could be sold off at a knockdown
price to private buyers' .
The not so reticent right wing of the
Conservative party has been pushing for
privatisation of the NCB . Norman Tebbitt,
Secretary of State for Trade and Industry,
hinted that privatisation of the pits was on
the government's agenda . Ian MacGregor,
NCB chairperson, is clearly in favour of
privatisation . He stated `Any time you can tap
private capital you have some kind of
understanding that pretty savvy people
are interested . That indicates the indus-
try has a future' .
