PC: Coal mine closures under Blair, not Thatcher

[wargamer6]

I picked up a copy of Prime Minister Boris, and one of the stories consisted of this:

In exchange for a 20 year no strike deal, no mine closures and Scargill fired, Thatcher sacked Ian MacGregor and didn’t close the mines.

Blair comes to power as OTL, but in the aftermath of the 2001 election and Kyoto, decides to put forth a plan to cut CO2 emissions by closing coal mines.

This proceeded to split Labour into “New Labour” and “Old Labour” factions, with most coal mining MPs defecting to a new party.

The 2005 election sees Blair 25 seats from a majority, and he hands everything off to Brown.

Was this scenario plausible at all?

 

[Bernard Woolley]

The 1984-85 Miner's Strike was quite finely balanced. The NUM could easily have won the strike, or at least gotten a good deal if both sides had been less intransigent.
However as has been observed by a couple of authors it would only be putting off the closures to the '90s, or post Kyoto. However if the NUM was still as influential in the '90s as it was before 1985 would the UK have actually signed the Kyoto Treaty, or would their influence in the Labour Party prevent that?

 

[Isot the Terrible]

I picked up a copy of Prime Minister Boris, and one of the stories consisted of this:

In exchange for a 20 year no strike deal, no mine closures and Scargill fired, Thatcher sacked Ian MacGregor and didn’t close the mines.

Blair comes to power as OTL, but in the aftermath of the 2001 election and Kyoto, decides to put forth a plan to cut CO2 emissions by closing coal mines.

This proceeded to split Labour into “New Labour” and “Old Labour” factions, with most coal mining MPs defecting to a new party.

The 2005 election sees Blair 25 seats from a majority, and he hands everything off to Brown.

Was this scenario plausible at all?

Absolutely implausible.

Even if Thatcher and Scargill managed to come to an agreement, Heseltine and Major would have pulled out of it after the 1992 election, when many non-striking mineworkers felt betrayed after a new more severe round of pit closures.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/13/newsid_2532000/2532765.stm

http://dronfieldblather.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/lessons-of-history-by-bryan-robson.html

 

[TheMann]

What about the possibility of using the coal for another purpose? Britain did have North Sea oil coming around by then, but what about the idea of using the coal for synthetic crude instead of just fuel for power plants and coking material for steel mills?

 

[Simon]

The best I think you could possibly get would be to only close fewer of the mines than in our timeline as IIRC there were a number that were still profitable but by the time the strike came around both sides were too heavily invested. If you could close the loss making mines whilst retaining the ones that made a profit or didn't lose money and get the National Coal Board to at least break even then that might be enough to head off privatisation. At least for a little while.

What about the possibility of using the coal for another purpose? Britain did have North Sea oil coming around by then, but what about the idea of using the coal for synthetic crude instead of just fuel for power plants and coking material for steel mills?

Isn't synthetic crude and oil horribly expensive to produce though, both the process itself and the modified refineries needed to process it? I know that South Africa used it IIRC since oil was one of the few natural resources they lacked but they were something of a special case due to the embargo.

 

[PMN1]

Blair comes to power as OTL, but in the aftermath of the 2001 election and Kyoto, decides to put forth a plan to cut CO2 emissions by closing coal mines.

This proceeded to split Labour into “New Labour” and “Old Labour” factions, with most coal mining MPs defecting to a new party.

Given in TTL how quiet old labour was about coal when labour got back into power I suspect most of them didn't give a dam and were quite happy to have a group that could bring them down gone.