GREAT BRITAIN: King Coal’s Abdication

The price of coal, lifeblood of British industry, was increased a surprising 18% (about $1.60 a ton) by Britain’s National Coal Board last week. The increase was overdue (in three of the past four years, the nationalized coal tipples have run at a loss), but when it came, Britons set up a howl. “We are frankly staggered,” complained the head of the Federation of British Industries (Britain’s equivalent of the N.A.M.). Said a Tory M.P., pointing the accusing finger at Tory Minister of Fuel Geoffrey Lloyd: “You will finish up by bankrupting the country.”

Even with the price rise, British coal prices will still be lower than the world average. But behind the drastic price rise lies a disquieting fact: after five centuries of dependence on coal for fuel, Britain is no longer able to mine enough cheap coal to meet the needs of its expanding industries. British coal exports, which in 1913 supplied half the world’s coal trade, are drying up at the source. For every ton of coal Britain now exports, it buys almost a ton of twice-as-expensive dollar coal from West Virginia. The best British coal seams are petering out, and young Britons, like young Americans, are no longer inclined to labor underground when cleaner, pleasanter jobs are plentiful on the surface. The inescapable conclusion is that King Coal in Britain is slowly abdicating. The date of the coal-price rise, wrote the conservative Spectator last week, “may come to be remembered as the day on which coal ceased to be the national staple.”

Facing up to this dire possibility, Fuel Minister Lloyd told an anxious House of Commons that British industry must drastically wean itself from dependence on coal for power. By 1960, said Lloyd, British oil refineries (expanding at breakneck speed) will provide enough fuel oil to replace 25 million tons of coal a year. Thereafter, he added, he is counting on atomic power to drive out “the specter of the coal gap.”