The phantom coalman
To watch Ian MacGregor in action is rather like watching a glacier go by. It sets the mind wandering into fantasy: sup- pose, for argument's sake, that we had to invent a chairman of the Coal Board. In what image would we make him? Let us go overboard at the start, and give our alter- native chairman a first class honours degree in coal-mining. He has spent his formative years in the mines, preferably starting early enough to remember them before they were nationalised. But he needs experience, too, of a big modern company. So let us take him to ICI, by way of the division which makes mining explosives. At ICI he moves about — to plastics, say, and to fibres, Which he runs; to America, where he is ICI's top man. He is on the short list of three for the chairmanship, a strong ortho- dox candidate in an election when heterodoxy, personified in John Harvey- Jones, was the order of the day. Have we made him an organisation man? Then let us make him a genial man, too — in fact let us make him, like Joe Gormley, a Lancashire man. He knows the mining communities from the inside, has lived in one, often speaks of it, could do so to great effect on television when the need arose. Why, what have we done? We have re-invented, com- plete in every detail, Bob Haslam. All we need add is that nowadays he has moved on from ICI, to two chairmanships, one in the private sector, one in the public — Tate & Lyle, and British Steel. We may pause to admire the way he has played British Steel's hand through the miners' strike. And then we should note that he was not originally intended to take on that job at all. Once it became clear that he was not staying on at
ICI, his name was pencilled in as the next chairman of the Coal Board. Indeed, it was inked in: all was agreed. Then the Prime Minister intervened. Ian MacGregor, hav- ing tackled British Leyland and British Steel, was the only man to tackle coal. What about Mr Haslam? Well, somebody would have to chair British Steel, wouldn't they? We are left to wonder how he would have played the Coal Board's hand. No less strongly on points of substance, but less stiffly, more amiably, moving onto the mid- dle ground of sympathy — the Gormley touch .... Such qualities might still serve to bind up wounds, when the septuagen- arian Mr MacGregor goes on to tackle Florida, where, as he reminds us, he is a registered voter. Somebody has to be the alternative chairman.
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