Will the coal last?
rr here will be no power cuts until well 1 into 1985. That is the heart of the argument, unless Mr Peter Walker's asser- tion is to rank with 'there ain't gonna be no war' as a dud prophecy (and his record is not wholly flawless). After more than six months, coal stocks are still high enough indeed, they were rising towards the end of the summer — to feed the electricity grid through the winter, without the Coal Board counting on moving much of the millions of tons strike-bound at the pit- head. The approach of autumn was always destined to be the crucial moment in the strike, and it seems that, unless Mr Scargill can secure practical assistance from one of the unions in the power stations, the strike will have failed. It is noticeable, for all the public protestations of support at the TUC, that the NUM was rather more eager to look for a mediator after the breakdown of the latest talks than it was before the holidays. Yet Mr Scargill continues to demand a promise of the unpromisable. Some ministers are anxious that, by so wholeheartedly accepting Plan for Coal in the last round of talks, Mr MacGregor might have given too much away. Yet Plan for Coal is, after all, a plan only in the sense of George Brown's National Plan; it derives gloriously optimistic figures for output from gloriously optimistic assump- tions about demand. It is so far removed from reality that it must ultimately be relatively harmless. At best, reprieves for the worst loss-making pits can be only temporary. No government, however in thrall to the NUM, could continue inde- finitely to let mounds of unsold coal pile up. Of course, there is plenty of scope for speeding or slowing the rates of closure, but closures there will have to be. It is strange to hear people remark that the strike has become 'political'. It was never anything else. The violence and the hardship are all too real. Yet the central point at issue seems ever more arcane and byzantine — like the ostensible cause of some war of religion which is really about political power.
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