The new Conservative government however saw things differently. Despite a ‘Joint Understanding’ the Coal Board had failed to reduce coal prices to the Energy Industry to compete with the EEC and the leaked 1978 Ridley Report had made it abundantly clear that Margaret Thatcher had no plans to go the way of Ted Heath. In March 1984, the 1974 ‘Plan For Coal’ was cited as being ‘obsolete’.
I distrusted trade unions, politicians even less and had absolutely no faith in the British Press. No one ever wants to be out of work, but I had reasons of my own to believe that the Coal Industry could not survive as it was and as much as I was a great believer in Heritage, you could not fight change.
Nottinghamshire has lots of Heritage, much of it worth fighting for. Along with the odd Tudor mansion built on the back of an industry very much in its infancy, 18th century Industrialists built their grand houses in the rolling countryside. The county is littered with them, the vast majority bought up by the National Coal Board and left to rot, but that’s a story for another day.