With respect, you might compare the case of the French, Spanish, and Portuguese coal industries, and what they’ve had to do to keep coal mines open. For example, in 2001 (the latest data I have available, forgive me if that’s too far back), according to “Coal Production Subsidies: Commission of the European Communities, State Aid Scorecard—Statistical Tables, web site www.europa.eu.int” (as Summarized on page 82 of the US EIA International Energy Outlook, 2004), coal subsidies for various countries in Western Europe were:
Germany: $113 per short ton of coal
Spain: $58 per short ton of coal
France: $403 per short ton of coal
United Kingdom: $3 per short ton of coal
The UK clearly did a great job of avoiding high subsidies at that time, whereas in France…well good Goddess, you don’t have to be an expert on world coal trade to know that a $403 per ton subsidy on coal which could otherwise be purchased on the world market for $27 to $58 delivered to Le Havre is incredible. In addition to that $403 per ton subsidy, the French had a “market cost” of $42 per ton, so in effect the French taxpayers were paying $403 per ton of coal so they could dump their coal on the market at $42 per ton.
That’s the situation that England was heading towards before they closed down the high-cost mines, and the reason that there are even 7 mines still open is that they got the low-hanging fruit of the most expensive mines, and avoided a French situation. The Spanish have a trickier situation, in that several of their specific power plants (like La Robla and its nearby mine, in Leon, which I visited a while ago) were designed for their local coal, which is a hard quality/type (low-Btu anthracite) to find on the world market. But UK power plants were built to be quite a bit more flexible, and they were very open to world-market coals.
And sure, Thatcher had no love for the coal miners - I’ve recently read a bit on that in “How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World”, as well as in Lady Antonia’s “Warrior Queens” book, where she fully intended to take on the coal miners, and planned it like a military operation. But she had to - the average English ratepayer didn’t seem to understand that to some extent the romance of the salt-of-the-earth coal miner trudging off to work was heading the country towards economic ruin, and drastic measures were needed. The union was refusing any sort of gradual closure scheme, as well as cutbacks in manpower, for quite some time, and things got to a tipping point. As a result, FRDE, while I understand what you are saying and believe you have part of the answer, I respectfully dispute that the coal mines should have been kept open.