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Chapter CLXII: More than a Miner Inconvenience
Chapter CLXII: More than a Miner Inconvenience.

From a certain perspective the British coal industry in 1937 was doing tolerably well, the industry had coped with the disruption of the Abyssinian War and the Anglo-Irish Trade War, domestic production was holding up and industry-union relations were no worse than usual. Attractive as this view was, at least for those who were predisposed to let sleeping dogs lie, it missed out on a number of issues which had forced successive governments into action. There is a temptation to talk about coal at a grand scale and invoke the major trends that were involved; electrification and mechanisation, the rise of oil, the changing shape of the British economy and so on. All of these certainly played a part and we shall look at them in turn, but the reason that coal was such a political problem is far more simply explained; in the years since the Great War coal production had remained broadly flat but employment had fallen by 40%, over 350,000 net jobs being lost over the period.

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The tale of the post-Great War British coal mining industry in a single chart. A subtle omission from this graph is the data for 1926, the year of the General Strike. While the General Strike itself may have lasted barely eight days, many of the coal miners had stayed out on strike until November severely disrupting production for most of the year. Many is not the same as all and certain mining regions had returned to work early, most notably the new mines on 'The Dukeries' coal fields of Nottinghamshire. The resulting fractures in the mining unions had still not healed over a decade later and would get worse when the independent Nottinghamshire and District Union abandoned merger talks with the national Miner's Federation and accepted the the TGWU enabled offer to affiliate itself with the Liberal Social Democrats. The growing splits in the union movement were of great concern to the TUC and the Labour party who were locked in argument about how to respond.

Bad as those figures were they actually under-stated the problem, a clue to the reason why can be seen in the use of the slightly clunky term 'net jobs'. If an older colliery that employed 2,000 men closed down and was replaced by a new mechanised operation that could produce the same amount of coal with only 1,000 employees, that was a net loss of only 1,000 jobs. However, if the new colliery was not in the same region as the closed site then the local employment impacts would be far worse than the net figure would indicate. This was the problem facing the government, the pits that had closed had been concentrated in the traditional coal mining heartlands of South Wales and the North East of England, while many of the new shafts that had been sunk had been located on the new Nottinghamshire and Kent coal fields. Consequently the overlap between the Special Areas and the traditional coal mining regions was considerable, only the struggles of the textile industry being comparable in scale and extent. From a political perspective therefore the key figures in the coal industry were not output, efficiency or even profitability but employment, specifically employment in the struggling Special Areas. For this reason the coal mining industry was not seen as a strategic or economic issue but as a social problem and policy was developed and judged accordingly. The chosen policy since 1930 by Labour and National governments had been cartelisation and quotas, the government fixing a 'tolerable' price for coal (i.e. one which kept the struggling pits just about afloat without causing too much damage to the wider economy, at least in theory) and dividing up the market in each region by setting quotas. The hope had been that this would be a temporary measure and that as the economy recovered from the depression and returned to growth so would the coal industry. The economy duly recovered and in terms of output so did coal, but by the politically important measure of employment the industry had at best stabilised and even that was only true at the national level. It is sometimes claimed that it was the only the political pressure to 'do something' about the Special Areas that prompted the government into action and doubtless that was a motivating factor, but the government focus on the coal industry should be seen as a part of a wider effort by Eden to re-focus the government on domestic priorities. Of course government attention is in no way a guarantee of a problem improving.

tOQwMs7.jpeg

The pit village of Dowlais in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales. The low rectangular white buildings at the rear left are the Dowlais foundry works, to the right is the demolished iron and steelworks and dominating the centre of the picture the massive tip that loomed over the town itself. The heavy job losses at the local coal mines during the 1920s had been a body blow to the region, the subsequent closure of the blast furnaces and steel works then all but killed off the local economy. The UK national unemployment rate had dropped below 10% by late 1937 and even South Wales had got the figure down to 30%, but in Dowlais unemployment was still at a shocking 75%. This was not an isolated problem, hundreds of coal towns and villages across South Wales and the North East of England were similarly affected.

As had become traditional for the coal industry nationalisation was briefly considered but then discounted, just as it had been in the many government and independent reviews since the Great War. The previous Conservative dominated National Government had engaged in a great many 're-organisations' of heavy industries hit by the Depression and Eden himself was supportive of state intervention, or at least the Tory One Nation version of it. Outright nationalisation however was a step too far for much of the wider party both inside and outside of Parliament. This was not just a matter of ideology however, aside from the considerable cost of such a move it was also unclear how the change in ownership would actually help the problems of the industry. The Coal Council was already centrally controlling price and production quotas, with the effect the failing pits were being subsidised by the successful pits (and coal consumers), a nationalised industry would just formalise the de facto centralised control. The more cynical would note that nationalisation would also mean the government would be more clearly responsible for the quotas and any consequences rather than being able to blame the Coal Council for any unpopular decisions. The other great claim of nationalisation was that it would vastly increase efficiency and productivity, even if this had been true such an outcome would make the political problem worse not better; increased efficiency allowed fewer miners to produce the same amount of coal, which raised the prospect of further job losses.

An obvious challenge to the analysis above is that it assumes a static market, that an increased supply of cheaper coal would not find new customers. This neatly brings up one of the main external challenges facing the coal industry; the squeeze on demand from advancing technology. This is often taken to mean changes such as the proliferation of diesel fuelled motor vessel replacing steam ships, the electrification of railways and the ongoing tussle between 'town gas' and electricity for new homes, all of which were indeed factors. One of the most serious impacts however was the growing efficiency of existing technology, as an example a pre-Great War steam boiler would be at best 15% efficient but by the mid-1930s it could be 35% or better. Similar, if less dramatic, efficiency gains could be found in everything from blast furnaces to turbines all of which enable far more useful energy to be extracted from the same amount of coal. This growing efficiency, along with the rising use of oil based fuels, had kept domestic coal demand flat even as energy used continued to rapidly rise. This did not stop a determined band in parliament and elsewhere trying to fight back, the demands for a return to a coal fired fleet or a more lavishly funded coal-to-oil programme were fundamentally aimed at increasing domestic demand for coal and so helping the struggling mines. As we have seen all these proposals were rejected by the government, almost always because they were incredibly expensive, massively impractical or both. Government planning would therefore proceed in line with the industry's own prognosis that domestic coal demand would be broadly flat at best.

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Black coals over the white cliffs of Dover. The Tilmanstone aerial ropeway ran coal from the East Kent coalfield to a tunnel through the white cliffs and direct to Dover port for onward shipping. As was often the case government efforts to solve a previous problem were a cause of the current issue, in this case the development of the East Kent coalfield in the 1920s had been guaranteed by the Treasury as part of a wildly ambitious Labour plan to re-start the long dead Weald iron industry developed by the famed town planner Professor Abercrombie. The plan failed at anything beyond a few half laid out towns, but the coal mines proved profitable enough not to need the guarantee and, while never nationally significant, were large local employers. As crisis hit the wider industry more than a few politicians would come to wish the Kent mines had never been guaranteed and the jobs had stayed in the traditional mining regions.

Having decided what it would not do, or in some case could not do, the government was left with the question of what it would do. A twin track approach was decided upon, a somewhat convoluted plan to support the industry alongside an acceleration of existing schemes to re-train and re-locate former coal mine workers. To deal with the first point the planned Coal Act would nationalise ownership of coal mining rights which at the time sat with a wide range of owners, not always the same as those that owned the land above the mine. A new Coal Commission would be responsible for those rights, as well as continuing to 'encourage' mergers and acquisitions in the sector to reduce the number of coal mining companies and promote economies of scale. That nationalising the coal industry was a step too far but forcibly acquiring the mineral rights was in principle acceptable is an interesting insight into attitudes of the time, the distinction between government actively controlling an industry versus the entirely passive act of collecting royalties was considered a significant one. It should also be noted that the acquisition was not completely unprecedented, gold and silver mining rights had sat with the crown for centuries while the 1934 Petroleum Act had claimed for the state all 'unknown' oil and gas reserves. The Petroleum Act had been generally seen as a success, the legal certainty on rights and royalties had prompted a rash of exploration as we saw in Chapter CL, that there were no significant reserves to find was a fact of geology and not a failure of the system. Having a single rights owner for all coal would, it was hoped, allow mines to be planned and developed in the most efficient way without being constrained by a morass of agreements and leases; there were just over 1,800 producing coal mines in the UK but over 17,000 companies and individuals would register as owning coal rights. Of course this would mostly benefit new and expanding operations as already existing mines were committed to their current configuration, hence the second objective of the act, to substantially cut the rate of royalties. Such cuts would allow a reduction in the domestic price of coal without damaging the financial health of the mining firms and would increase the competitiveness of exports. As is often the case the 'ends' were popular but the 'means' by which they would be achieved were not, in this case it was the compensation being proposed that was the sticking point. The Greene Committee (named after it's chair the leading administrative judge Sir Wilfrid Greene as he was then) had assessed the value of all coal mining royalties as a shade over £4.4 million a year. Taking the standard 15 year valuation life of a mining royalty they decreed that £66.5 million was the fair value to acquire the rights, for comparison the entire RAF budget for 1937 was barely £55 million so this was a substantial sum. As the government could borrow for the long term at very low rates, around 3% for anything with a Treasury guarantee, the interest cost on such a sum would be only £2 million a year. Thus the new Coal Commission could substantially reduce the royalty rates paid by coal mine and be entirely self financing, a key requirement to get support from the Treasury and the more 'economically minded' backbench MPs. The controversial issue was that the Greene Committee had used the previous seven years of data to assess the annual income from royalties, a period which included the depths of the Depression and so, it was argued, significantly undervalued the royalties. Again it is interesting to note that the actual principle of the nationalisation scheme was not strongly objected to or even particularly commented on, it was concerns over the allegedly low price being offered that drove the opposition. That such opposition included the Church of England, who's Ecclesiastical Commissioners owned considerable coal rights in the North East of England due to their complex legal relationship with Durham over the centuries, lent those objecting to the act a certain moral sheen they perhaps did not deserve. In any event this alliance of large landowners and Lords Spiritual was unable to prevent the passing of the Act and it would duly come into force, an important detail for our current period was the extended implementation period. With over 17,000 claims to value the Act allowed five years to get them all valued, any appeals heard and the final totals reconciled and paid out. As a result the Coal Commission would not be able to start reducing royalties until 1942 at the earliest.

g00ADKZ.jpeg

Snowdon Colliery on the East Kent Coalfield, in the background the partially built new town of Aylesham that had been built to house the miners. The deepest mine in Kent at over 3,000ft it was also somewhat damp, a combination which made it hot and humid; temperatures of 100ºF (38ºC) and 80% humidity were typical. The mine soon attracted the nickname 'Dante's Inferno' and was held to be one of the worst pits in Britain to work down. The workforce was almost entirely non-local, consisting of desperate miners from the Special Areas and those who had been blacklisted after the General Strike and could not get employed elsewhere. Unsurprisingly Aylesham was a fractious and divided place and only a quarter of it's housing was ever built, the idealised cohesive community the planners had hoped for entirely failing to materialise.

The other strand was what to do with the unemployed mining workforce or as some would have it the ex-workforce. As we saw in Chapter CXLI the government was keeping faith that the effects of the economic boom and the funding available from the new BIFID corporation would benefit the Special Areas and help the regional economies. However the Commissioners Reports were making clear that some of the former mining areas were not benefiting and probably never would; the remote pit villages of Northumberland and the mining valleys of South Wales were too small to have worthwhile local markets for local light industry and too far from decent transport links to attract any larger. The solution to this had been internal migration, from the 'Labour Exchange' system which advertised all the jobs available elsewhere through to schemes to encourage and financially support those re-locating. These had been a considerable success on their own terms, South Wales had experienced a net population decline of almost 300,000 people due to people moving out and there was a similar, if less dramatic, pattern in the North East. A minority had moved to the new mines in Kent and Nottingham but the majority had abandoned the traditional trades and started working in the new light industries of the Midlands and South East. Excluding the few who had relocated to the new coal fields the majority of those who had left were young and those with new families who were more prepared, often even happier, to work in a factory rather than down a mine. What was left was the older cohorts more attached to the mining identity and unwilling, sometime unable, to re-train and start a new profession at the bottom. The government's new approach therefore was to harness those skills to rejuvenate an old struggling policy, the Empire Settlement Act. Passed in the early 1920s it was a scheme to support emigration to the Dominions, which at the time were keen to increase their populations and were running land settlement schemes to set up new citizen farmers on empty land. The scheme was also popular in London as a way to build bonds of Imperial unity and as a way to deal with lingering post-Great War unemployment. Previous effort had been made to process miners through the scheme, several thousand being sent to Canada to work on the harvest and (in theory) stay on to start their own farms. This had ended badly with three quarters returning after the harvest, which was a depressingly typical outcome for the scheme, in the end however it was a combination of the Depression and advances in agricultural technology that all but killed the scheme. The key change in the new proposal was to stop trying to turn miners into farmers but let them carry on being miners, a seemingly obvious observation that had nevertheless taken Westminster, Whitehall and the Dominions 15 years to come up with. With the Empire in grips of a number of mining booms, primarily gold but also bauxite and a number of other key minerals, there was a strong demand for experienced miners and while coal mining is different from hard rock mining it is far less of a transition than agriculture. Another lesson from the earlier debacles was the need for proper co-ordination, a task which bounced around Whitehall until landing with the Imperial Trade Council and was the start of that bodies evolution beyond it's original more limited role. There was of course a price for such expansion, in this case the Council became the venue for the intense fight over the Imperial Labour Exchange proposals, a row we shall be looking at in due course. In the short term however the scheme was a moderate success, assisting tens of thousands of miners and their families to relocate to mining projects across the Empire.

The one area that we have not covered in detail is exports which had once been a pillar of the industry, prior to the Great War Britain had been formidable coal exporter with almost a third of all mined coal being destined for overseas markets. The Great War, more precisely the consequences of the war, had disrupted this setup considerably as old markets shrunk or disappeared entirely and new players entered the export trade. As a result far from looking to expand exports the main concern for industry and government was to preserve existing market share, as we shall see in the next chapter this was far from a straightforward endeavour.

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Notes:
Coal! Graphs! Graphs about Coal! While writing this one it seemed longer, yet in the end it's about average Pip chapter length. I think this is in part because so much got cut out as being irrelevant. You were for instance saved the baffling history of British work camps/improvement centres, places where the soft and workshy unemployed would be made fit for work through the pedology of labour, a terrible idea and so unsurprisingly is the fault of the Fabians, one of Britains' most reliable sources of terrible ideas. There is also more coal to come as we look at the thrilling concept of international coal cartels! And hopefully more interestingly back stabbing politics, trade shenanigans and low ambition disguised as high strategy.

The Coal Act is OTL, as the chapter says I think the different views on nationalisation and state vs private industry are interesting, as is the fact this was an employment problem not an existential threat to the industry (that was postwar). The migration schemes did exist but had pretty much stopped by the early 30s, by coincidence the Empire Settlement Act was up for renewal in 1937 in OTL, so repuropsing that to ride the mining boom seemed a fairly possible change. It's not going to solve the problem, not every unemployed miner is going to want to leave their home, but it will help some and that is better than nothing. Unfortunately it probably makes things a bit nastier for those who remain, efforts are being made but if their position is that they will only work as a coal miner and only in a certain small area (which in many cases has no economic coal reserves in it) public sympathy is going to fast evaporate. The Nottinghamshire union did end up merging back into the national federation in 1937, here I thought it would be more interesting if they went and joined the LSD to give them a bit more union muscle and the left-wing credibility that miners bring to a socialist movement.

The Imperial Trade Council is a new Butterfly thing and like the Committee of Imperial Defence and a few other bodies it is going to become important. Nev and co. were not very Empire minded so that side of things atrophied in OTL and then just fell apart during the war, in Butterfly much more attention is being paid to it due to different personalities, Imperial Free Trade being a thing, the different threats (Japan no Germany), etc.
 
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@El Pip "As we have seen all these proposals were rejected by the government, almost always because they were incredibly expensive, massively impractical or both."

While incredibly expensive may slow a dedicated politician, massively impractical only encourages the true believers. I did not realize that coal employment was that bad of a problem before the before the beginning of the environmental movement. Are miner health problems a concern?

Thank you for the update
 
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@El Pip "As we have seen all these proposals were rejected by the government, almost always because they were incredibly expensive, massively impractical or both."

While incredibly expensive may slow a dedicated politician, massively impractical only encourages the true believers. I did not realize that coal employment was that bad of a problem before the before the beginning of the environmental movement. Are miner health problems a concern?

Thank you for the update

We've been worrying about what to do with a million unemployed miners since the begining of the AAR. It's almost certain to happen, and as entire communities are built around mines, its going to be an existential problem for many.
 
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I humbly suggest to change this from the AAR category to the Pippean Encyclopedia of Britishness et al.
 
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I have to say, after reading this excellent review of coal, managing to cram it between two quizzes, a midterm, lawn care, and finalizing my wedding vows (the nuptials are Saturday, nothing like a bit of deadline pressure to get the creative juices flowing!), I was treated to this article by the BBC. I simply must know if the streak continues TTL!
 
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I did not realize that coal employment was that bad of a problem before the before the beginning of the environmental movement.
Mechanisation and the rise of oil hit coal mining countries hard, there is a similar graph for the US coal industry of the period. Though as the US had a bigger population and a stronger internal migration culture it was less of an obvious problem I believe.
Are miner health problems a concern?
Sort of. There's a medical inspector of mines and all sort of research going on, but there is also a "it must be proven" attitude prevailing. Everyone can see problems, but there's not enough data to definitely say what the cause is. So as the epidemiologists gather and analyse the data, no-one wants to load more costs onto a struggling industry.
We've been worrying about what to do with a million unemployed miners since the begining of the AAR. It's almost certain to happen, and as entire communities are built around mines, its going to be an existential problem for many.
There was almost a section on that. So far in the future it's not funny, but the Durham "Category D" village scheme might end up a model. The Labour council of the 50s used it's planning powers to just say certain settlements (all former mining villages) had no future and should get no investment and no council money. Only a handful of the few hundred villages identified got abandoned and it was not popular, but I do often wonder if it should have been pushed harder.

On the actual numbers, it is depressing that in the 50s there are debates in Parliament complaining that coal mining is short several 10,000s of workers and more young people should be encouraged in, which duly happened. An absolute moratorium on new apprentices and new employees in coal would, with perfect hindsight, be the best option for a government to take right now. Sadly not even slightly plausible.
I humbly suggest to change this from the AAR category to the Pippean Encyclopedia of Britishness et al.
That is an excellent suggestion.
Z3wSg01.gif

I have to say, after reading this excellent review of coal, managing to cram it between two quizzes, a midterm, lawn care, and finalizing my wedding vows (the nuptials are Saturday, nothing like a bit of deadline pressure to get the creative juices flowing!), I was treated to this article by the BBC. I simply must know if the streak continues TTL!
Blimey Wraith you don't do things by half do you? What an incredibly hectic life you are leading right now, do try and take some time to enjoy your nuptials.

Honestly I don't know about the streak, I've got the shape of what's going to happen out to the 1940s but I've not projected beyond that. There's still a fair bit of flexibility in the plan, it has already changed several times so may well do again. At the moment I think the streak is safe till the late 40s, but beyond that I'd have to plot out how all the smaller changes have snowballed, which definitely sounds like a job for Future Pip. ;)
 
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Interesting it took so much time to try transferring experienced miners to places where they are needed.

Other than that an interesting update to read about, never thought much about British coal other than thinking it's simply dying a slow slow death. Seems there's a bit more to it, didn't expect new sites to keep opening in thirties.

More powers to Imperial bodies is also nice.
 
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Interesting it took so much time to try transferring experienced miners to places where they are needed.
They never even reached that conclusion in OTL, though in farirness they were distracted by the impending war and the OTL Gold Boom was not as big as it was in Butterfly (more countries on the gold standard for longer, better wider economy,etc).
Other than that an interesting update to read about, never thought much about British coal other than thinking it's simply dying a slow slow death. Seems there's a bit more to it, didn't expect new sites to keep opening in thirties.
Last deep UK coal mine started sinking in 1987. Asfordby produced first coal in 1991, but was shut down by 1997. One of Heseltine's super pits, which were obviously not very super but the theory was not completely mad. Asfordby was killed by bad geology and a nasty flood, until then it was very efficient and actually making money.

In British coal mines at least it's always been a few large and efficient pits doing the bulk of the production, while most miners work in small inefficient pits which can't be shut due to employment concerns.
More powers to Imperial bodies is also nice.
This is absolutely going to be a theme going forward, it will not always go smoothly but it is something interesting to explore I think.
 
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In British coal mines at least it's always been a few large and efficient pits doing the bulk of the production, while most miners work in small inefficient pits which can't be shut due to employment concerns.

I'm both dreading and looking forward to TBTM having to deal with various different countries and their coal industries post ww1. They're all doomed but some are more doomed than others.

Chapter CLXII: More than a Miner Inconvenience.

Not sure how I missed the update but let's have a looksee.

From a certain perspective the British coal industry in 1937 was doing tolerably well

The industry? Yes. The workforce? Mm....

From a certain point of view, the british coal industry was fine. From another, it was a cybernetically enhanced monster living on life support purely to benefit an evil empire.

industry-union relations were no worse than usual.

Hah! Best line of the chapter.

There is a temptation to talk about coal at a grand scale and invoke the major trends that were involved; electrification and mechanisation, the rise of oil, the changing shape of the British economy and so on.

Which will of course be done here.

in the years since the Great War coal production had remained broadly flat but employment had fallen by 40%, over 350,000 net jobs being lost over the period.

It's remarkable how the real problems started at the begining of the 20th century rather than post war as popularly remembered.

The tale of the post-Great War British coal mining industry in a single chart.

Rather bleak reading. And that's just a decade of work. It gets significantly worse.

However, if the new colliery was not in the same region as the closed site then the local employment impacts would be far worse

This is the real, unfixable, unbutterflyable, issue with mining generally, and British coal mining especially.

only the struggles of the textile industry being comparable in scale and extent.

They'd been having issues for a lot longer and for even more existential reasons - an industry founded on the premise that literally no one else in the world could do it is not going to survive everyone else industrilising. Not when it's the first thing to be industrialised and it's relatively easy to pull off.

For this reason the coal mining industry was not seen as a strategic or economic issue but as a social problem and policy was developed and judged accordingly.

Makes sense. Even sensible, policy wise.

The chosen policy since 1930 by Labour and National governments had been cartelisation and quotas, the government fixing a 'tolerable' price for coal (i.e. one which kept the struggling pits just about afloat without causing too much damage to the wider economy, at least in theory) and dividing up the market in each region by setting quotas. The hope had been that this would be a temporary measure and that as the economy recovered from the depression and returned to growth so would the coal industry.

Of course, that just keep the coal industry alive. Does nothing for employment and mechanisation.

The UK national unemployment rate had dropped below 10% by late 1937 and even South Wales had got the figure down to 30%, but in Dowlais unemployment was still at a shocking 75%. This was not an isolated problem, hundreds of coal towns and villages across South Wales and the North East of England were similarly affected.

As above. Existential, rather unfixable.

As had become traditional for coal the industry nationalisation

Er...wut?

the demands for a return to a coal fired fleet

Er...wut?

That nationalising the coal industry was a step too far but forcibly acquiring the mineral rights was in principle acceptable is an interesting insight into attitudes of the time, the distinction between government actively controlling an industry versus the entirely passive act of collecting royalties was considered a significant one.

That is rather interesting, isn't it?

there were just over 1,800 producing coal mines in the UK but over 17,000 companies and individuals would register as owning coal rights.

Just goes to show how much money there was in coal in the 19th century.

As a result the Coal Commission would not be able to start reducing royalties until 1942 at the earliest.

Hmm. Suboptimal timing.

What was left was the older cohorts more attached to the mining identity and unwilling, sometime unable, to re-train and start a new profession at the bottom. The government's new approach therefore was to harness those skills to rejuvenate an old struggling policy, the Empire Settlement Act.

Fob em off on Canada and hope they become farmers?

The key change in the new proposal was to stop trying to turn miners into farmers but let them carry on being miners, a seemingly obvious observation that had nevertheless taken Westminster, Whitehall and the Dominions 15 years to come up with.

Funny how peoples minds work. This could actually work quite well given how many mines there are in sparsely populated regions.

Unfortunately it probably makes things a bit nastier for those who remain, efforts are being made but if their position is that they will only work as a coal miner and only in a certain small area (which in many cases has no economic coal reserves in it) public sympathy is going to fast evaporate.

Well, yes...but TTL, some decent attempts have been made to help them and there's not much more that could be done other than early retirement and welfare.
 
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Not related to update, but (wondering since I'm reading something related currently) why didn't RN make more effort to modernize it's battleships preWW2 due to their slowness?

Seems like Japan modernized/had everything besides Fuso & Yamashiro capable of speed of near 25 knots (so 7 ships that they knew of, not counting illegally reactivated Hiei).

To counter that RN had three BCs. Nelson and Rodney were only 23 knots, unmodernised QE's and Revenge class were less than that. Seems quite a speed deficit?
 
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I'm both dreading and looking forward to TBTM having to deal with various different countries and their coal industries post ww1. They're all doomed but some are more doomed than others.
There is a degree of irony around that. A great deal of effort expended on saving jobs in the mines and restricting mechanisation, yet ending up being short of manpower for the coal mines in WW2. Or in the case of Germany short of actual coal mining capacity and the manpower to run what they had.
Not sure how I missed the update but let's have a looksee.
You thought we were just discussing coal for the joy of it? Interesting.
Hah! Best line of the chapter.
I do try.
Which will of course be done here.
Indeed Cat.jpg

The @nuclearslurpee memorial indeed cat.
It's remarkable how the real problems started at the begining of the 20th century rather than post war as popularly remembered.
I think it gets mixed up with the Depression and the general 1920s malaise before that.
Rather bleak reading. And that's just a decade of work. It gets significantly worse.
Only bleak if you think people working down a mine is good. I've (briefly) worked down mines, it is not good.
This is the real, unfixable, unbutterflyable, issue with mining generally, and British coal mining especially.
I don't think it's a particularly British coal mining problem. Look at Walloonia, East Saxony, those sorts of places. The reluctance to admit your mining town is pointless now the mines are shut seems fairly common across nations.
They'd been having issues for a lot longer and for even more existential reasons - an industry founded on the premise that literally no one else in the world could do it is not going to survive everyone else industrilising. Not when it's the first thing to be industrialised and it's relatively easy to pull off.
They had the advantage there is far less mythos around textiles, less of "I worked on this underwear weaving loom all my life and so will my children, we won't do nowt else" attitude. And as has been mentioned the skills are more transferable, if you can supervise a textile loom you are most of the way to supervising a continuous welding machine.
Of course, that just keep the coal industry alive. Does nothing for employment and mechanisation.
It was reckoned at the time those measures had saved 100,000 odd jobs, hard to say the exact truth of that but certainly things would have been even worse employment wise without the quotas and price fix. Though I would say it just delayed the inevitable and made the final reckoning that much worse.
Er...wut?
People were banging on about coal nationalisation in the 1800s.
Er...wut?
As late as July 1939 I can find people in Parliament banging on about how the Royal Navy should be coal fired to help domestic miners and to reduce the risk of relying on imported oil. There were at least two campaign organisations trying to get the fleet back onto coal and they were not entirely run by nutters, one of them had Admiral Reginald Hall on it (the man behind Room 40 during WW1) so there was some heft to it.
Just goes to show how much money there was in coal in the 19th century.
More goes to show how fractured land and mineral ownership was.
Funny how peoples minds work. This could actually work quite well given how many mines there are in sparsely populated regions.
I feel like it should work at least in part. The Empire Labour Exchange idea will crop up again around this point.
Well, yes...but TTL, some decent attempts have been made to help them and there's not much more that could be done other than early retirement and welfare.
There is also an interesting cultural thing going on. The Cornish thought nothing of heading off to the ends of the earth to go mining and did so with no subsidy or official assistance, when Tin hit problems they headed off into the Empire to mine gold or whatever. The Welsh did not and need a great deal of prodding and support to do anything. Yet Cornish tin mining dates back to 2000BC while Welsh coal mining is relatively short in most places, 1870s or later for the Merthyr Tydfil area. If anyone should be tied to the tradition of their ancestors it's Cornish miners, yet it was the shallow rooted Welsh who didn't want to move.
Keep 'em running Pip! Coal not dole!
There probably is a calculation you could do, how much subsidy can you pay before it costs more than the dole. Though you have to include the cost on everyone else of more expensive coal/energy.

Incidentally this was one of the bits that got cut, while it is currently the government's problem Labour are also divided over the point. The mining union wants a higher price for coal, to fund a shorter day and so more miners employed, the non-mining unions are less keen as that is higher energy costs for all their members. Labour itself is ignoring the issue, because addressing it means an almighty row about what nationalisation and Clause IV actually mean in practice.
Not related to update, but (wondering since I'm reading something related currently) why didn't RN make more effort to modernize it's battleships preWW2 due to their slowness?

Seems like Japan modernized/had everything besides Fuso & Yamashiro capable of speed of near 25 knots (so 7 ships that they knew of, not counting illegally reactivated Hiei).

To counter that RN had three BCs. Nelson and Rodney were only 23 knots, unmodernised QE's and Revenge class were less than that. Seems quite a speed deficit?
Time, money, other priorities, a desperate desire to ensure politicians didn't see 'modernisation' as an alternative to building new tonnage and the need to keep a certain number of ships in service at all times. The Japanese felt they could afford to have large chunks of the fleet in the yard for years, in 1935 they had Ise, Hyuga, Mutsu, Nagato and three of the Kongos all in for reconstruction at the same time. The Admiralty would never have accepted 2/3ds of the battleline all being unavailable at the same time, but the IJN felt so un-threatened (or so confident war would only come on their timeline) they took the risk.

On the actual ships;
The 'R's fundamentally couldn't be modernised, not without doing an Italian style complete re-build which would cost more and take as much time as building a new ship.

The QEs were on a schedule for modernisation, but the requirement to keep a certain number of ships in service meant they went in one at a time, this also helped with the large cost. The Warspite modifications took 3 years and £2.5 million, the QE herself went in straight after so it was one in, one out, at least until the war interferred.

Rodney was scheduled to go in for a full two-year modernisation in October 1939 that would replace her machinery and get her up to 26 knots along with other improvements, Nelson might have followed but maybe not. Because ultimately all these ships were old and were planned to be replaced, so there was little point modernising a ship that would be scrapped a few years later. The ultimate pre-war plan was for all those ships to be scrapped with the KGVs and Lion class replacing them.
 
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There is a degree of irony around that. A great deal of effort expended on saving jobs in the mines and restricting mechanisation, yet ending up being short of manpower for the coal mines in WW2. Or in the case of Germany short of actual coal mining capacity and the manpower to run what they had.

TBTM timeline...WW2 could happen but if it does it'll be for the same reasons WW1 happened - basically everyone except the British will have at least one nation they actually would quite like to go to war with and batter. There's not a Vienna style postwar consensus or concert.

Germany specifically is presumably going to have to mechanise and make everything everywhere as efficeng as possible, because they're going to have quite bad manpower shortages for much of the 30s.

You thought we were just discussing coal for the joy of it? Interesting.

In this thread? Makes sense.

I think it gets mixed up with the Depression and the general 1920s malaise before that.

Probably with how we teach history too. The victorian age lasts until 1914, but we're all thinking its the 1880s until 1905 (if that), and then the grest war, roaring 20s with no problems, Depression, ww2, and then post war.

Only bleak if you think people working down a mine is good. I've (briefly) worked down mines, it is not good.

Moreso the human impact of a hundred towns dying a death. Mining in and of itself was, at the time, about as dangerous and unhealthy as working in a factory. Of course, a lot of the mining dangers and unhealthy stuff is inherent, so by the 80s and 90s, much more dangerous and unhealthy than working in a factory (in this country anyway).

I don't think it's a particularly British coal mining problem.

I think it was the mix of the mines starting alongside industrialisation and urbanisation. So every mine was used, no matter how viable, lots of towns converted to or were entirely founded upon the coal industry, and then stayed viable for much longer than later mining towns because the tech and techniques weren't as developed. So you had the mining town problems of everywhere else, but instead of a book and bust in one or two generations, the british ones could be four or five generations in.

The reluctance to admit your mining town is pointless now the mines are shut seems fairly common across nations.

Yeah it's always going to be a problem. Esepcially if it's been there for a while. Long enough for people to be born, live and die there.

They had the advantage there is far less mythos around textiles, less of "I worked on this underwear weaving loom all my life and so will my children, we won't do nowt else" attitude. And as has been mentioned the skills are more transferable, if you can supervise a textile loom you are most of the way to supervising a continuous welding machine.

There were also other factories in the area doing other things, typically, for that reason. One of the reasons why the north west had it slightly better than the north east. Sure, half the town worked in the 5 Mills but you also had a tractor factory and some toolmakers and a canal and rail link for the goods, and there were coal mines around as well.

People were banging on about coal nationalisation in the 1800s.
As had become traditional for coal the industry nationalisation was briefly considered but then discounted, just as it had been in the many government and independent reviews since the Great War.


More wondering about what the sentence is trying to say and whether it makes sense?

For coal the industry nationalisation was...sounds wrong?

As late as July 1939 I can find people in Parliament banging on about how the Royal Navy should be coal fired to help domestic miners and to reduce the risk of relying on imported oil. There were at least two campaign organisations trying to get the fleet back onto coal and they were not entirely run by nutters, one of them had Admiral Reginald Hall on it (the man behind Room 40 during WW1) so there was some heft to it.

Any real advantages beyond maybe helping demostic mining? This would presumably cost more than it gained for the navy, and logistics wise?

More goes to show how fractured land and mineral ownership was.

Still is. Mineral rights are often divergent from the land, and not recorded as to who owns them.
 
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I am seriously pondering referencing the Ricardo–Viner–Harrod–Balassa–Samuelson–Penn–Bhagwati effect in the next chapter. Though as has often been said, just because something can be done doesn't mean it should.

Anyway;
Germany specifically is presumably going to have to mechanise and make everything everywhere as efficeng as possible, because they're going to have quite bad manpower shortages for much of the 30s.
Mechanisation is very expensive and has a fairly long pay off period, particularly for the things that make a real difference, the boring logistics of replacing carts/conveyors with trains for instance. Not sure Germany has the domestic capital to do that (judging by your TBTM's first chapter) or is a particularly good investment choice, even for a foreign mining focused investor there are better opportunities almost everywhere else and that's before considering the political risk of an unstable and post-hyper inflation Germany.
In this thread? Makes sense.
We do have high standards.
Probably with how we teach history too. The victorian age lasts until 1914, but we're all thinking its the 1880s until 1905 (if that), and then the grest war, roaring 20s with no problems, Depression, ww2, and then post war.
There is definitely a recency bias, no-one would call all of 1952-2022 the Second Elizabethan Age and treat it all as having similar fashion, foreign policy and so on. But people do with the Victorian Age.

It also ties into Butterfly, there were interesting trends in British society in the late 1930s. It was fairly short and the shadow of the looming war were long, but it was a distinct period from the Depression and the previous non-roaring 20s. Of course it got swamped by the war and everything went off a different route, but one of the (current) aims of Butterfly is to explore what would happen if it didn't.
More wondering about what the sentence is trying to say and whether it makes sense?

For coal the industry nationalisation was...sounds wrong?
I see what you mean, should be 'For the coal industry'. Errant 'the' moved to the right place.
Any real advantages beyond maybe helping demostic mining? This would presumably cost more than it gained for the navy, and logistics wise?
You don't need to run as many oil tankers around the place, so fewer convoys to protect, no danger of being 'cut off' from fuel and so on. It also helps with the balance of payments, fewer imports. How important that is depends on how concerned you are about the submarine/convoy raider threat.

The Admiralty's concern was that coal has a much lower energy density, say 50 to 60% that of fuel oil and oil is a bit more efficient to burn. Roughly speaking you need to carry twice as much coal and have twice as many boilers to get the same power, you also need more crew as you need plenty of stokers for coal. As a result a coal fired ship is some combination of slower, shorter ranged and larger compare to an equivalent oil fired ship. That was enough to decide it for the Admiralty, though as you rightly say the logistics were also better for oil, particularly around refuelling at sea.

Still is. Mineral rights are often divergent from the land, and not recorded as to who owns them.
I thought that had been somewhat fixed? Big deadline about a decade back that if you hadn't registered your mineral rights by a certain date then you were assumed not to have them, Crown Estates and the Church Commissioners put in loads of claims eveywhere.
 
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Mechanisation is very expensive and has a fairly long pay off period, particularly for the things that make a real difference, the boring logistics of replacing carts/conveyors with trains for instance. Not sure Germany has the domestic capital to do that (judging by your TBTM's first chapter) or is a particularly good investment choice, even for a foreign mining focused investor there are better opportunities almost everywhere else and that's before considering the political risk of an unstable and post-hyper inflation Germany.

TBTM Germany had similar OTL issues in the 20s then things got even worse before they get better.

It'll certainly be a case of some regions are pretty advanced and rebuilding, and others are still wrecked by what goes down in the late 20s/early 30s, or from before then even.

There is definitely a recency bias, no-one would call all of 1952-2022 the Second Elizabethan Age and treat it all as having similar fashion, foreign policy and so on. But people do with the Victorian Age.

Doubt we'll get another monarch Age after Edwardian. They don't reflect/define the fashion, morales, politics of an Era in the same way post 1911.

I see what you mean, should be 'For the coal industry'. Errant 'the' moved to the right place.

Indeed.

It was interesting to read the coal nationalisation plans in the late 19th century. What was the plan and who was saying that?

You don't need to run as many oil tankers around the place, so fewer convoys to protect, no danger of being 'cut off' from fuel and so on. It also helps with the balance of payments, fewer imports. How important that is depends on how concerned you are about the submarine/convoy raider threat.

The Admiralty's concern was that coal has a much lower energy density, say 50 to 60% that of fuel oil and oil is a bit more efficient to burn. Roughly speaking you need to carry twice as much coal and have twice as many boilers to get the same power, you also need more crew as you need plenty of stokers for coal. As a result a coal fired ship is some combination of slower, shorter ranged and larger compare to an equivalent oil fired ship. That was enough to decide it for the Admiralty, though as you rightly say the logistics were also better for oil, particularly around refuelling at sea.

Was there another naval power that had the debate post grest war and stuck with coal? I suppose non naval powers that just wanted coastal patrols etc stuck with coal for longer too?

I thought that had been somewhat fixed? Big deadline about a decade back that if you hadn't registered your mineral rights by a certain date then you were assumed not to have them, Crown Estates and the Church Commissioners put in loads of claims eveywhere.

There was a big push to sort out baptismal responsibilities for all parishes and properties (because having that attached to properties these days is rather absurd as well as an unexpected expense). There may have been an attempt to do the same with mineral rights but I've only just finished law school and we're still told to watch out for this sort of thing so it clearly hasn't been fixed in practice yet.
 
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Doubt we'll get another monarch Age after Edwardian. They don't reflect/define the fashion, morales, politics of an Era in the same way post 1911.
Sadly true. I mean I have hopes for a British style Meiji restoration that will sweep away such barbarism as the judiciary vetoing every single infrastructure project and the fetishisation of newts over people, but I fear it is a tad unlikely.
It was interesting to read the coal nationalisation plans in the late 19th century. What was the plan and who was saying that?
Social Democratic Federation (or something similar, the names all blur into one) wanted to nationalise everything as early as 1880s, the mining union started saying it about the same time, then the TUC refused to back any candidate that didn't support nationalisation from 1890s onwards. Roughly, roughly it was a 'Workers Control' type plan, co-operatively owned and controlled by the miners via the union. Broadly keeping the structures the same, no national organisation or any link to the government, but unions replacing shareholders and management accountable to the miners, via the union of course.

The issues with this meant things drifted towards the OTL 'public ownership', i.e. owned by the government who appointed the managers (and provided the regular bail outs) with unions having to apply political pressure to the government who would then pressure the Coal Board to make the changes.

Interestingly Shinwell (*spit*) claimed there was no ready-made plan for Coal Nationalisation in 1946 and basically no-one in the Labour Party had really thought about the practicalities pre-war, nor had time during the war.
Was there another naval power that had the debate post grest war and stuck with coal? I suppose non naval powers that just wanted coastal patrols etc stuck with coal for longer too?
Not really, the French dithered awhile as their very early experiments with oil sprayers failed and so they were distrustful of the entire idea till the 1920s. I think everyone else just saw all the other advantages and so went for it.

That said minor auxiliaries did linger on for a while, boom vessels, trawlers, tugs, that sort of thing were being built as coal fired well into the 1930s.
There was a big push to sort out baptismal responsibilities for all parishes and properties (because having that attached to properties these days is rather absurd as well as an unexpected expense). There may have been an attempt to do the same with mineral rights but I've only just finished law school and we're still told to watch out for this sort of thing so it clearly hasn't been fixed in practice yet.
All part of the same package I believe along with Chancel Repair Liability and such horrors. From 2013 all that has to be registered with the Land Registry or it doesn't apply. Of course that does require the purchaser (or indeed the current owner) to have checked with the Land Registry and then understand what they have read.

Plus of course I do recall reading that 15% of UK land isn't registered with the Land Registry, which no doubt makes things fun.
 
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Sadly true. I mean I have hopes for a British style Meiji restoration that will sweep away such barbarism as the judiciary vetoing every single infrastructure project and the fetishisation of newts over people, but I fear it is a tad unlikely.

I do like newts...

Social Democratic Federation

Anyone relevant?

All part of the same package I believe along with Chancel Repair Liability and such horrors. From 2013 all that has to be registered with the Land Registry or it doesn't apply. Of course that does require the purchaser (or indeed the current owner) to have checked with the Land Registry and then understand what they have read.

Plus of course I do recall reading that 15% of UK land isn't registered with the Land Registry, which no doubt makes things fun.

Ah, yes. The push to get as much as possible registered at land registry, everything new registered or it wouldn't count, and old stuff not registered still counts.

Basically yes, everything new is registered or it doesn't count, but old stuff is still lying around and an awful lot of property domestic and otherwise dispersed or retained mineral rights. Chancel stuff isn't necessarily resolved either for stuff that hasn't been sold in the past 20 years (aka a lot of properties).
 
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We're close to the bottom and the BBC is talking about it again so...

Stonehenge tunnel. What do?
 
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I'm currently re-reading from start. Pip just promised (I think in 2009.) that there's a plan for a Dominion of Palestine, and all will be revealed in due time.

Given that such development is probably ASB before 1950's at best, I wonder how many decades (centuries?) will pass before we get Dominion of Palestine update?
 
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Perhaps those notes were lost? We have a Great Britain that is in much better shape for whatever is coming down the pipe than OTL, so decolonizing might be further away. Perhaps it's for Pip the Younger (of the two).


Last. Word. Top of page is next. Violate it at your peril!
 
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