National Coal Board

By 1983, there were one hundred and seventy-five working pits across Britain, but most were already slated for closure.

The National Coal Board had been encouraged by government ministers to cut subsidies, which meant mine closures were becoming inevitable economic realities rather than political choices.

These cuts sparked a sense of looming threat among miners, creating the tinderbox that would ignite in 1984.

The Conservative government anticipated the strike and built up coal stocks over the preceding year, storing large quantities at depots so they could supply homes during an industrial lull.

Behind the tip was an industrial landscape that had been built on top of a natural spring.

The National Coal Board managed this spoil heap and had issued warnings about its instability in previous months.

It was known that the tip sat on ground prone to saturation during rainstorms, but risk assessments were lax.

Local villagers had raised concerns about the tip's safety several times before the tragedy.

The village itself was left shattered and its sense of safety had been brutally uprooted.

An inquiry led by Lord Justice Davies took place in early 1967, reviewing the chain of decisions that led to the disaster.

The report found the National Coal Board had ignored key evidence about the slope's instability and failed to relocate the tip despite clear warnings.

It named nine of its own staff as partly responsible but none were criminally prosecuted nor was the company fined.

Witnesses reported the Queen being close to tears.

One person who didn't hurry to visit, though, was Lord Robens of Woldingham, who at the time was chairman of the National Coal Board.

He instead decided to attend the University of Surrey, accepting an appointment as chancellor.

Robins and the NCB tried to blame the disaster on the heavy rains that had fallen in the days before the tragedy.

In 1960, he moved to Amanford, which is one of the bigger towns in that part of Wales.

His father was a chief engineer for the National Coal Board.

His grandfathers were both coal miners, and he was born from a long line of working class mining people.

And when he grew up in Ammanford in Carmarthenshire, he joined the Conservative Party in 1964 at the age of 15, which in Wales is kind of one of the few unforgivable sins you can commit as the descendant of a coal miner.

The inquiry there, led by Lord Justice Edmund Davies, was extraordinarily thorough.

It found the National Coal Board had known about the danger and done nothing, and it named names.

The board's chairman was effectively forced out.

That inquiry became a benchmark for what a public inquiry could do.

And three, can you sell it in the way you can sell what the Attlee government sold in the first weeks of its administration in 1945, which is, you know, if you were in Derbyshire or North Nottinghamshire or County Durham and you walk past the pit head, on the gates of the colliery was a sign saying this...

Colliery is now managed by the National Coal Board on behalf of the people.

And what is Andy Burnham's equivalent? Can you do that if you're saying, actually, I've done a series of finickety changes to the way we regulate water in this country, or the way your local bus works, or et cetera, et cetera? And maybe actually the answer is, yeah, you can.

And this is the cheat code, as it were, control over ownership.