My IEA article
Mr Burnham is so wrong about deindustrialisation. He and I share the same anger at its pace and extent, but a different view of how and why it is still happening. He claims that it was mainly in the Thatcher period, when the historical figures tell a very different story. He thinks it was because policy was too free enterprise, when much of the damage to UK industry was done by large nationalised businesses that became infamous for the numbers they sacked and the huge losses they heaped on the taxpayers.
In 1947 when it was nationalised the coal mining industry employed more than 700,000 miners. All the jobs were destroyed by the time the last mine closed in 2015. The losses were spread over all the post war governments, with a particularly large number of pits closing in the 1960 s under Labour.
In 1947 when the railways were nationalised they employed 650,000 people. By the time of privatisation in 1997 that had collapsed to 150,000, a fall of more than three quarters. The rail industry had lost huge market share and failed to spend its large capital budgets on moving with the times. It had no rail link to Heathrow, one of the world’s busiest airports and had watched as industry moved to new estates by motorways in despair because rail did not want their waggon load traffic.
Shipbuilding employed 220,000 in 1950. Today that is down to 24,000. It shed labour under nationalisation as well as in the private sector. It went from building a peak of 1.3 m GRT in 1950 to building very little by 1990, with a modest revival through naval orders since. Its period of nationalisation did not stop the losses.
The steel industry still had 323,000 employees in 1971. By the time of its privatisation after Labour’s 1970s nationalisation it was down to just 52,000 and is still in decline. Now renationalised as British Steel it is likely to see the end of all blast furnace steel and more job losses under its new owner.
The Labour government of the 1970s presided over a sharp decline in industrial employment as did the Blair/Brown governments 1997-2010. In 1997 Mr Blair inherited 4.379 million jobs from the Conservatives. By 2010 when Mr Brown lost office that had slumped to 2.87 m, a fall of a third. It is true there was also a substantial fall under early Thatcher, continuing the rail, coal and steel trends of the previous Labour government.
As the 1980s advanced the Thatcher government helped rebuild the car industry whose output had halved under Labour in the 1970s, doubling it. Privatisation of telecoms led to a large surge in telecoms private sector investment, innovation and choice, which in turn boosted the City which needed better communications and lines capable of taking data.
If you take the ONS index of manufacturing output capturing all production industries the picture looks a bit better. The Index stood at just 40 in 1948 and progressed to a peak of 104.7 in 2007 before the great recession hit. It was still at 101.3 on the eve of covid in 2019. Under Margaret Thatcher manufacturing output did increase by 9.1% overall. If however you look at manufacturing’s share of GDP that has been in continuous decline for many years. As as in other advanced countries,services have been outperforming industry. Under Labour 1997-2010 manufacturing as a share of the UK economy halved from 20% to just 10%.
So why have traditional industries like coal, steel, shipbuilding and rail, done so badly and destroyed so many jobs? Part of it is their time as nationalised industries. The 1974-9 nationalising government got impatient and had to publish a White Paper exposing the losses, the low returns, the failure to spend the large capital investment programmes wisely by the nationalised businesses. In part it was the failure of the state monopolies to move with the times and see how consumer preferences and technology were changing the business landscape. In part it was bad management and difficult Unions conspiring to keep productivity down and costs high. Our shipbuilding disappeared to Korea and Japan because they were so much more efficient. Our coal industry lost out to gas and oil which were better in so many ways. Our rail industry missed out on where the business opportunities were whikst delays and cancellations undermined service quality. Privatisation brought more and better services and gave it a big early boost in passenger numbers to temporarily give hope of a better future. Gradual tightening of central controls and nationalisation of Railtrack put a stop to that progress.
If we compare overall growth in the 1970s and 1980s Mr Burnham will be surprised to see that 1979-89 the UK economy grew by 29%, whereas for the five years 1974-9 under Labour they managed just 9.5%. It is true that the disastrous European Exchange Rate mechanism gave us a nasty adverse hit in the early 1990s under John Major, but this was a policy Labour and Lib Dems were very keen on. Current Labour never criticise Mr Major’s disaster with that bad EU policy. We few who opposed it were told we were wrong as we watched the predictable damage unfold. Over 1 million industrial jobs were lost in the 1970s, another 1 million in the 1980s, and more than that under the 1997-2010 government.
The UK industrial sector in more recent times has been throttled by dear energy under a policy supported by all the main parties in Parliament. Deindustrialisation accelerated under the current Labour government as they doubled down on carbon taxes, dear electricity and a passionate reliance on imported energy at the expense of our own oil, gas and petrochemical production.
I think it wrong that we have set ourselves against home production of energy and energy intensive products. Importing them is worse for CO2 production , bad for the balance of payments, bad for jobs, and loses us the tax revenue.
If Mr. Burnham is serious about wanting to halt the rapid decline of industry in the last two years he needs to change his mind on its causes. It is dear energy, the jobs tax, the tax atttacks on business and the net zero bans that are accelerating industrial collapse. Nationalised British Steel still plans to shut down the remaining blast furnaces for net zero reasons, with likely karge job losses. Nationalised Great British Rail will plough on with the ruinously expensive and much delayed HS 2 project mis allocating money on a huge scale to perpetuate losses and extend unsatisfactory services on the rest of the network.
For industry to flourish we need lower energy costs and lower taxes, with plenty of competition. More nationalisation will replay the 1970 s when large nationalised losses led to too much public borrowing, sky high interest rates and the infamous trip to borrow from the IMF.
October 4, 2026
Modernisation and the switch from rail to road and ship to air surely accounts for most of the transport jobs.
Privatisation is not a popular sell however.. it just represents no better, or poorer as in the case of the railways, service at vastly greater expense. Would have BR back tomorrow. The hyped GBR that Labour have created will simply be a state owned privatised mess.
Reply. Nationalised BR was always in decline, poor services and high costs for taxpayers. Track,signals and stations have been nationalised for last 20 years and are largely unmodernised and offering delays and cancellations.
October 4, 2026
Privatisatiom works far better than the government running things were is falls down is that the government are not only hopeless at running things they are hopeless in the way they privatise things, subcontract thing and regulate things and they strangle things with misguided red tape too. Often the regulators and the privatised companies conspire against the users of the services and the tax payers as do state run industries like the NHS. This with banking, water, trains (absurdly complex ticketing systems), energy, education…
October 4, 2026
Nationalisation to liebour is a fundamental belief.
The Marxist incharge truly believe the state is better at doing things despite evidence to the contrary.
Mr. Burnham wl continue without a mandate to destroy jobs and industry to begin the great reset.
Never a word about borrowing costs, lack of diesel stocks or gas storage but the bus fares are £2 so all is well.
October 4, 2026
You must recall BR differently to me then Andrew…
October 4, 2026
and me.
With self driving robot taxis and cars, remote working and teams meetings trains will become ever less important. They are totally impractical and expensive already for most journeys.
October 4, 2026
Before privatisation, British Rail ran an advertising campaign suggesting rail had entered a new phase, likened to the Space Age, using a futuristic sung jingle: ‘This is the Age of the Train’.
This began to change its image until a TV comedian told of his experience of curled-up stale cheese sandwiches, a noisy rickety journey on an old train with unclean toilets and worn grimy seats. He concluded with the reason: This is the Age of the Train!
Its impact shed an entirely negative light on the advertisements and probably led to the slogan being dropped soon after.
October 4, 2026
This site rarely comments on football, our national game. Last night an inspired England team thrashed Croatia 0-7 away in Zagreb. And kept a clean sheet. Croatia have beaten us within living memory.
Mrs Gold and I were in the garden last night with friends, enjoying a drink and some canapes while watching the game on our wide-screen TV. We could hear the repeated loud cheers from the pub at the end of the road. Wonderful stuff!
October 4, 2026
I played a lot of football in my youth and at university (though my Grammar School forced Rugby Union onto the boys (most wanted football) as they thought it was “posher” and more upmarket and could then play against all the local posher private schools. I rarely watch it now but did catch a bit of it last night and a bit of the World Cup. England also did very well here until they met the serial pushing and fouling Agentinan Side. The referee did not deal with this very well in my opinion.
If only the UK had a decent manager with a working compass to inspire the country.
October 4, 2026
England normally play well in qualifying games (which this was) but fail when the chips are down. So little to praise at this point.
October 4, 2026
Good morning.
I am sorry JR but I think you missed out three items that had done for British industry.
1. We were a recovering wartime economy that infrastructure and and public accounts were in a mess.
2. We lost our Reserve Currency to the USA. A loss that has never been given its place in our nations history.
3. The loss of our Empire and the access to cheap raw materials and the markets our goods could be sold in.
Nationalisation of our health services into the NHS and the costs of that and other things did not help. And so too does blind weddedness to one or another ideology to the nth degree. Key infrastructure must remain, at least, out of the hands of other countries and their Sovereign Wealth Funds and companies. Where there can be not competition then other forms of ownership, including nationalisation, must be considered.
October 4, 2026
The five “Conservative” PMs after Attlee failed to reverse and undo the many disasters of the dire Attlee government just as Cameron through to Sunak failed to undo the disasters of Blair and Brown and even Joined the “common market” without the people’s concern. Let us hope the next government will indeed do a real full blooded restoration away from the disasters of big state socialism,
Alas the odds suggest suggest some dire lefty coalition is by far the most likely outcome.
So 10 out of 10 for Kemi you say. She is certainly doing quite well (thank God we did not get Cleverly) but she has an impossible job restoring trust in the partly after the disasters, incompetence and dishonesty of Cameron though to Sunak. ESPECIALLY when it is still stuffed with Net Zero fans, open Border fans, EU fans and LibDims.
Her best hope is that the £600 billion ineffective and dangerous Covid “vaccines” not only caused heart disease, heart attacks, blood clots, allergic reactions, cancer… as they did – but amnesia too.
October 4, 2026
Attlee’s National Health Service (NHS) and the welfare state were clearly disasters but so many other disasters from this dire postwar Labour government. Disasters that Churchill, Macmillem, Douglas-Home and Health largely failed to reverse and even built on.
October 4, 2026
We know from his comments about: ‘Selling the family silver’, that Macmillan favoured Nationalisation.
October 4, 2026
LL
What annoys me is that, whn it comes to services UK history always seems to start in 1946. The impressions you get today is that, ‘before’ the NHS there was no healthcare. This is untrue. Same to with coal, steel, and manufacturing. Labour went on a mad experiment which today’s politicians simply do not want to question. I say no !
October 4, 2026
We did not lose access to cheap raw materials, nor did we lose markets. The cost burden of the Empire was never really shifted as we call the Empire The Commonwealth today.
The most successful of our colonies was Hong Kong. Here’s why:
‘ Due to our low tax policy, [government] revenue has increased.’
John James Cowperthwaite
He advised the closing of all Government stats departments because they encourage Governments to think they know better than the Market. The Market is wize because it is the sum of the millions of buying and selling decisions of the PEOPLE. It works best when the Government does not bribe the people to do things they otherwise would not do.
October 4, 2026
The common ingredient missing from the Public Sector and from nationalised industries in the round is accountability and responsibility for outcomes.
In the Private sector if a business fails there are personal penalties dished out in the form of loss of position loss of personal wealth in the case of failed business and the shame of failure.
In the public sector when the endeavor is failing or fails it is given a new name the tax payers pick up the loss and nothing more is said. The managers involved are moved to new posts at no cost to them and many are rewarded with fat early pensions and even a seat in the HoL or a Knighthood for the lower grades.
These people are failures but they never pay the price of their incompetence and failure.
That is why nothing is ever achieved on time or on budget in the Public Sector, no one is ever fired for incompetence and they should be.
October 4, 2026
+1
October 4, 2026
In the private sector like shops and with fair competition customers vote every day by choosing who they buy from. With the state sector monopolies and free at the point of use things like the NHS they get what they are given or not and a vote on the very many issues every few years for MPs who rarely do as they promise anyway. Perhaps a duff FPTP vote with a choice of any two appalling parties with zero chance for all the others!
October 4, 2026
There are 135 odd political parties in the U.K. FPTP is NOT a two party system. It’s the PEOPLE IE THE MARKET that chooses to support one of two parties so that they can appoint them and sack them.
The next election will give the result as if there was PR because THE MARKET has rejected the two main parties and has not decided how best to replace them.
The people, widely, do not want the smallest and most radical parties to be Kingmakers at a price. You advocate for the urgent establishment of the Mozlem Party of Great Britain which WILL RULE AND WE WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO UNSEAT THEM VIA THE BALLOT BOX.
You really must engage your brain. You would destroy Britain forever. You are as dangerous as Polensky etc
October 4, 2026
I remember the 60s and 70s for working and it wasn’t a bed of roses, and all the main parties had a hand in the decline of our top industries but liebour just edged the top contender position with the help of the dreaded Trade Unions to totally kill off alot of our heavy industries , and now Burnham and his bunch of misfit MPs would willingly take us back in time to them days of total termol well good luck with that one Liebour call a General Election and let the people decide who should run our country
October 4, 2026
Afraid Mr Burnham is simply too young to remember the 1970,s himself, so his knowledge is limited to the stories he has been told, and literature he has read, no problem with that, but it depends upon who you have listened to, and what type of literature and accounts you have read or been indoctrinated by.
There is always two sides to an argument, and whilst free market Capitalism and Communist inspired Unionism are on opposite sides, and I have seen both in action, they both have some merits in their own way if not taken to extremes.
The middle ground where both sides work together for the general good of all, is often the correct way forward.
Unlike Mr Burnham I was a Union Shop Steward in the 1960’s and early 1970’s and saw what went on behind closed doors at Branch meetings, where perhaps a dozen hard line Union members decided the actions and fate of thousands of workers.
I have also been in the position of management and run my own Companies (with my own Money) so have likewise seen and been on the other side.
Mrs Thatcher attempted to get a balance between the two sides and ideologies in then1980’s, but the Unions at the time wanted to defend their hard earned but entrenched positions with conflict, so they got it !
Red Robbo and Scargill helped to rapidly destroy their own industries of Car manufacturing and mining.
God help us all if Burnham gets his way and wants to drag the Country back to the 1960’s and 70’s.
October 4, 2026
Usually rather more than two sides to any argument.
A union that manages to use its power to increase their members wages and get better terms and conditions almost always do so at the expense of jobs in their industrly and jobs for their members. This as their members become more expensive (so the industry uses fewer of them as far as they can do) and their industry overall becomes less competitive so consumers use less of their services by finding alternatives.
October 4, 2026
Unfortunately Alan, very few voters now remember the 70’s.
You had to be there to really understand how bad the labour/magement problems were. I often used to go into Jaguar in Castle Bromwich, in the beginning because I was the ‘new’ guy and none of the other engineers were willing to do so. Parking my Ford estate outside because “you can drive it in but you won’t drive it out” to quote gate security) I needed to dragged some heavy equipment onto site. I thrn usually had to wait for an hour or two for an electrician (and his apprentice) to arrive and swop my 13A plugs for ‘factory’ ones (deliberatly different to prevent theft). The electrician drank tea whist his apprentice swopped the plugs over. I was willing to do it but it would have resulted in the machine being “blacked”. So I’d do my work and then await the same crew to come back and change them over again. I should mention that many of the problems were (in my view) deliberate sabotage. They got an agreed ‘average’ rate if the machine was ‘down’ – which seemed to suit them quite well. There was also the factory in Coventry where all of our equipment had to be moved 12 foot above the shop floor beccause it got run through by fork lift tines almost daily before we did so (try fault finding a machine controller 12 foot up a ladder!). The Union hadn’t liked the new “automation” that measured part throughput for the first time….because it was linked to wages.
October 4, 2026
There’s room for a good honest study as to where privatisation worked and where it didn’t.
Frankly, water was and is a walking disaster, because it’s a quasi monopoly and the government didn’t regulate properly. It would probably have been better left nationalised than what has actually happened.
Telecoms was a roaring success-competition is inherent in that market though.
Power is see as the ultimate no win-inefficient nationalised utilities have been replaced by bullying, unstable, inefficient privatised ones. Somehow again regulation hasn’t worked.
Steel was a lose-lose- Ian McGregor sorted it out temporarily, but the cost of energy here through the 80s 90s and a growing 3rd world production skewered it.
People forget that we had higher energy prices, feeding through to higher industrial feedstock prices way back. I remember doing a study into chlorine prices in 1982 and we were more expensive, hobbling swathes of the chemical industry. Even tin cans for chemicals packaging were far cheaper in Belgium then the UK.
October 4, 2026
Privatisation can work well in almost all areas if it is done sensibly, has sensible competition and regulated well. Alas governments are rather useless (and often corrupt and acting for vested interests) at those activities too.
October 4, 2026
Nationalised water wasn’t great. With competing demands for money, the government of the day didn’t invest, so sewage treatment was bad. Where I grew up raw sewage was pumped out to sea on the tide. They try not to do that so much today.
Mutualisation would be better for water. Let the customers own the business so they take responsibility if investment isn’t made. Their choice – cheap bills or better service. Just make sure the regulator is in place so they are good neighbours.
As it was, the government just sold the industry on to private investors, so the share I thought I had in the industry being a British citizen was taken from me and sold to someone else.
October 4, 2026
We know the results from the outcome of privatisation compared with previous nationalisation. No study is required.
October 4, 2026
The World is a completely different place now than it was in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
Many Countries have now developed or are in the process of developing their own mini industrial revolutions, education and modern technology means that many industries are not as labour intensive as they once were. World wide communication and computerisation is now possible immediately at low cost and availability, the cost of Raw materials and Power is different in many parts of the World, as indeed are health and Safety standards.
The Eu has tried through tariffs and protectionism to try and stem the tide of the inevitable, but is failing because more and more Countries are growing their economies and becoming more competitive with their own mini industrial revolutions, so the EU is being left behind.
Trump is now trying to delay matters with the same sort of protectionism, and will be able to delay matters simply because it is rich in itself with raw materials.
We are failing simply because we tried the failing policies of the EU, but are also refusing to use or manage properly our own Raw materials of Gas, Oil, Coal, and Water, compounded with ancient distribution systems.
Thus we need to be forward thinking for a better future, not backward actions of a failing past..
October 5, 2026
Correct Alan – but our “Leaders” first need to stop spouting nonsense about “Green Jobs” and “AI Leadership”.
You cannot have any AI Centres if you don’t have cheap, reliable energy and abundant water. Neither our energy or water are predictable. At the moment we might have some (or none) of either – it all depends on whether the wind blows or the rain ‘rains’. After this summers drought, I await the coming floods….
So much posturing on Net-Zero. If they really believed their own nonsense we would be busy adapting to climate change, not peeing in the wind trying to stop it. Reservoirs, flood prevention, nuclear, fracking, food self sufficiency, defence, migration management? Not a Dickie Bird!.
October 4, 2026
Coal mining and shipbuilding and railways were largely private enterprise before WW2. Non survived the ravages of war. No maintenance and a legacy of foot dragging and under investment.
Roll our minds forward to the ’70s. The great mantra from financiers and economists (like yourself and Minford) was to offshore such crude and primitive industries as steelmaking and shipbuilding and heavy engineering. The Japanese and Koreans and everyone else could do it so much cheaper with modern machinery. And we got rid of those tiresome unions.
A great result from Right Wing economics – but nothing to follow it up.
Which leaves the UK response from the intellectual giants of All Souls and Brasenose and the rest. Nada – nothing – the market will provide, something will turn up. There was no response and the result is visible all around – nothing much turned up.
Sure, flogging off council housing bought a temporary boost – but the money was not reinvested. Instead it was squandered. We spent decades tarting up the same tired old bricks and mortar. Little if any political capital in allowing new.
Mr Burnham inherits the whirlwind and when he fails Ms Badenoch will inherit the same whirlwind. She and her successors will fail – there is no way out. Neither All Souls not Brasenose nor any other intellectual source can tell us how to find a great economic use for millions of ordinary people.
Add in the global competition for energy. The North Sea fields are practically worked out. We have the Climate Deniers who provide a useful political cover for the naïve. In the real world there are serious problems far far beyond the power of an entirely enfeebled and intellectually bankrupt parliament.
I will reveal an economic secret. We need more archivists and archaeologists. Lots of interesting old junk lying around and it makes nice BBC TV films for export. We must live off the old Lord John, the new has passed us by.
Reply I did not support or encourage the loss of key UK heavy industry, a loss nationalisation speeded up owing to bad judgements of management and attitudes of Union leaders in monopolies.
October 4, 2026
Employing large numbers of people, especially at taxpayers’ expense (overmanning for which the public sector is notorious) is not a virtue whereas productive profitable or useful, efficient activity is.
October 5, 2026
Politicians hate the idea of wealth and therefore oppose wealth creation.
I wonder what they think they consume each day?
October 4, 2026
You make all the sensible points as usual.
In short ditch net zero, ditch all the solf loans for largely worthless degrees in largely worthless subjects, cut and simplify taxes and NI, go for easy hire and fire, vastly reduce red tape, relax planning, more practially workers, halve the size of the state sector at least, cull the many parasitic jobs in law, compliance, tax planning, HR, fully detatch from the EU, do not nationalise anything, drill and frack, stop rigging markets in energy, education, banking, pensions, housing, cars, fishing, farming… stop the wars on landlords, employers and road and energy users. Stop importing low skilled and illegal migrants at vast cost. Deter crime and deter low silled immigration retore free speach, kill DEI and stop all the evil tow tier justice.
So that is a 180 degree U turn on everything that Burnham, Labour, Starmer stand for. As largely did Sunak, Cameron, May and Boris.
Say sorry for the very dangerous and ineffective Covid Vaccines idiotically coerced onto people arms even people who never needed them even had they been safe and effective as they were dishonestly described.
October 4, 2026
To be fair, if one has to be, the decline in the coal mines was in great part due to their being worked out, and if left in private ownership, their decline and closure would probably have been pretty chaotic, but I completely agree with you about everything else though. The lack of any real commercial incentive is a complete dead hand over all Nationalised industry.
October 4, 2026
Interesting historical figures bringing some balance to the debate. Good summary, but a bit more detail would be good..
October 4, 2026
Serious misjudgements were made by all political parties since the 70’s most egregiously the failure to properly manage our finances, particularly borrowing. But surely outsourcing our industrial infrastructure to the Far East largely because of cost of labour has been the most damaging? America made similar mistakes. Yes we do need to reindustrialise but unless immediate changes are made to Net Zero policies and energy costs reduced this important change is doomed.
October 4, 2026
Interesting to see the Transport Secretary crowing over the poor performance of a rail operator she is going to nationalise. She must genuinely think that performance will get better rather than – as those of us who remember nationalised rail know – worse. Indeed why *would* it improve ?
October 4, 2026
The argument is not between Nationalisation/Privatisation. The key to any public service is governments perception of the rules governing the provision of that service and the quality of the management tasked with running it.
UK government of whatever historical colour or persuasion has proved itself incapable of creating a service. Where it has tried it has failed both in concept and management.
You may choose not to believe what I say, but compare the Norwegian approacb to oil and the dogs dinner set up in the UK in the 60s/70s. Then there is HS2, a profligate son of the Dome. The Japanese already have a Maglev train capable of 600Kph and are busy building the line for it, Tokyo to Nagoya, bat tunnel free.
I have absolutely no faith in UK goverment’s ability or desire to run anything. I would sub contract water to the Israeli’s, Oil&Gas to the Norwegian’s, tranport to the Japanese, immigration to the Australian’s, finances to the Swiss, and energy to anyone with two identifiable brain cells.
October 4, 2026
When Labour are in power they mostly act like the Opposition, doing things that are harmful to our country.
October 4, 2026
It’s one thing to be blind and ignorant of history but distorting the facts is an utter sin.
When I left the UK for a decent paid job in Germany in 1974 the labour government had done it’s worst – By that I mean many great factories stood idle, but still the unions persisted in their right to strike for the most inane reasons. The country was bust. Exports were down due to the quality – You should have heard how even the German women were able to criticise the cars we tried to export to them and why they didn’t compare to European ones.
Thatcher may have closed some industries but only those on their last legs brought to insolvency by the Wilson/Callaghan governments.
Burnham and the rest of the socialists that ache for the return of the 70’s clearly have several marbles missing. It was a dreadful time for the UK. Maybe he’s got a secret wish for a reincarnation of Thatcher to come along and sort out the diabolical mess socialist policies have created. Thatcher did an amazing job considering the unbelievable pressure, enemies stacked against her and the dire state of the economy.
October 4, 2026
“In 1947 when it was nationalised the coal mining industry employed more than 700,000 miners. All the jobs were destroyed by the time the last mine closed in 2015. The losses were spread over all the post war governments, with a particularly large number of pits closing in the 1970s under Labour.”
To put the numbers into perspective, historical records from the National Coal Board / British Coal show the following approximate distributions:
Clement Attlee (Labour, 1947–1951): ~101 pits closed
Harold Macmillan (Conservative, 1957–1963): ~246 pits closed
Harold Wilson (Labour, 1964–1970): ~235 pits closed
Edward Heath (Conservative, 1970–1974): ~26 pits closed
Wilson/Callaghan (Labour, 1974–1979): ~25 pits closed
Margaret Thatcher (Conservative, 1979–1990): ~115 pits closed – which represents a much higher percentage of the remaining industry. So as you can see the peak era of Labour-led closures occurred in the 1960’s rather than the 1970’s.
October 4, 2026
seem to ignore the move from coal to diesel to electricity to power trains.
gas central heating introduced. Coal not being used and everyone owning a car has reduced the need for the railway to support everyday transport of people.
Not saying Nationalisation is a bad thing if it were not Politicised which is the real problem. And a tendency to build up unnecessary management structures.
The other factor in reduction in staff is importing energy form other countries.
the UK imports coal !
Who destroyed the coal mines for political reasons and not net zero?
A Nationalised undertaking is more likely to invest in capacity to meet future needs than a private one.
Neither system is perfect. But if a foreign country owns your energy supply that can’t be a good thing
October 4, 2026
164 illegals arrived yesterday ……
October 4, 2026
It is interesting to compare the numbers before nationalisation with those several years later. Both the governments and Unions of those years share responsibility for the decline. I believe Burnham was born around 1970 so the events of those years would have mostly passed him by. His focus on the 1970s and hatred of Mrs Thatcher hardly show a forward-thinking PM. So far, he has shown no inclination to deal with the big issues, and no vision for the future of the UK, except by taking us backwards. Reality will kick him in the face very soon, but do he and his chancellor have the backbone to make tough decisions? Some people grow in office; some shrink.
I fear Burnham is a shrinker!
October 4, 2026
big convoy of many coaches, flanked by police motorcycle outriders, mobile phone signals blocked so nobody can live stream it, from the coast
all for illegal immigrants
absolutely outrageous
plus the ones being flown into Manchester airport, off the record, and being kept secret
this should bring a government down
October 4, 2026
No wonder there’s no police ….they’re all busy on other duties
October 4, 2026
The US has withdrawn all bombers from RAF Fairford as it does not consider the UK a safe place for them.
But its ok our women and children have to be exposed to the very same threats.
October 4, 2026
as the videos of what happened today in gosport trickle out, after mobile phone signals were blocked by the police, everyone should have a look.
massive police road block preventing locals driving or walking anywhere, massive convoys of coaches full of illegal immigrants, with masses of ambulances and police escorting them.
when I am ill I can’t get an ambulance, when I am attacked I cannot get police, yet there they are in abundance.
where are all these people being taken?
this simply cannot carry on.
October 4, 2026
The purpose of nationalisation is to cause further de-industrialisation in addition to that caused by the Left’s climate crisis hoax which would not exist if it wasn’t sabotaging our energy and thus destroying our industry, economy and national security. It also enables the state to expand to Soviet levels of employment and control. The public sector have anyway succumbed to Robert Conquest’s second and third laws of politics and are never sacked for laziness, negligence, incompetence, malfeasance, corruption, misbehaviour, insubordination, criminal behaviour or even treachery. Nationalisation doesn’t work because there never is any accountability. If a quango such as Ofwat cannot regulate properly the private owners of water companies they certainly have no chance of protecting the consumer against the owners when it is the state.
October 4, 2026
dover also been running the industrial scale illegal immigration scam today.
there is going to be civil war soon.
the rank and file cops are going to rebel and refuse to support this.
October 4, 2026
ridiculous abuse of state power to lock down an entire town, with road blocks everywhere, to facilitate mass illegal immigration. heads really need to roll.
October 4, 2026
I am an octogenarian and admit to the tendency to wander down memory lane and,strangely,admit to
missing the hard times of the post-war years.The purpose to re-build and make the world a better place
for everyone was a no-brainer.It was instilled at school and at home.Somehow it all came off the tracks
and the hundreds in the HoC and HoL and the uncountable civil servants haven’t a clue how to get
us back on the rails
October 5, 2026
They don’t want to.
Hard to comprehend.
October 5, 2026
The prob of nationalisation can all be whittled down to psychology on a postage stamp.
Nationalists believe in cooperation over competition.
But competition challenges man to excel.
Take tennis. Federer and Nadal competed against each other and brought out the best in each other.
But they were gentleman competitors with work ethic. Training and fighting hard and playing by the book. They didn’t cheat or lie or hurl abuse at each other.
And so we need the same kind of competition in business. Where you get win-win (client and customer). And where people are greedy and unethical, they can be fired and/or if more serious, challenged by the law.
Nationalisation breeds laziness and complacency. It would be like Nadal playing no-one higher than someone ranked 100. We’d never know the extent of his athleticism, fighting ability and skill overall.
Without competition there would be no development in science and tech and art and culture let alone business.
Sure, there is more cooperation than competition in the family. And that is right. The family is the home – not the world. And we need a safe refuge. But even in the family there is healthy competition such as Monopoly at Christmas!
So this topic isn’t ultimately about politics but about psychology! And how to instil healthy psychology in people.
October 6, 2026
What about the millions of other tennis players.?A Few winners don’t make a society