Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [221]
I perfectly understood Norman’s concern and it was partly because I shared his instinctive distrust of the figures — and could not quite believe Peter Walker’s laid-back optimism — that I had asked for the meeting with Peter and Walter Marshall. The message I received at the meeting was extremely encouraging. Walter Marshall confirmed the position as Peter had previously described it. If supplies of coal from Nottinghamshire and other working areas to the power stations were maintained at the present level the safe date for endurance would be June 1985. In fact, the CEGB believed they could keep the power stations running until November 1985. He showed me a chart which demonstrated that coal, nuclear and oil generation taken together almost exactly matched the (lower) summertime demand. Indeed, if endurance could be extended into the spring of 1986 — which we might manage by getting more miners back to work for example — it would then be possible to go on into the following winter.
However, all these predictions were extremely sensitive to variations in the supply of coal from the Nottinghamshire pits. Walter Marshall stressed how important it was to maintain their output. Small improvements in supplies from these pits increased endurance dramatically: small shortfalls curtailed it equally dramatically. It would be essential to maintain transport from the Nottinghamshire pits and although road transport had made a great contribution, deliveries by rail could not be dispensed with. Enormous quantities of coal had to be moved, and pithead stockyards in many of the working pits were comparatively small — they had been built on the ‘merry-go-round’ system, by which trains ran directly to the power stations and back again on a daily basis. Accordingly, it was vital that we keep the rail unions working, if necessary at the price of concessions in pay talks.
Walter Marshall confirmed that importing coal for the power stations would be a mistake. This would annoy even the Nottinghamshire miners. It would be better to dedicate imports to industry and avoid getting the CEGB embroiled in the argument. Looking to the longer term, he also set out his programme for increasing endurance to at least twelve months rather than the six months provided for in the current plans. We never forgot the possibility of a second strike after the present one was finished.
The combination of Walter Marshall’s natural ebullience, his mastery of detail and the determination he showed to avoid power cuts raised my spirits enormously. Over the next couple of days I spoke individually to Norman Tebbit and several other colleagues to give them the message. We were all able to take our holidays in a better frame of mind than we would otherwise have done.
On Tuesday 31 July I spoke in a debate in the House of Commons on a Censure Motion which the Labour Party had been ill-advised enough to put down. The debate went far wider than the coal strike. But the strike was on everyone’s minds and inevitably it was the exchanges on this matter which caught the public attention. I did not mince my words:
The Labour Party is the party which supports every strike, no matter what its pretext, no matter how damaging. But, above all, it is the Labour Party’s support for the striking miners against the working miners which totally destroys all credibility for