Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [86]
The tripartite meeting was due to take place on 23 February. In the interim, we were hoping that the NCB would be able to make a more effective presentation of their case and to prevent the NUM continuing to make all the running. Indeed, we were advised that unless we held the tripartite meeting earlier than planned the NUM Executive might vote for a strike ballot. On the morning of 18 February I met hurriedly with David Howell to agree on the concessions which would have to be offered to stave off a strike. There was still considerable confusion as to what the facts really were. Whereas the NCB had been reported to be seeking 50 or 60 pit closures, it now appeared that they were talking about 23. But the tripartite meeting achieved its immediate objective: the strike was averted. The Government undertook to reduce imports of coal to the irreducible minimum, with David Howell indicating that we were prepared to discuss the financial implications with an open mind. Sir Derek Ezra said that in the light of this undertaking to review the financial constraints under which the NCB was operating, the Board would withdraw its closure proposals and re-examine the position in consultation with the unions.
The following day David Howell made a statement to the Commons to explain the outcome of the meeting. The press reaction was that the miners had won a major victory at the expense of the Government, but that we had probably been right to surrender. This was not, however, the end of our difficulties. We agreed to improve the redundancy terms for coal miners, to finance a scheme for conversion from oil to coal in industry and to look again at NCB finances. As is always the case once corporatism takes a grip, it became extremely difficult to bring the tripartite discussions to an end without provoking a crisis and equally difficult to ensure that the whole question of government finance for the NCB did not come onto the agenda. It had already emerged at the tripartite meeting on 25 February that the NCB was in far deeper financial trouble than we had known. They were likely to overrun their external financing limit (EFL), which had already been set at some £800 million, by between £450 and £500 million and were expecting to make a loss of £350 million. We would need to challenge these figures and examine them in detail, but we could not do this — as the NCB Board undoubtedly realized — when the NUM knew almost as much about the NCB’s financial position as we did. Therefore, our aim must be to draw a ring fence around the coal industry by arguing that coal was a special case rather than a precedent. We must seek to avoid any commitment for the years beyond 1981–2. Above all, we must prepare contingency plans in case the NUM sought a confrontation in the next pay round.
We confirmed these decisions at a meeting of ministers on 5 March. David Howell skilfully handled the next tripartite meeting on 11 March, at which it was understood that we would not need another tripartite meeting until the NCB’s financial position had been resolved. Meanwhile, he had been instructed to prepare a memorandum on contingency plans and circulate it by Easter.
Having managed to ease the Government out of an impossible position — at what I knew to be a high political cost — I concentrated attention on limiting the financial consequences of our retreat and preparing the ground so that we would never be put in such an awful situation again. David Howell had been shaken by what had happened. He feared a repetition of the events of January. There was much argument between him and the Treasury about the new EFL for the NCB and the level of investment we ought to finance. We had to agree to an EFL of well over £1 billion. Similarly, the threat of strike action constrained what we could do immediately to increase our capacity to endure a future strike. It was clear that coal stocks