It’s unlikely there will be much in the way of the ceremony, but there will be a hugely important moment in our national story at the end of this month.
A lorry will deliver the very last sack of traditional domestic coal to a British home. Then from May 1 it will be illegal to sell that oldest, dirtiest energy source to households.
This doesn’t quite mean the end of ‘real’ house fires, as it will still be legal to sell anthracite – the least polluting and highest quality coal – along with smokeless fuels made from coal.
But in many ways that last coal delivery will mark the final chapter in the story of an industry that has been central to British history.
Writer George Orwell said that “our civilization is based on coal.” How true. Coal fueled the Industrial Revolution, sustained the British Empire and fueled the Royal Navy.
The fuel that has kept the British warm since at least the 2nd century – according to analysis of the hearths of Roman villas in Northumberland – has been quietly all but removed from our national life. Undated photo shows little boy helping his father deliver coal
A lorry will deliver the very last sack of traditional domestic coal to a British home. Then from May 1 it will be illegal to sell that oldest, dirtiest energy source to households. Pictured: A lorry losing its load in London in an undated photo
It will also forever be associated with miners and their communities, who endured the dangers and horrific nature of the work.
Disasters like Aberfan, but also Margaret Thatcher’s struggle against Arthur Scargill’s striking miners in the 1980s, are etched in our collective memory.
Now King Coal no longer reigns supreme. Last Friday, none of the electricity produced in this country came from coal, and the last coal-fired power station is due to close next year.
The fuel that has kept the British warm since at least the 2nd century – according to analysis of the hearths of Roman villas in Northumberland – has been quietly all but removed from our national life. There is no other example in history of a fuel going down so quickly and completely.
However, no one should mourn his passing too much. It’s not just CO2 emissions, which are twice as high for coal-fired power plants, kilowatt-hour for kilowatt-hour, as for gas-fired power plants. Coal was always a dirty fuel, spewing clouds of soot and sulfur dioxide into the air.
No one should mourn the passing of coal too much. It is not only CO2 emissions, which are twice as high for coal-fired power plants. Coal was always a dirty fuel, spewing clouds of soot and sulfur dioxide into the air
The switch from coal-fired to gas, oil and electric heating in British homes has reduced sulfur dioxide levels in the air by 98 per cent since 1970 and more than three-quarters fewer soot particles as small as 2.5 micrometres in diameter. are. .
While householders today worry about the environmental damage caused by cars and wood-burning stoves, the air was dirtier in the 1950s, before air pollution records were kept, when London’s smog nearly wiped out all light. The worst, in 1952, took at least 4,000 lives.
With less coal burning, blackened buildings are allowed to shine again, and Norway no longer complains that the acid rain blown in the wind from Britain is killing its pine trees.
By the time I was born in the 1960s, oil, followed by natural gas, had become the mainstay of home heating. But a haze of smoke still hung over the older houses in Canterbury, where I grew up. I still associate visits to my grandparents in a mining town in Nottinghamshire with a caustic smell that permeated the countryside for miles.
Every time we left we would reach the A1 and realize that the grass had suddenly turned green again instead of a rim of black powder.
A Charrirngtons lorry unloads coal onto London’s pavement. Undated photo
But for all the pollution, we should be thankful for coal. Whatever people say now, it has changed our lives enormously over the past centuries.
Without it, industrialization would have quickly ground to a halt as Britain ran out of water power for its mills and charcoal for its iron production. While coal picked up on the waterfront in County Durham had been shipped to London since the Middle Ages, it was the greedy furnaces of the industrial north in the late 18th century that really kick-started the industry.
At the time, five-sixths of the world’s coal was mined and used in Britain. At the industry’s peak in 1913, there were 3,024 operating deep mines producing 292 million tons of coal and employing 1.1 million miners.
It wasn’t just supplying heat and making steel – the streets and homes of Victorian Britain were lit by ‘town gas’ produced from coal.
Until well into the 20th century, trains, ships and barges almost all ran on coal. The last steam train service ran until 1968. Throughout the 20th century, coal was the mainstay of electricity generation. And even in 2012, it still supplied nearly half of our electricity.
London housewives line up to receive their supply of coal from the roundsman. The coal merchant is supplied with an army truck to make his deliveries during the Second World War February 1945
It is equally difficult to explain to people under 40 the central role coal once played in our national political life.
The three-day week of 1973/74 came about because at that time whoever controlled the coal controlled the British economy – and, as we discovered, it was not Prime Minister Edward Heath.
In 1974 there were still a quarter of a million miners working in Britain. Ten years later there were only 130,000 when Arthur Scargill made his fateful decision to run against a much better prepared Conservative government led by Mrs Thatcher.
The storage of coal in power stations, initiated by Nigel Lawson – who died last week – helped keep the lights on during the year-long strike. And with gas pouring in from the North Sea, coal suddenly retreated.
Climate change forced former supporters of the industry into a rapid turnaround, to the point that some now see coal mines as a crime against humanity, rather than the beating heart of the working class.
Our last deep coal mine, Kellingley in North Yorkshire, produced its last wagon load in December 2015. never turn off the light.
A coal merchant makes his rounds in his horse-drawn cart in the Gorbals area of Glasgow circa 1960
In 2021, coal was used to produce just two percent of our power – and most of that came from imported supplies.
While we should be glad that Britain is no longer running on dirty coals, there is no reason to stomp the industry to the ground and dance on its grave.
A proposed coal mine in Whitehaven, Cumbria, which was given the go-ahead by the government in December, has been vehemently opposed by climate change protesters, despite the fact that it will not produce coal for power stations or open hearths, only coking coal for steel production. At the moment, coal is the only commercially proven means we have to produce steel.
Mrs. Annie Berry brings in her coal, which is delivered to the street in a heap. Stanleytown, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales, March 1, 1954
Our heritage railways, too, have warned that they risk running out of coal because so little is now produced in Britain, and that their other main source – Russia – has been cut off.
An opencast mine in Wales, Ffos-y-Fran, which produces coal for heritage railways, was due to close last autumn but was delayed by nine months. Another open pit mine that could have supplied the fuel, at Dewley Hill in Northumberland, was not cleared.
Still, the amounts of coal involved in running heritage trains at 40 mph are small and of negligible carbon emissions, so why jeopardize a tourism industry?
Mining caused the blow of the industrial revolution, but it fizzled out.
At a minimum, we should recognize Old King Coal and its contribution to our national story and to the transformation of living standards around the world.
Sniffing a whiff of coal on the platform of a heritage railway should remind you of the unique substance Britain made.
Ross Clark is the author of Not Zero: How An Irrational Target Will Impoverish You, Help China (And Won’t Even Save The Planet), published by Forum Books for £20.
