Burning Rage

The National Grid is exultant that today is "this country's first coal-free day since the Industrial Revolution". But not half as exultant as they are in every oil-producing nightmare state on the planet.

Places in which we do not need to take the slightest interest, because we continue to stand on vast reserves of coal. We were once the world leaders in its responsible extraction and incineration.

That all had to go, however, because Margaret Thatcher could not forgive the miners for their role in creating her wholly improbable rise to the Leadership of the Conservative Party, a position that would otherwise have passed seamlessly, so to speak, from Ted Heath to Michael Heseltine.

She ought to have been grateful. Yet she was not. At least, in vengefully closing the pits that she had kept open because they had worked through the Strike, Heseltine's finishing of the job had a certain spiteful logic to it. Her approach had none whatever.