Boom – Crisis – Heritage by Lars Bluma

Author:Lars Bluma
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2021-09-15T14:19:06.280000+00:00

Obliteration

Continuing deregulation in the 1980s and 1990s led to inevitable privatisation of the coal industry in 1994. At this time, only 15 collieries remained in production in the UK, two of which, Monktonhall and Longannet, were in Scotland. Miners and management were encouraged to buy-out the mines and to establish of miners’ co-operative modelled on the successful experience at Tower Colliery in Wales. Being a superpit, the huge scale of Monktonhall’s operating costs were an instant burden for the company formed by the miners, which had insufficient capital to support more than one coalface in production at any one time. The project eventually failed, the miners lost the redundancy payments that they had invested in the business, and the colliery buildings, a landmark on the east side of Edinburgh, were demolished in November 1997 and February 1998 (Fig. 5).

This left the Longannet complex near Culross in Fife as Scotland’s last surviving deep coal mine. Taken over by the company Scottish Coal, it continued to supply Scottish Power, operators of the adjacent power station (the second biggest in the UK) until underground flooding in 2002 brought to an end centuries of deep coal mining in Scotland. Longannet Power Station subsequently continued to generate electricity using imported coal until 2016 when its closure signalled the complete cession of thermal electricity generation in Scotland.

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