Lord Coal's Role

Few other positions in business can match the chairmanship of Britain's huge National Coal Board, held for six years by blunt, ebullient Baron Robens of Woldingham, 56. "Lord Coal" or "Honest Alf," as he is known to Britons, runs a mammoth operation that has a work force (420,000) twice the size of the British army, ranks No. 3 on FORTUNE'S list of the 200 biggest non-U.S. companies. Because the company has been nationalized since 1947, the N.C.B. chairman is also a political appointee serving at the pleasure of the government. So last week, when the politically charged issue of last fall's Aberfan "coal tip" disaster broke into the headlines once again, all Britain debated the fate of old Lord Coal.

"Dear Alf." The controversy erupted when a government tribunal issued a long-awaited report on the catastrophe, in which 144 died when a water-weakened tip suddenly slid down its precarious mountainside site. In 151 emotion-charged pages, the report told a "terrifying tale of bungling ineptitude," scourged the National Coal Board for neglecting "the stability of tips," cited seven N.C.B. staffers (all of whom have been shifted to new jobs) as "blameworthy." Lord Robens himself got off with only a sharp rebuke for having insisted that the company "could not have known" of trouble in the tip.

Even so, Britons quickly took sides on Lord Coal's role. In an editorial headlined "A Damning Indictment," the London Financial Times argued for what it called "the honorable tradition that whenever a disaster occurs the man in command should go." Not so, snapped Sir Miles Thomas, who had been head of BOAC when the early Comet jet airliners were crashing. "I wouldn't resign," said he. "I'd see it through and make sure everything possible was done to see that it never happened again." A letter from former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who tapped Robens for the N.C.B. job in 1961, told "Dear Alf" that "the test comes when things go badly--all the more galling when it really isn't our fault but just bad luck."

Nevertheless, three days after the report came out, Robens turned in his resignation, saying that while "the doctrine of ministerial responsibility does not strictly apply" in his case, "I follow its rules." The government promptly announced that it would sit on the resignation, at least until the N.C.B. had finished its own report on measures to prevent future disasters. If Robens was to be the Aberfan scapegoat, he now stood as something of a martyr --and to many Britons the government seemed to be playing politics by delaying his exit. Robens seemed to agree: he promptly set to speeding up the N.C.B. report.

"Pick Your Pit." Robens' resignation, if it goes through as expected, will mark the end of a relatively bright era in one of Britain's most beclouded industries. A loud Lancashire socialist with a promising future in the Labor Party when Tory Macmillan chose him for the chairmanship, Alf Robens took the job only, or so he said, because he did not want it to go to "Lord Montgomery or someone like that." For all his socialist background, Robens was made a baron in 1961, and soon showed a gifted eye for profit. By closing down unprofitable collieries and pushing mechanization, he helped the industry into the black in 1962 for the first time in six years.

Coal, to be sure, is back in the red, partly because the government's deflationary "squeeze" has postponed a needed price increase, partly because a slow drift of workers away from the mines has caused a dip in production. Hoping to encourage remaining workers to move to more productive mines, Robens has begun an imaginative all-expense-paid "pick-your-pit" program. He sneers at competition from other fuels, recently dismissed the promise of North Sea gas as merely "an old flame tarted up in a miniburner." Such bravado delights Britons, even if few believe the lord's prediction that, with future economies, coal, which supplied 90% of Britain's fuel needs in 1950, can keep its current 64% share.

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