National Coal Board

The state corporation that owned and ran almost all of British coal mining from 1947 to 1987. Created by the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took the industry over on vesting day — 1 January 1947 — was renamed the British Coal Corporation in 1987, and was wound up when the industry was privatised in 1994.

Historical usage

The NCB is the most common institution named in 20th-century British colliery records: after 1947 practically every deep mine's later history is NCB history, and a record saying a pit 'passed to the National Coal Board at nationalisation' is describing the same day at every one of them. It took over some 1,647 mines, more than a million acres of land and around 100,000 dwellings from hundreds of separate companies. The handover itself was almost comically brief — a ceremony in London lasting two seconds, in which the first chairman, Lord Hyndley, was handed a bound copy of the Act — but at pit level it was marked: flags flown from headgears, and a notice mounted outside each colliery stating that it was now managed by the National Coal Board on behalf of the people. Coal mining employed over 700,000 people at its peak around 1950. By privatisation in 1994 there were fifteen pits left.

How it worked

A single management structure over an industry that had been split between hundreds of owners: the Board above, divisions and areas beneath it, collieries beneath those — which is why a colliery record from this period names an Area rather than a company. It set wages nationally, and its remit went well past extraction. The Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation took on some 700 halls, 600 recreation grounds, convalescent homes and holiday centres; the Coal Industry Housing Association built nearly 20,000 homes between 1952 and 1955 to replace substandard colliery housing; a pension scheme was set up for retiring miners; and where eight medical centres had existed before 1947, there were 373 by 1960. The Board sponsored research into mining diseases, ran its own brickworks and coking plants, recruited through campaigns and its own magazine, and brought in the five-day week to make the industry worth joining.

Why it was used

Private ownership had left the industry fragmented, under-invested and unable to attract men. Nationalisation was meant to fix all three at once — Attlee's vesting-day message claimed the Act offered great possibilities of social advance — and it put capital behind mechanisation, safety and welfare on a scale no individual colliery company could have found. By 1950 mining had become one of Britain's better-paid industries.

Risks & limitations

One owner also means one decision-maker. The same body that built the housing and the medical centres ran the closure programmes, and when it announced the closure of Cortonwood in March 1984 it became the counterparty in the year-long strike that followed. Its record-keeping has outlived it more usefully: the abandonment plans the NCB and its predecessors deposited are why the Coal Authority — now the Mining Remediation Authority — can say where the workings are, and are what most of this archive's coal records ultimately rest on.

Regional variation

A Great Britain body, organised into divisions and later areas, so 'the NCB' in a colliery record usually means a particular Area with its own management and its own closure decisions. It is worth reading the date too: the same organisation is the National Coal Board before 1987 and the British Coal Corporation after it, and records use whichever name was current.

Related terminology

Care and Maintenance, Colliery Brickworks, Man-riding, Mines Rescue Station, Shaft Capping, Wartime Requisitioning

Images

Mines associated with this term

5 examples chosen from 25 linked records — the term page is not an index.

• Auchengeich Colliery — North Lanarkshire (well documented example)
  Named in this record’s history: “…of around 650, and a peak of 860 in 1956 — and it passed to the National Coal Board on nationalisation in 1947. It was also known to be gassy, and it…”
• Cortonwood Colliery — South Yorkshire (well documented example)
  Named twice in this record, first in the summary: “…colliery of no unusual size or fame until March 1984, when the National Coal Board told its men the pit would close in April. Cortonwood's miners…”
• Lofthouse Colliery — West Yorkshire (well documented example)
  Named in this record’s history: “…19th-century mining notebooks at the public inquiry to show that the National Coal Board could have known. He was elected Yorkshire Area president later that…”
• Longannet Colliery — Fife (well documented example)
  Named in this record’s history: “…next door. It was run by the National Coal Board and its successor British Coal until the 1994 privatisation of the coal industry, after which it…”
• Six Bells Colliery — Blaenau Gwent (well documented example)
  Named in this record’s closure notes: “…the Six Bells shafts stopped winding coal in their own right, and British Coal closed the complex in 1988 — some accounts give 1989.”

Sources

1. (primary) Nationalisation of coal — The National Archives
2. (secondary) Nationalisation — By the People, For the People — National Coal Mining Museum for England

Record created: 25 August 2026 · Last researched: 25 August 2026