COMFORT
By Robert Black
1970Robert BlackMiners Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
WILL the Tories depose Old King Coal? - not the pantomime favourite, the real thing - Lord Robens, £20,000-ayear head of the National Coal Board, former Labour minister, director of the Bank of England and one of the board of Times Newspapers.
His Coal Board job, it appears, may be in some danger after what one newspaper called his 'militant antipolicy speeches'.
Not that he actually criticized the Tories.
He just didn't like the Prices and Incomes Board's idea of centralizing the NCB After all, the man has been operating Tory policy for years. It would be most ungracious of them to put him out now after all the pit closures, speed-up, mass sackings, etc.
Anyway, he doesn't think they'll sack him. On the contrary, when his second fiveJanuary, he expects the gor. term of office ends in ernment either to take him on for another term or 'shake me warmly by the hand and say goodbye'.
If he does have to go away with only a handshake, it won't quite leave him on the breadline, though he claims that if you're thinking in terms of vast possessions and so on, I'm not at all wealthy.
He'll still have his directorship. And if the worst comes to the worst he can always toddle off to the House of Lords and draw f5 a day simply for turning up. But he might just about be able to get by on Earnings Related Benefit ...
Robens : Old King Coal