Coal, Clean Air, and the Regulation of the Domestic Hearth in Post-War Britain

In July 1956, Anthony Eden’s Conservative Government successfully steered a bill for clean air through parliament and on to the Statute book. ¹ The Clean Air Act substantially strengthened the regulatory controls in place at the end of the Second World War. It predetermined a national standard of air quality, created a tariff of financial penalties, established a Clean Air Council to monitor pollution levels and co-ordinate research, and removed the necessity for the plaintiff to demonstrate in court that smoke created a nuisance. The main thrust of legislation was the regulation of domestic smoke emissions. The Act encouraged local authorities to introduce and enforce smoke pollution controls: the burning of bituminous coal would be prohibited or heavily restricted in a zone by zone progression across towns and cities, particularly those identified as ‘black’ by the House of Commons Committee on Air Pollution in 1953, namely urban and industrial areas that were prone to high levels of atmospheric pollution and frequent natural fogs. ²