ABSTRACT
The strategy for ensuring that power stations had adequate supplies of all the materials essential for normal operation was an important part of the CEGB’s preparations for the miners’ strike. As described in Chapter 5, the NUM strike in 1971–2 had demonstrated the vulnerability of power stations to the stoppage of supplies. It was not surprising that fuel deliveries were targets for NUM pickets. It was not so obvious that supplies of industrial gases, water treatment plant chemicals and engineering materials could be legitimately linked to a dispute in the coal industry. Yet these had been targets for the pickets in 1971–2 who eventually stopped all our supplies. Each power station had effectively been under siege. Even food for the canteen was being stopped by the zealous picketing miners. Trade union traditions were so deeply entrenched in the minds of the suppliers’ delivery drivers that, whatever the logic of the situation, most would not cross a picket line.
