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The end of Kent CoalKent coal was some of the most difficult coal to extract and hence some of the most expensive in Britain. The whole industry was always close to failing for the first fifty years of its life. In 1947 the entire industry was nationalised but the National Coal Board made plans to start closing the Kent collieries as early as 1960. Chislet Colliery's biggest market was British Rail and when steam locomotives were withdrawn between 1966 and 1968, the colliery could no longer survive. It closed in 1969 and most of its men were transferred to the other three Kent pits. By 1975 there were just 3000 miners at Betteshanger, Snowdown and Tilmanstone, producing one million tons of coal per year. By now most Kent coal was used as a coking blend for the steel industry, which was also in crisis. By the 1980's both the government and the NCB were determined to make the coal industry viable by closing 'uneconomic' pits while the miners and the NUM were convinced bad management and poor investment were holding the industry back. Things came to a head in 1984 when the NUM called a national strike.
The 1984 strike lasted for almost a year and became one of the most controversial and bitter disputes since the General Strike of 1926. When it was over, neither the NCB nor the NUM fully recovered. The NCB was reorganised as British Coal in 1987, the year that Snowdown and Tilmanstone collieries closed with little opposition. Betteshanger was the last colliery in Kent, closing in 1989, just one year short of the centenary of the discovery of coal in Kent.
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