Coal: Rise and Fall, 1919–35

Abstract

In 1925, when the extensive colliery interests belonging to GKN had achieved an annual output of over 6 million tons and employed 36,000 men,² coal was perceived as being the most important holding within the group, more significant than steel or fasteners. In South Wales only the Powell Duffryn Steam Coal Co. was larger, and in 1938 after the two had merged they were responsible for one-third of the productive capacity of the region. The directors with responsibility for the colliery subsidiaries held sway on the board and chief among them, Henry Seymour Berry, Lord Buckland, was elected chairman in 1927. Supported by his deputy and close friend, Sir David Llewellyn, a possessor of technical expertise and extensive local knowledge, he had been able to alter the shape of GKN’s senior management team so that by the late 1920s it had become dominated by executives recruited from the South Wales coal industry. Among those introduced by Berry were T.J. Callaghan, E.A. Mitchell-Innes and Sir Leonard Llewelyn. The growth in output achieved from the 1880s to 1914 by the South Wales coalfield³ was not sustained in the interwar period when annual totals were consistently lower in response to declining and increasingly competitive markets, which prompted pit closures and high unemployment and, in turn, a greater level of industrial unrest.

Everything being now relative, there is no longer absolute dependence to be placed on God, Free Trade, Marriage, Consols, Coal or Caste.

John Galsworthy, A Modern Comedy (1929)¹