Derek Ezra, Lord Ezra, former chairman of the National Coal Board, who has died aged 96, was a remarkably successful public sector businessman in what now seems like a bygone age. He spent his entire working life until the age of 63 in the coal industry, at a time of almost continuous decline. Although submerged tensions exploded into industrial unrest from time to time, the period as a whole was characterised by an unusual degree of mutual cooperation.
He joined the marketing department of the Coal Board in 1947 – the year of nationalisation – when the newly established board found itself the owner of 1,400 collieries, as well as 85 brickworks, a cinema, a slaughterhouse and a holiday camp. Ezra gradually worked his way up the ranks of the industry, through regional sales departments, until he became director general of marketing at the NCB in 1960. He was deputy chairman from 1967 until 1971 and soon became the obvious internal successor to Lord (Alf) Robens, who retired in 1971. He took over on a salary of £20,000 a year, when the board was losing £10m a year.
His most traumatic period was in November 1973, when the miners started a ban on overtime. By December it was clear that coal stocks were dangerously low, and on 1 January 1974 a three-day working week for British industry was introduced. The government refused to break its own incomes policy to make a special case for the miners (even though the rest of the TUC had agreed that miners could be treated as a special case). The miners voted by a large majority in favour of a strike, which went on even after Edward Heath had called (and lost) a general election on 28 February.
Despite the bruising effect of the strike, Ezra’s belief in the future of coal was undiminished. He masterminded a strategy, outlined in the booklet Plan for Coal in 1974, which provided a boost for investment, research and development, and a Japanese-style collaboration between the industry and its suppliers. This produced impressive benefits for both sides and helped British mining machinery manufacturers to be among the world leaders.
He took pride in nurturing special relationships with his suppliers. When the NCB wanted a special coal face shearing machine, the Germans said they would make it, but the board went to British manufacturers, who produced a machine so revolutionary that it was exported all over the world. At that time, 97% of the board’s needs were supplied from Britain.
Although many people have an image of the government forcing the closure of collieries, it was not always the case. Both sides of the industry cooperated with the government in an act of almost continuous “downsizing” (though no one had thought of the name then) which reduced the industry’s manpower from more than 700,000 in 1947 (and around a million earlier) to 230,000 by the time Ezra retired. Indeed, during the early part of the 1980s, the government actually postponed closures that the NCB wanted to make.
Ezra was a quiet, dedicated marketing professional who never seemed to enjoy the public spotlight into which the industry was inevitably thrust in those days. He provided something of a sombre contrast to his extrovert predecessor, Robens, who had a natural eye for publicity. What he lacked in flamboyance he made up for with backstage manoeuvres and a single-minded mission for coal. He forged an unusually close relationship with Joe Gormley, president of the National Union of Mineworkers. In March 1979, he appealed to Gormley to continue as leader of the NUM for another two years in the hope that they might both retire together.
Though quite the opposite of Gormley in temperament, he believed that the union leader could deliver what he promised. Together, and not without difficulty, they kept the left wing of the union at bay at least until the 80s. Ezra proved a nifty background ally when Gormley forced a reluctant Margaret Thatcher to abandon plans to close 23 pits in 1981. Instead, they both won the promise of more investment despite the prevailing monetarist pressures. The retreat by Thatcher turned out to be partly tactical (there was not enough coal in stockpiles at the time) but it was also from a realisation that the wrong man – from her point of view – was at the helm of the NCB.
Ezra left the industry in 1982 – refusing Thatcher’s offer for him to stay on for another year after she failed to find a successor – and joined his friend Gormley in the House of Lords the following year. He admitted, to no one’s surprise, that he had been a closet Liberal since joining the party at Cambridge but his public offices had not allowed him to take an active part in politics.
After his retirement from coal, he took a number of posts in industry, ranging from chairman of Associated Heat Services to president of the Keep Britain Tidy group. In the Lords he consistently supported the cause of the manufacturing industry and lamented the absence of an industrial strategy (of the kind he had pursued in miniature at the Coal Board). He warned that Britain’s traditional surplus on manufacturing trade had been translated into a widening deficit. He wanted North Sea oil revenues to be used to stimulate investment and build infrastructure.
Together with Lord Callaghan, he tabled more than 30 separate amendments to the bill that led to the privatisation of the railways in the Railways Act 1993, in an attempt to stall it. In his inaugural speech as president of the Economic Research Council in 1985, he warned that, since 1979, Britain had suffered the most serious reduction in industrial capacity of any major western nation.
Son of David and Lillie, Ezra was born in India, and educated at Monmouth school and Magdalene College, Cambridge, from where he graduated with a first in history. During the second world war, he was involved in intelligence, attached to Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, receiving and coordinating behind-the-lines intelligence. He was awarded the American Bronze Star in 1945. In 1979 he was made a grand officer of the Italian Order of Merit, in 1981 a commander of the Luxembourg Order of Merit and in 1981 an officer of the Légion d’honneur.
His wife, Julia (nee Wilkins), whom he married in 1950, died in 2011.
• Derek Ezra, Lord Ezra, industrialist, born 23 February 1919; died 22 December 2015
