The Coal Act 1938 (C.52) was an Act of the

Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprema ...

that created the Coal Commission. Criticized for its inconsistencies, the Act was repealed, by degrees, over the next several decades.

Act

The main purpose of the Act was to create a Coal Commission, consisting of five people (including a chairman) appointed by the

Board of Trade The Board of Trade is a British government body concerned with commerce and industry, currently within the Department for International Trade. Its full title is The Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council appointed for the consideration of ...

. The Commission was required to obey all requests of the Board of Trade that were in the "national interest", making it directly under the control of the government of the day. From 1 July 1942 all unworked coal seams and coal mines came into the control of the Commission, who were tasked with managing them in "the interests efficiency and better organisation of the Coal Mining Industry". The Commission was directly prohibited from engaging in coal mining, and as a result owned all the coal but was not allowed to deal with it. The Act set a sum of £66,450,000 (worth approximately £ as of ) to be paid to the owners of mines and coal seams as compensation. The amount was divided up per region so that, for example, a Yorkshire coal owner would claim from the Yorkshire Coalfield division of the Central Valuation Board. The Act was criticised by academics as a piece of socialist legislation passed by a Conservative government, which as a result contained so many amendments, provisos and limitations that it was in many ways unworkable. As an example, the Commission was allowed to open up new underground workings, but was prohibited from disturbing the surface of the ground. It was repealed over several decades by the

Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946 The Coal Industry Nationalisation Act of 1946 (9 & 10 Geo. 6 c. 59) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which nationalised, or brought into state control, the coal industry in the United Kingdom. It established the National Coal B ...

, the

Mines (Working Facilities and Support) Act 1966 Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer to: Extraction or digging * Miner, a person engaged in mining or digging *Mining, extraction of mineral resources from the ground through a mine Grammar *Mine, a first-person English possessive pronoun ...

, the Coal Industry Act 1975 and the

Coal Industry Act 1994 The Coal Authority is a non-departmental public body of the United Kingdom government sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS). On behalf of the country, it owns the vast majority of unworked coal in Great Bri ...

Notes

References

*{{cite journal, last=Lang, first=J.H.A., year=1939, title=The Coal Act, 1938, journal=

Modern Law Review The ''Modern Law Review'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of Modern Law Review Ltd. and which has traditionally maintained close academic ties with the Law Department of the London School of Economics. ...

, publisher=

Blackwell Publishing Wiley-Blackwell is an international scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons. It was formed by the merger of John Wiley & Sons Global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business with Blackwell Publish ...

, volume=2, issue=4, issn=0026-7961 United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1938 Repealed United Kingdom Acts of Parliament Coal mining law