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"Pick Your Pit." Robens' resignation, if it goes through as expected, will mark the end of a relatively bright era in one of Britain's most beclouded industries. A loud Lancashire socialist with a promising future in the Labor Party when Tory Macmillan chose him for the chairmanship, Alf Robens took the job only, or so he said, because he did not want it to go to "Lord Montgomery or someone like that." For all his socialist background, Robens was made a baron in 1961, and soon showed a gifted eye for profit. By closing down unprofitable collieries and pushing mechanization, he helped the industry into the black in 1962 for the first time in six years.
Coal, to be sure, is back in the red, partly because the government's deflationary "squeeze" has postponed a needed price increase, partly because a slow drift of workers away from the mines has caused a dip in production. Hoping to encourage remaining workers to move to more productive mines, Robens has begun an imaginative all-expense-paid "pick-your-pit" program. He sneers at competition from other fuels, recently dismissed the promise of North Sea gas as merely "an old flame tarted up in a miniburner." Such bravado delights Britons, even if few believe the lord's prediction that, with future economies, coal, which supplied 90% of Britain's fuel needs in 1950, can keep its current 64% share.