The decline of the UK coal industry from the start of the Thatcher administration through those of Major and Blair is documented and analyzed here. Over that 20-year period employment in the industry fell by 95 per cent, the UK's reliance on coal shrank, and union power was demolished. The political agenda over two decades remained implacably anti-coal. Yet, as the author demonstrates, the actual process of decline was driven by a set of political and economic coincidences and by chance.