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.
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