His political ambitions, including an aspiration to become Prime Minister, were frustrated by bad timing, but his energies were diverted into industry: he spent 10 years as Chairman of the National Coal Board, and later – despite the Aberfan disaster – headed a major inquiry which resulted in the Robens Report on occupational health and safety.
He was an official in the Union of Distributive and Allied Workers from 1935 to 1945; certified medically unfit for military service in the Second World War, he was a Manchester City Councillor from 1941 to 1945.
[1] Following the war, in the dramatic Labour landslide victory of 1945, Robens was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for the mining constituency of Wansbeck in Northumberland.
Thus, when Harold Macmillan (Eden's successor as prime minister) offered Robens the chairmanship of the National Coal Board (NCB) in 1960, he accepted enthusiastically.
Geoffrey Tweedale, writing in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, has expressed the view that, had Robens persisted in politics, he, rather than Harold Wilson, would have become prime minister.
He enjoyed the trappings of power including a Daimler with the vehicle registration number "NCB 1", an executive aeroplane (a six-seater De Havilland Dove which he and other Board members used to visit the far-flung coalfields) and a flat in Eaton Square.
He threw himself into the job with vigour and enthusiasm, visiting pits, arguing with miners at the coalface and developing a deep knowledge of the industry.
[6] As Chairman of the NCB, Robens oversaw substantial cuts in the mining industry, many of them reflecting market forces and government policies originated before he assumed the post.
[1] The largest single blow to his reputation came from his reaction to the catastrophic 1966 industrial accident at Aberfan, in the Taff Valley, South Wales.
On the morning of 21 October, a massive spoil heap from the nearby Merthyr Vale Colliery collapsed onto the village of Aberfan, burying 20 houses and the Pantglas Junior School in a landslide, 30 ft (9.1 m) deep, of water-saturated slurry that killed 116 schoolchildren and 28 adults.
Speaking to the media on the Sunday after the disaster, Robens was concerned that the initial shock and sorrow might give way to anger, possibly directed towards the men who worked at the top of the spoil heaps.
In the event, when it was clear that his earlier comments to reporters had been misinterpreted at the Tribunal as a denial of responsibility, he offered to appear at the inquiry to set the matter straight.
He conceded that the NCB was at fault, an admission which would have rendered much of the inquiry unnecessary had it been made at the outset, notwithstanding the advice of Lord Edmund-Davies that his appearance was not necessary.
[14][15] Following the Conservative victory in the 1970 general election, Robens found the new administration's distaste for nationalisation at odds with his own rather paternalistic views.
[citation needed] He was Chairman of Vickers from 1971 to 1979, opposing the Labour plans for nationalisation that led to the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Act 1977.