Ian MacGregor later admitted that if NACODS had gone ahead with a strike, a compromise would probably have been forced on the Coal Board. Files later made public showed that the Government had an informant inside the TUC, passing information about negotiations.
The National Coal Board had decided in the 1972 strike that a NACODS member was entitled to stay off work without any loss of pay if he faced violence or aggressive intimidation from NUM pickets. When the number of NUM strikebreakers increased in August, Merrick Spanton, the NCB personnel director, stated that he expected NACODS members to cross the picket lines to supervise their work.