a background of mounting unemployment in the UK and damaged many traditional steel-working communities. By 1983, there were only 71,000 staff with losses stemmed to £256 million. The company was now moving towards profitability and would be in the vanguard of the Thatcher government's programme of privatisation. National Coal Board His next role was as head of the National Coal Board (NCB), approved in person by Thatcher. The appointment, announced on 28 March 1983, was greeted with considerable disdain by the National Union of Mineworkers, in particular its president Arthur Scargill. Scargill was concerned at MacGregor's uncompromising business methods, branding MacGregor "the American butcher of British industry." MacGregor replied that he was "a plastic surgeon" whose job was to "try to rebuild damaged features." He provoked Yorkshire miners by telling them that they were less productive than women miners in the US. MacGregor's approach to turning the NCB into a profitable concern was similar to the line he had taken at British Steel: cut jobs and close unprofitable pits. This led to the protracted and increasingly bitter 1984–1985 miner's strike. Despite many meetings between the two opposing sides no agreement was ever reached, and the UK coal industry continued its decline when the strike finished. Only 15 deep mines remained at the time of privatisation in 1994, although some briefly reopened; fewer than 10% of the figure 10 years earlier, when 170 collieries had still been operational. , there were three deep coal mines operating in the UK; by the end of 2015 they had all gone with the closure of Kellingley, the UK's last deep colliery. Later life MacGregor retired from the NCB in 1986, rejoining Lazard's as a non-executive director. In the UK, there were campaigns to appoint him as head of the National Health Service and to the board of directors of British Gas plc but without success. He enjoyed a variety of company chairmanships including Goldcrest Films but was disappointed to be forcibly retired from two US companies when he reached 78. He maintained his British business interests, observing "Being British is a faith. I will never lose it." He was chairman of property firm Mountleigh when it collapsed in 1992. Personality and private life He married Sybil Spencer (died 1996) in Washington, D.C. in 1942; she was from Wales. They had a son and a daughter. MacGregor split his time between his homes in New