COAL-MINING INDUSTRY.

HL Deb 28 October 1943 vol 129 cc407-47

LORD ADDISON rose to call attention to the situation in the coal-mining industry; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Motion in my name on the Paper relates to the most critical and difficult industrial question on the Home Front. I am sure every one of us is anxious that nothing we either do or say should weaken the national effort, but, however good our intentions, it appears to be a fact that this matter can neither be obscured nor escaped from. It is continually with us. We have been, and are, presented in this industry with a recurrence of disputes in one form and another, and continually, and very properly, exhortations are made for us to be economical in the use of fuel. Above all, we are reminded, amid the disputes which seem to recur almost constantly, that there is, or will be, a deficiency of production.

In the Parliamentary sense there was a crisis in this matter the other day in the House of Commons, and the Prime Minister made a very great speech. He made a speech of great dialectical distinction, and he was successful, as usual, in the case that he urged upon the House. For the time being, shall we say, the crisis was smoothed over, but we are in fact, I am afraid, no further on, either in the prospect of getting more coal or getting more peace, both of which everyone desires. One of the points that the Prime Minister made was to suggest that he could not entertain the question of nationalization of the coal industry, for various reasons that he gave, and he addressed himself to the difficulties almost entirely from that point of view. It is worth asking ourselves, whatever may be our beliefs or disbeliefs in that particular method of approach, whether that is the only thing that might help. I do not think it is. I was not impressed by the statement that the present Parliament had no particular mandate on this subject. It has not; it is nine years old. I wonder what, in fact, it has a mandate for at all, if we take the issues at the time at which it was elected. It certainly had no mandate for compelling every man and woman in the country to go to whatever work they were ordered to do. It certainly had no mandate for that, but nevertheless it did that because national necessity required it.

In my judgment the fact that the nationalization of coal mines, like the question of compulsory labour, was not in the prospectus upon which the present Parliament was elected is neither here nor there. The point is, what is the best thing to do? We know, of course, the overwhelming necessity of doing nothing that will interfere with the successful conduct of the war. There was one thing that the Prime Minister did which pleased me very much. He did not spend his time scolding miners or threatening them, and therein he displayed his conspicuous wisdom. I shall have a word or two to say on that particular subject later on. I was very glad indeed that he avoided that error.

When there is the state of affairs which we have had in this industry for the last twenty years presenting its war difficulties, in this, as in every other case, if you have an ill, before you prescribe a remedy it is material to examine causes and try to do what you can to remove them. Now this particular industry, whatever be the rights and wrongs of the different disputes, and I am not assessing them, has presented to the country for more than twenty years a series of recurring strikes, disputes and wrangles of one kind or another, and it has been the subject of the most authoritative Commissions of Inquiry. I am glad that my noble friend Viscount Sankey is here because he, as we know, presided over one and Viscount Samuel, the cause of whose absence we all regret, presided over another. Their recommendations, for the most part authoritative and common sense as I think most of them certainly were, reside somewhere or other in pigeon-holes.

THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY

Oh no.

LORD ADDISON

The most important of their recommendations are in pigeonholes unless, of course, the scrap paper collectors have taken care of them. But notwithstanding these Commission Reports nothing whatever has been done about them. The disputes have continued in one form or another and, looking at it quite dispassionately as a fair-minded man, I should say that on the whole it seems to be the worst tempered industry in the country. There seems to be a lot of very bad temper about it. We cannot separate the present from the past any more than we can legislate for the future without having regard to the present. Seeking for causes, the first outstanding fact in this industry is that at the beginning of the last war, or thereabouts, there were 1,200,000 men and boys employed in it, and at the begining of this war the number was round about 703,000; in other words a decline of something like half a million. We know that for years there has been a difficulty in getting young fellows to go into the pits, notwithstanding the fact that the miners as a whole are perhaps the most clannish and self-contained of any of our communities. It is noteworthy that during the last twenty years the tradition has gradually become weaker and the young entrants into the industry have been too few.

The fact is that young men have sought other openings and so you are confronted with this remarkable decline in the numbers of workers engaged in the industry. Some of us, I myself for one, have spent a good deal of time on different occasions in South Wales and other places, and I feel that if anybody during the last fifteen years had chosen to spend a week or two there he would not require to ask himself why it was the young fellows did not want to go into the industry. They suffered from the most desolating unemployment with no assurance for the future; they lost heart and sought for something better. That is true. I know many splendid coal-owners, I know a consider- able number of coal-owners who get on very well indeed with their men, who have good managers, and in whose collieries there is an excellent spirit, as you have also in many other industries, but I do say with great respect that if you look at the records of what might be called the motive spirit of the Mine Owners' Association for the last twenty years, it cannot be claimed that the best men have made themselves felt as they might have done. There are 1,135 colliery companies and 1,900 mines. Somehow or other, notwithstanding the best efforts that I know have been made by many high-minded coal-owners, the outlook and temper in the government of this industry has bred suspicion and dislike.

I am putting it mildly. It is not so in other great industries. We have in your Lordships' House leaders of many great industries and we have some who have set a fine example in the coal industry, but there is for some reason a different spirit in this industry from that in many other great industries, where you see hearty co-operation and a better spirit between those in charge and those who take orders. I am trying not to apportion blame any more than I can; I am stating indisputable facts. I do not know who wrote the article in the Spectator of October 15, but it concluded with this sentence which I thought was remarkably apt: The country as a whole is sick of this recurrent problem, and knowing as it now does that the structure of the mining industry is unequal to its tasks in peace or war, would welcome a bold policy to end the situation which for twenty years has been the gravest blot on Britain's industrial system. At present I believe production is round about the figure of 190,000,000 tons a year, and 210,000,000 or perhaps a little more is wanted as a minimum. In other words, the shortage appears to be from twenty to thirty million tons per annum. We are told that 80,000 additional men are required to allow for at least 20,000 as the minimum annual wastage. We have to remember that this is an industry in which 100,000 men are injured every year in one form or another. In the first years of the war recruitment of miners for the Forces was allowed on a considerable scale. There are magnificent fellows in the Forces, and I can quite well understand that neither a company sergeant nor a commanding officer would want them to be combed out. Whatever we may say I am sure they will not be combed out. They are too good. It was a mistake, as we see now, to allow this large-scale recruitment of skilled miners. If we had done the same (thing in agriculture the country would have been short of food, and I did my best to stop it, with a certain measure of success. However, we shall not get many of these men back to the mines. I do not think it is reasonable to expect it.

A small number may be got from other sources, but it is interesting to note that according to the returns of the Ministry of Labour, of those who had the right of election whether to go into the coal mines or into the Forces, putting it roughly one half of 1 per cent. only elected for the coal industry, which shows sufficiently well the repute which the industry somehow or other has got. I do not think the suggestion that men should be directed into the coal pits will give us very many. I do not suppose you could make a skilled miner very quickly. I suggest that if we are to get that twenty or thirty million extra tons, the first thing to aim at is the introduction of a better spirit into the industry, to get the men and the managers to pull together to secure more efficiency in the coal mines.

Let me say a word here about the miners. I am perfectly certain no one would suggest that miners are not as patriotic as any one else. They volunteered quickly enough to go into the Forces and their record in the last war was outstanding. Certainly no one hates Fascism more than they do. But it is a fact, I am sure, that after four years of war many of the miners are very tired. Let me say also a word about the accusations of slackness, absenteeism and so on. I am not here to excuse a man who slacks, but the fact is that, taking the industry as a whole, there have been more shifts per man worked per annum during the War than at any time in the history of the industry. There have not been so many weeks with shortness of shifts. There have been more shifts worked. I think we have to look at the human side a little closely. In conversation with those who know the facts very well I have found that, when the men come up from the pits, they cannot get away in their bit of free time to have their usual relaxation, as they could before, owing to the shortage of petrol which causes difficulties of transport. That is a matter that wants con- sideration. Then again after four years the average age of the miners is higher, because a considerable percentage of the younger men have gone. I do not believe they are fed too well. That is another important reason, I am sure. The pit canteens are, of course, a great help; everybody knows that. But when a man is working underground, a mile from the shaft, he cannot come up to get a meal. When he comes up at the end of his shift he wants to get home, have a wash, change his clothes, and then have a meal at home. He is not inclined to go to the canteen when he leaves off work, and go home afterwards. I am quite sure that we ought to do something to enable more meat to be provided for the miners—some of us, perhaps, would have to go with a little less then we get now, but we could manage. The miners need to be better fed.

Apart from this, there is, I think, another cause for the existing state of affairs in this industry. These men are rather disgruntled, they are disappointed, they are losing hope in the future. And it is in this connexion that I think the Prime Minister has made a mistake. There is no doubt that these men remember what happened immediately after the last war, and what has happened since. It is not my business to go about among people connected with the mining industry, but it is my business to go about a good deal among those who are concerned with agriculture. Not a week passes but, in the course of my work in that connexion, I have the question advanced to me: "What is going to happen after the war? Are we going to be let down again in the same way that we were let down in 1921?" That kind of question crops up, as I say, every week, and if any of your Lordships were to go into any market place in England to-day, without doubt you would be asked it. It is a very proper question to ask, and the miners are asking it. They say: "Are we going to have another example of the sort of thing that followed after the last war?" I submit that they are entitled to be reassured; to be told that they are not. You cannot expect good will and whole-hearted co-operation until they are reassured. We have only to think of the miseries they endured in South Wales and other places to realize how just is their claim that they should have an assurance of better things for the future.

One has been told something of the difficulties of dual control. It is suggested that the mine managers are looking over their shoulders to the colliery companies, who are their employers, and that these in turn are looking to the Ministry of Fuel and Power, who are their nominal war directors. But I cannot say that I attach very great importance to that. The number of cases supported by evidence is very small. There may be something in it, but what is clearly required, without a doubt, is greater unity of direction in this industry. Whether that is to be brought about by nationalization or otherwise may well, I think, be discussed in a friendly spirit. I think that the Prime Minister made a mistake in ruling out other suggestions. We discussed in this House yesterday the management of another very great industry, the transport industry. We had brought to our notice the example of the London Transport Board, which represents the amalgamated direction and the coalescence of interests of a very large number of different concerns, and which has operated with immensely successful results. I do not see any reason why that sort of example might not, perhaps, be imitated in this industry which we are discussing now.

Some form of regional amalgamation with, perhaps, a national directing board in charge might meet the case. But I am quite sure that we shall never get the good will and the co-operation in the pits that is essential if we are to meet the necessities of the hour, unless we can give the promise of a system which will enable the men to co-operate whole-heartedly freed from misgivings as to the future. The Miners' Federation have put out various suggestions—I have a copy of them on the table before me—as to amalgamation and as to assurances for the future that should be given to the men. Not one of those suggestions involves nationalization, as it so happens. I can see no reason why they should not be considered seriatim. I will not read them to your Lordships now; they are before the Government. As I say, the men are entitled to be assured that the conduct of the industry will be such, and the manner in which the whole of its products will be dealt with will be such, that they will have a guaranteed week's wage, that they will know that they are going to have enough to live upon, and that they will not be subject to a recurrence of the miseries of the last twenty years. There is no doubt that with a depleted labour force of 700,000 as compared with 1,200,000, there will be no risk in giving the necessary guarantees. Unless they are given, we shall not get the improvement in the conduct of the industry which is so necessary, and the improvement in its equipment which appears to be very much needed in some districts.

One thing which I should like to protest against, with all the earnestness I can, is the stupid scolding of the miners which has been going on lately. It is carried on, of course, for the most part, by people who have never taken the trouble to ascertain the facts. I have seen in some quarters threats as to what is to be done, threats of imprisonment and that kind of thing. Now that is what Himmler does. It is a method that is not British, and most certainly it is not the right way to deal with a large body of patriotic British workers. I believe that the good will and confidence of the miners can be obtained. I believe that the first objective of the Government should be to seek to obtain it, and not to postpone efforts in that direction to some unstated time after the war; because we want this improvement now. We all know that those who tell us that the present time is not appropriate are nearly always those who find that excuse whenever it is suggested that anything should be done. If the kind of steps which have been recommended, or something like them, had been taken in 1941, we should be a good deal further forward to-day than we are. Any new method requires time to develop its results; we know that. One thing which above all others would yield a dividend in this matter would be for the Government to decide that they are going to approach this problem with a definite promise and undertaking that they will do their best to remedy the well-founded grievances of the industry, and seek to obtain the good will and co-operation of those who are engaged in it.

Finally, although I am not as a rule a plagiarist, I should like to read another sentence from the article to which I have already referred, because it seems to me to epitomize the situation with which we are confronted and the outstanding need for a better and more sympathetic approach by the Government: In the mining industry, as in no other, the past is inherent in the present, and it is no use shutting our eyes to the fact that for a quarter of a century and more the miners have nursed a sense of grievance, arising from a fixed conviction that their industry has been mismanaged, a sense of grievance which permeates the whole atmosphere of the mining villages and which no palliatives are going to remove. This cannot be eradicated by anything less than a statement of long-term policy which will assure them of far-reaching reforms. I beg to move.

VISCOUNT SANKEY

My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord who has introduced this Motion, but your Lordships will permit me to say that this 15 not an occasion on which to discuss the technical details of the mining industry, or the problem of future mechanization in the pits, or the financial policy of the colliery companies;. It is not an occasion to examine the conditions of labour or leisure or the homes of the miners. It is not an occasion to consider the employment of young and inexperienced men underground, or to denounce the unscientific user and waste of a great national asset. Permit me rather to state two propositions, and endeavour to persuade your Lordships that each one of them is correct. First, we shall never have peace or prosperity in the coalfields until we have public ownership of the mines; we shall never have efficiency in the production and distribution of coal until we have nationalization and unification of the industry. Second, unless there is substantial agreement or overwhelming necessity, we cannot press for nationalization during the war, but meanwhile the Government should at once assume both the operational and the financial control of the mines.

Let me try to develop these two points, and let me take the latter point first. Nationalization will surely come. It is gaining ground every month and every minute. In my view, however, unless by agreement or necessity, it ought not to come now, because Parliament has not the necessary time to devote to a discussion of the many controversial points which are bound to arise and be decided before a satisfactory scheme can be settled. Again, we are in the middle of a great war. Now, with our Allies, Russia and the United States of America, we have started our march on Germany, after having been for the last three years with our backs to the wall. To win the war is our only active task. I do not say that nobody should be thinking of the problems of peace and seeking their solution, but to swing over from private to public ownership is a big job, and many of the men on whom we rely to do it are busy elsewhere.

I have no belief in the present system; the system is wrong and has failed. It has caused infinite harm and infinite bad feeling. But the subject is a controversial one, and it would not be right hurriedly to pass an Act for nationalization when many of those interested in it are helping the country at home and elsewhere. This does not mean, however, that we ought to do nothing in the matter. Two steps should be taken. The first and more important is to guarantee to the miners that they will get fair treatment and a square deal when peace is declared. Forgive my asking two questions. Is it always to be promise and never performance? Are the miners always to be abused? The second point is that we should do everything possible to increase the output of coal, care being taken that the increased output does not mean increased danger. The present position is impossible; it is neither one thing nor the other. The Government should, therefore, at once take over the mines, both the operational and the financial control.

Now permit me to deal with my first proposition, that we shall never get peace and prosperity in the coalfields until we have nationalization and unification of the industry. When the theory and practice of laissez faire became discredited, it was seen that absolute liberty for a man to do as he wills is impossible. The freedom to make excessive charges or extravagant profits must be controlled; the freedom to oppress the workers must be curbed; the freedom to conduct a business in a way harmful to the community must be ended. The question at once arose, how far can an industrial society be a free society? How can we effect a compromise between liberty and efficiency? We cannot solve the question of State interference on general principles. There is no presupposition either for or against nationalization; each case must be decided on its merits or demerits. On some questions there is a consensus of opinion. There have been—years and years ago, of course—private armies in Great Britain, British privateers on the seas, and private letter carriers, but we have nationalized our Army, our Navy and our Post Office. Nationalization is not a panacea for all things at all times; it is a development. As time goes on and industries become larger and more important units within the State, it is probable that more nationalization may be called for; indeed, it may be necessary that more nationalization should take place.

Latterly we have solved the question of public ownership by several different methods. But a democratic State with large industries governed autocratically is a house divided against itself. It becomes inevitable to apply to some industries the democratic principles which have functioned so well in political life. Now the planners are becoming vocal. Of course, there must be plans after the war period; we must not be caught unprepared for peace. With some planners planning is a difficult and anxious task; with others it is an agreeable and harmless occupation. There is no need to be afraid of planners, but what is to be watched and feared is the control behind the planning. How long is the control to go on? Who is to control us? Planning is no more a panacea than nationalization. But there are some to whom planning means the abolition of all limitation on Government control. What they want is not the nationalization of property: they want the nationalization of control, to plan private enterprise out of existence and to hand over industry to a bureaucracy. If they succeed, we shall have hordes of officials, endless forms to misunderstand and fill in, but of freedom there will be little left. No such system is suggested for the nationalization of the mines. The proposal is that, subject to the ultimate control of Parliament, the industry should be managed jointly by councils upon which there are representatives of persons acquainted with the commercial and technical sides of the industry, the miners, and. last but by no means least, representatives of the consumers. The fact is that the present owners and the miners will never agree.

THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY

They are not allowed to.

VISCOUNT SANKEY

I repeat, the present owners and miners will never agree. There will always be strife, contention and ill-will, and the more strife there is the less coal we shall get. It seems advisable therefore to change the ownership, but in so doing not to forget the rights of the owners. Nobody should be deprived of property except when the public necessity, properly determined, clearly requires it, and on condition of just and previous compensation. In my view that public necessity has now arrived. Let me for a moment imagine that I am addressing a larger audience, among which there might be many miners. The miners would be well advised in this crisis to listen to and follow the advice of their leaders, who have more experience in handling awkward political situations. The political world is a difficult one. There are hard places in politics, as there are in mining, and there, are slippery places in politics. Their leaders know how to deal with them. And, if I judge rightly, there is a good deal of gas in politics. Let us be careful. Above all, the miners should not toe discouraged. Doubts are traitors. Their cause is a just one and will surely succeed.

As my name has at times been mentioned in connexion with the nationalization of the mines, will you allow me in my concluding remarks to proceed on a more personal note, and to trespass upon your Lordships' indulgence in telling you how the matter strikes me? Upon coal the future of our country will still for many years depend. Nature has bestowed upon Great Britain one of the greatest of her gifts. Coal is our chief national asset. Do not let us waste it. Our manufactures and our transport system depend largely upon it. The health and comfort of our people depend upon it. Directly or indirectly our foreign trade depends upon it, and both in peace and in war our Navy, our Army and our Air Force— those great national protectors—depend largely upon it. The days are past when the difficulties in the industry were merely a question of hours and wages. Since 1870 we have had compulsory education, and with education there is a growing tendency to begin to think and to demand rights. To-day it is not a question of cut-throat competition between collieries at home for sales and profits. We are entering upon a period of cut-throat international competition for foreign markets. I have not a shadow of a doubt that we shall succeed in peace, as we are succeeding in war, if on vital questions we stand together and are as men of one mind.

Let me in my last words, and for the first and last time in this House, repeat myself: A great change in outlook has come over the workers in the coalfields, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to carry on the industry on the old accustomed lines. The relationship between the masters and workers in most of the coalfields in the United Kingdom is unfortunately of such a character that it seems impossible to better it under the present system of ownership. Many of the workers think they are working for the capitalists and a strike becomes a contest between labour and capital. This is much less likely to apply with the State as owner, and there is fair reason to expect that the relationship between labour and the community will be an improvement upon the relationship between labour and capital in the coalfields. Half a century of education has produced in the workers in the coalfields far more than a desire for the material advantages of higher wages and shorter hours. They have now, in many cases and to an ever-increasing extent, a higher ambition of taking their due share and interest in the direction of the industry to the success of which they, too, are contributing. Those words are taken from my Report on the Coal Industry Commission. I stand by them to-day. I believe them to be true and that they will prevail.

THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY

My Lords, I must ask your Lordships' indulgence for venturing to address you again so soon, though on a totally different subject from that of my last speech. I think we are indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Addison, for having raised this very important matter, and I should like to thank him, if I may, for the very temperate manner in which he approached it. I am not speaking at all in a controversial spirit, but I think the noble Lord showed in his speech that his knowledge is more profound in agriculture than it is in mining. But I hardly think I should have the time or the capacity to explain to the noble Lord all the difficulties which are in his mind in relation to the coal industry. The noble Viscount who has just spoken, I am sorry to say has made a highly controversial speech, and I should have thought that at this time, especially after the eloquent speech which the Prime Minister addressed to another place, he would have refrained from embarking on a matter of such high controversy to which, on another occasion, I should be only too glad to reply. I do not propose, except in one or two remarks in passing, to refer to the speech which the noble Viscount has delivered.

No one will deny that the coal industry is probably the most important industrial concern in this country by reason of the fact that it produces the only source of power that we possess. I am always surprised by speeches from those who are not closely associated with the industry which suggest that there is a hostility between the owners, the managers, and the men which goes on day in, day out. I do not claim to be closely associated with all branches of the coal industry throughout the country, but I can speak for certain portions of the industry in different parts of the north of England, and I have never met this hostility. I have heard of it on political platforms when leaders of the Federation and other propagandists of the Socialist Party come out, but I have never met any hostility whatever in my own pits, and I am sure my friends and colleagues, including a noble Lord whom I see on the Front Bench and who is closely associated with the coal industry, will say the same. The coal industry has a good name and reputation, notwithstanding all that has been said by the noble Viscount who has just spoken, and I should be sorry indeed if the industry as a whole were to lose the sympathy which has been extended to it over a long period of years.

No one can be satisfied with the position of the industry at the present time. It is indeed very unsatisfactory, and I am sure it is our duty to do everything we can to relieve that unsatisfactory position and to carry out what is our prime duty at this moment—namely, to increase the production of coal. I hardly think that the noble Lord who opened this debate or the noble Viscount who followed him can claim that anything he said gave any indication as to how the output of coal could be increased in the near future. We require a large increase in the output, and instead we are faced with a steady fall. I am sure noble Lords will agree that the debate in another place was anything but satisfactory in view of the figures which the Minister of Fuel and Power gave. They were as confusing as most of the figures we get in the coal industry. I do not know whether your Lordships have ever seen a pay sheet, but it takes a very steady brain and clear view to understand what exactly a pay sheet means.

The dislocation in the industry is due to many reasons, and whilst one is always unwilling to criticize anyone or any authority at this moment, I feel that the Government showed a great lack of foresight at the beginning of the war. A great many men were taken from the mines—coal-getters, not surface men—by conscription, and your Lordships are well aware that all of us who have any influence in the coal industry did our best before the war to encourage miners to enlist in the Territorial Army. That had been going on for a great number of years. There have been splendid battalions made up entirely of miners who in the last war played a full part, and during the years before this war were training and equipping themselves in military matters. Perhaps that was a shortsighted policy, but during the last twenty years, when there were so many influences all over the country which opposed cadets and opposed what they called militarism and diminished our Armed Forces, it was up to us to do what we could to maintain that principle which has been in the minds of most British people for a great number of years by encouraging the men to join the Territorials. The Government, I am afraid, never saw the necessity of maintaining the output, and when France went out of the war, instead of realizing that our needs for coal would grow greater and greater as time went on, men were still taken into the Forces. That is why at the present time there is a shortage of men.

The noble Lord (Lord Addison) declaimed against blaming the miners, and I agree with him. I do not think that the way to solve this problem is by blaming the miners. I am sure that is not right; it is not encouraging, it is not helpful. But there are various factors with which the noble Lord will agree. There is unfortunately a general idea of approaching victory, when we here all know that there is a very hard road yet to follow, and that any complacency or any feeling that victory is at hand creates a very great danger. There is also the factor of what I would call war weariness. After all, we have been at war for four years, and your Lordships know well that the older men in the mines who have done their part nobly all these years, are mentally and also physically weary to a certain extent. I do not say that any sudden drop in production is due to this factor, but one can trace a certain diminution in output to the reason that these men, who are not growing any younger, have worked hard all this time and are not so strong or energetic as they were four years ago. Some of the best of the young men are also disappointed because they are debarred from joining the Army. These young men—the great majority of them—have the right spirit. They see their fellows in the Army or engaged in what they regard as more spectacular war work while they have to go underground, and they do not realize that the efforts which they put forward in that direction are as valuable as many efforts of a more spectacular character. I am only too willing to put forward what perhaps may be looked upon as excuses by those who are inclined to criticize the miners.

At the same time, there are what I would call certain sinister features. There is a slackening of discipline by reason of the Essential Work Order. Every one of us knows that in any great organization of any description safety and efficiency depend on the excellence of that organization and its discipline. Production could be affected by more work being done by a comparatively few men and by better discipline, but that discipline to a large extent is resented. The authority of the colliery manager on whom so much depends is deliberately curbed by the Essential Work Order, and I suggest that the Ministry of Fuel should take a much stronger line than they are taking at the present time in this respect. I also suggest that they should delegate authority to the Regional Controllers because at the present time that control is exercised in such a curious way that it is really not so effective as it should be.

We know well the continual recurrence of lightning strikes. Perhaps your Lordships will allow me to give you one little instance in a colliery of which I have some knowledge. The second shift went on strike. They went on strike because in the pay notes a few payments, amounting in all to £2 9s., had been omitted. The mistake was admitted at once and it was agreed that on the next pay sheets the loss should be made up. The whole of that shift went on strike, entirely against the advice of the union officials, and there was a loss to the country of 1,350 tons. This is a clear case in which the Regional Controller should have had power to deal with the ringleaders who had engineered this strike. But he is not permitted to do so. We know the procedure quite well. The complaint goes to the Regional Controller, the Controller passes it on to London, London sends it back and asks for his reasons, and the result, because of these methods and procedure, is that the case is not dealt with until some two months have elapsed. Now if I had committed a crime and was punished for it two months afterwards I should have a very strong grievance. The whole point of having quick recognition and decision of a dispute is absolutely destroyed by the delay which results from this official procedure. I submit that the men's leaders require to be strengthened and helped. We want the managers and the men's leaders to be supported by the Ministry against disruptive influences. That is the difficulty.

From what has been said one might imagine there were disruptive influences all over the coalfield. There is nothing of the kind. The number of these difficulties is not very large, and if they were met in the right way I am quite sure we should see that increase in production which we want so badly. As I have said, we want an immediate increase in production. It is true there is voluntary absenteeism to a certain extent. Any of your Lordships who are engaged in the industry know quite well what voluntary absenteeism means, and how very much that absenteeism can be exaggerated. But there is some voluntary absenteeism and this occurs especially amongst the younger men, which is very regrettable. As I have indicated, the machinery in the Regional Controller's office is too slow. But the directing of young men into the industry will have no effect on the immediate shortage. There is no shortage of workers at the surface. The actual shortage is in the number of men who produce at the coal face. In the mining industry, as in every other skilled industry, it takes a long time to train men. It is a matter for our higher direction in this country to decide whether miners can be returned from the Forces. Only our high authorities can tell whether, on balance, it is more important to keep the coal producers in the Army or that certain units should suffer in order that more producers of coal can be brought to the coal face to relieve the shortage of workers there.

The coal industry itself has a very long and a very complicated history, and I am surprised at the lack of knowledge which prevails throughout the country in relation to the industry. It is quite true that the major part of what is said in derogation of the industry is said underground and does not come before the public, as is the case with other industries in this country, but I am surprised that men who occupy high positions in this country should write to the Press when really their information is not very great. My noble friend Viscount Cecil of Chelwood is one of those who I am venturing mildly to indict at this moment. I think the noble Viscount is exercised about profit-sharing and I think he is also concerned about directors on boards of management. There was a letter in The Times two or three days ago which fully answered his point.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

Not at all.

THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY

I do not know whether your Lordships have read that letter. In it Mr. Hunter says quite (truly that joint control of complex industrial undertakings is a highly debatable subject. I cannot go into that point here to-day. In his letter he goes on to say that the industry has been run on a profit-sharing basis for the last twenty-two years, that by mutual agreement the miners receive 85 per cent. of the money derived from the sale of coal after the other costs (i.e., costs other than wages) are paid, and that in the lean years between 1928 and 1937 they actually received not 85 per cent., but 94 per cent. I hope the noble Viscount has profited by the information which Mr. Hunter has given him through the agency of The Times.

I am sure most of your Lordships study debates in another place, and I find from reading some speeches that if there is anything like a fair statement of the case that does not agree with the ideas of the Miners' Federation it is called provocative. This has gone on for one hundred years. The Federation representatives have claimed the right to abuse and disparage the owners to their heart's content, and the Mine Owners' Association has never retorted. We have never had a propaganda organization like that of the Miners' Federation, with the result that a great many people, including I am afraid some of your Lordships, have been thoroughly inculcated with ideas about the conditions of the coal trade as they have been shouted from the house tops by representatives of the Miners' Federation. The views which have been put forward by the Miners' Federation have not been for the benefit of the industry. The Miners' Federation is a vast political organization. It is a vast political organization for the promotion of Socialism and nothing else. With an industry like the coal industry, when the public are told that the owners are robbers and vagabonds and the managements incompetent, naturally this is all done to forward the policy of Socialism.

LORD ADDISON

May I interrupt the noble Marquess? Can he give an instance of where the Miners' Federation has described the owners as vagabonds and something else? Can the noble Marquess give one single illustration of where a responsible member of the Miners' Federation has so described them?

THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY

I have no quotations in my pocket at the present moment but I can tell the noble Lord that we are not spared abuse from members of the Miners' Federation at election times. I cannot quote from speeches at this moment but I will tell the noble Lord this. I gave away some prizes at an educational institution and an eminent member of the Miners' Federation complained about this because I did not belong to "the Party." I have always understood the term "the Party" to mean the Nazi Party. I suppose because I did not belong to the Socialist Party I had no right to take any part in education in the County of Durham. I can give the noble Lord the correspondence that has taken place in regard to that. I could satisfy the noble Lord to his heart's content if he would like me to do so.

I was speaking about Socialism and was about to quote the noble Viscount in saying we were all Socialists. I agree with him to a very large extent. Socialism is a very interesting intellectual problem and we certainly agree that a great many things should be carried out by the State, but the direction in which Socialism and nationalization are going in this country reminds me very much of the development of Socialism in Germany and Italy. 1 see many of those signs which, in those countries, put everything in the hands of the State—the lives and liberties of individuals and everything. All was put in the hands of the State. I see those signs coming in this country with the beginning of the nationalization of the coal trade.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

I do not know if my noble friend is speaking of my letter in The Times. It has nothing whatever to do with nationalization. I expressly said I did not advocate nationalization.

THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY

I did not say the noble Viscount had referred to nationalization; what I did say was that he had embarked on a discussion of the coal trade and had shown that his information, which is very high on every other subject, was very far from being so on the coal trade.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

I will deal with that letter later.

THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY

We have had a sharing of profit in the coal trade, which the noble Viscount seemed to know nothing about. If I have misrepresented the noble Viscount I am sure no one would be more sorry than myself.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

The only mistake is that you have not read my letter.

THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY

With reference to discipline I can only say that the miners' leaders for years have undermined discipline in the mines, and now when discipline is needed they are very surprised to find, when they try to exercise authority over their followers, that no notice is taken of them. I am quite sure that all this discussion about nationalization is doing a great deal of harm, for this reason. It is put to the miners that it is a panacea for all evils, that nationalization would get rid of all their grievances, and that only one more push is wanted to make the Government give way and even bring in nationalization while the war is going on. I think your Lordships will agree that that would be a great misfortune. This continual political propaganda is retarding reform. It is very difficult, where dis- turbance is part and parcel of the duty and work of many people in the industry, to get reforms which many owners and managers would be willing to assist in establishing. Owners and managers are disparaged by propaganda, the whole purpose of which is an increase in wages. While I was glad to welcome on any board of directors anyone who was making a contribution to the industry, when miners' representatives make wages their sole consideration their presence on the board is not very helpful. There is this fact to be taken into account, that as wages have gone up output has gone down. It is difficult to say exactly what is the reason of that, but it is matter which has to be considered, and I think your Lordships will find that that is one thing which is disturbing the leaders of the Miners' Federation now. Although they have succeeded in raising wages, notwithstanding that and notwithstanding all the concessions made and the assistance given to the industry, output steadily goes down.

There are a few words I would like to add on the question of private enterprise of which nationalization is the negation. I am sorry to think that private enterprise is spoken of as a thing which in the minds of some people seems a criminal offence. I speak diffidently to your Lordships, but I can speak for four generations who have been interested in the coal industry; and what is more important and may come as a surprise to the noble Viscount, though hardly, I think, to Lord Addison, is the fact that numbers of men whom I have the honour to employ are even more proud that their families have been for four generations associated with it. The coal-mining industry is a very speculative one. Many have tried it and very few, comparatively speaking, have succeeded. We have had to take big risks in four generations, and if those risks had gone wrong we should have met disaster. And who would have cared? As long as we succeeded we were of value to the State. Had we failed it would not have mattered; someone else would have taken our place. But if you propose by nationalization to kill the spirit of private enterprise in the coal industry, I am convinced you will never get the same results from a Ministry or from the Civil Service or from bureaucracy.

I want also to say something about the suggestion that miners are ill-used. That is not true. I have in mind the opening sentences of an article in the Evening Standard yesterday written by Mr. Harold Laski. Why Mr. Laski should speak for the coal trade I do not exactly know. I can only say it is a travesty of the situation in the coal industry. I understand he has been answered to-day. Everyone, not only the coal-owners but every individual interested in the industry, is looking to the future with anxiety. It is not merely miners who are affected. We all remember the unemployment after the last war. That affected not only miners but every industry in the country. If there is a word of blame to be said to the miners, I would draw attention to the 1926 strike. It is amazing to me that throughout the debate in another place a short time ago no one referred to that strike. I remember meeting the Polish Ambassador at that time and he said to me "Your miners have handed over your export trade in coal to us on a silver salver." Half the trouble in the following years was due to that strike. I agree that the outlook for the young men is something which it is our duty to do everything we can to support. These young men, unlike their forefathers, are not keen to go down the pits. I do not know the reason. It may be due to the general outlook on life which has been changing, but I think if political propaganda could be put aside, and if the coal industry was not made the cockpit of Socialism, you would find that owners, management and miners would on the major issues work much more closely together. There are many questions, such as increased compensation for injuries (with which I am in full sympathy), and questions of research, which it is well nigh impossible should be considered by owners and management at the present time. Harassed as they are day in day out by political controversy, they cannot devote the proper time and consideration to great problems which, if solved, would make mining a progressive undertaking.

LORD STRABOLGI

My Lords, I hope the noble Marquess will forgive my saying that I find myself in much sympathy with the concluding sentences of his speech. Earlier in his speech he really made my heart bleed for him when I heard that he was attacked because he had given away prizes at a girls' school.

THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY

I did not say a girls' school.

LORD STRABOLGI

If it had been a girls' school there would have been some excuse for thinking he was trying to bewitch the young ladies. As it was not a girls' school that makes it all the worse. The remedy for that and other evils, I suggest, would be to apply for admission to the Labour Party. He then could not be attacked on this matter, and could give the benefit of his experience, actual and hereditary, in the industry. I. would like with great respect to say that I am sorry the noble Marquess was not present during the recent coal debate in another place. I thought some members of his Party in another place—I suppose they would say there was no politics in it—did abuse and upbraid the miners.

The noble Marquess does not upbraid the miners. He can say with justifiable pride that he and h:.s family for four generations have worked with the miners. He is not an absentee coalowner. But he did give some abuse to the miners' leaders and I am sorry about that. They work closely with my Party and advise us on industrial matters, and from the beginning of the war the miners' leaders have done their utmost irrespective: of Party— some of them are Socialist, some Communist—to stop absenteeism. They have done, I consider, a very great servicee to the country. The output would have been less but for the exertions of these miners' leaders. They threw aside all idea of taking Party advantage out of the war, and they urged the men to put their utmost exertions into the war effort. The noble Marquess knows that is true, and I think that he might now forget the fact that he had political differences in the past with Mr. Smillie.

THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY

May I interrupt the noble Lord for a moment? What I did say was that the authority of these leaders has been weakened by reason of the fact that for years they have tried to disrupt the authority of the owners and disparage the managements. It is recoiling on their own heads now.

LORD STRABOLGI

I do not blame them at all for what they have done. I would do exactly the same thing in their place. They have been leading men in an industry which, as my noble friend Lord Addison has explained, has been shockingly mismanaged for generations. I am not referring to the model pits associated with the name of the noble Marquess's family; I am taking the general run of pits up and down the country. The men have had justifiable grievances, and their leaders have tried to express them on their behalf. The noble Marquess spoke of the strike of 1926. It was not a strike at all, it was a lock-out, brought about by the owners. The men were prepared to carry on at the wages they were earning, but the owners locked them out. Your Lordships know that that is true. The noble Viscount, Lord Sankey, in particular, knows that it was a lock-out and not a strike.

I do not wish to stand for long between your Lordships and the Government reply on this most important question, but I must say that I have hitherto seen no evidence of a realization on the part of the Government spokesmen—not the noble Marquess—of the extreme gravity of this situation. It is extremely grave. Let us leave aside all past grievances and devote ourselves to solving our present difficulties. The immediate future is black unless we can bring about an increase of output. My noble friend Lord Addison, in his masterly survey, referred to the estimated coal shortage of twenty to thirty million tons. That is the shortage computed on the basis of our present needs. It is going to be worse if certain things happen. Your Lordships have no doubt seen a very remarkable extract which appeared in The Times newspaper on October 25 from a report by Mr. Howard Gray, United States Chairman of the Coal Committee of the Combined Production and Resources Board and the Combined Raw Materials Board, and Sir Henry Self, who represents Mr. Oliver Lyttelton on that Board. It is a most remarkable report: and it shows that there are grave shortages in United States also. It explains how American coal mines will now have to supply coal to the Mediterranean—to Italy—and how we must stand by in this country to supply coal to North-Western Europe when we invade the continent.

Now there is a shortage of coal here and in America at the present time, and as we liberate the Low Countries and France great quantities of coal will be required almost immediately there. What is going to be done to meet the deficit? The American reserves of coal are falling. Present consumption in the United States, according to this report, is at the rate of 600,000,000 tons a year, whilst production is only 590,000,000 tons. Their reserves have been reduced from 91,000,000 tons to 74,000,000 tons, that being the figure at which they stood last August. By next January, the report suggests, the reserves will represent, probably, only forty days' supply. If this were the case with petroleum; if the reserve of petroleum in the United States were down to forty days' supply there would be a panic. But because it is coal the matter is treated by the Government, so far as I can make out, with complacency. The requirements of the United States for coal in 1944 are estimated at 620,000,000 tons, and taken in conjunction with the known position in this country, as explained by my noble friend Lord Addison, we are faced with a possibility— and do not let us burke the facts or shirk them—of our whole war effort, the war effort of the United Nations, being hampered next year by coal shortage.

What is the trouble? We have had many explanations. The ordinary professional man connected with coal mining takes an attitude which perhaps I may explain in this way. Just before I came to your Lordships' House to-day I attended a meeting of a professional association connected with engineering and coal mining, and I talked to two gentlemen who are closely associated with this industry. One of them put the trouble down to absenteeism, which he suggested was not widespread but substantial. He said that absenteeism was caused very largely by the way in which Income Tax was levied. He put the matter in this way. A man goes down the mine on Monday and earns £2. He reckons that if he works the next day he will only be able to get 10s., the rest going in Income Tax. This was described as very disgraceful and unpatriotic. I did not argue the point at all. The other gentleman said that he thought another cause, and a very important cause, of the trouble was that the working of the Excess Profits Tax, and the probable position after the war, led some of the coal-owners to keep back their best seams. This is a story which we have heard several times in another place and it has always been denied by the Government. But this second gentleman of whom I have been speaking, though he had no interest directly in the coal industry, is in a position to know what is going on, and he declared that it is so. I asked him: "But is not that also unpatriotic?" He said: "No, it is human nature. "So you see the difference of approach to what is really malingering by a minority of owners and a minority of miners.

As the noble Viscount, Lord Sankey, and Lord Addison have said, we have got to get away from that approach to the problem. The trouble really, I think it must be admitted, is largely psychological. In the case of the miners there is this fear for the future which was admitted by the Prime Minister in his speech in another place recently. And every member with mining experience who spoke from the Labour side of the House said the same thing. There is fear of the future, fear of going back to the poverty and unemployment of the period after the last war. The other belief which the men entertain is this: that nationalization will increase output by improving the spirit in the pits. I do not know if-that will happen or not. It may well be argued that it will. What matters so much is not the facts but what the men believe to be the facts, and it is, I think, beyond dispute that the great majority of the 650,000 men in the coal pits believe that there would be an improvement, and a very speedy improvement, if there were nationalization. That being the case I, myself, do not see how statesmanship can deny the obvious necessity for action now. I know that my noble friends will have been very glad to hear the authoritative pronouncement by Lord Sankey. If I may most respectfully, and with great humility, make one very slight criticism, it is that I cannot see the practical reasons why this great step should not be taken here and now.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

My Lords, I trust that your Lordships will forgive me for venturing to make a short reply to my noble friend Lord Londonderry's criticism of myself, and to take a brief part in this debate. I fully admit that I am not a colliery owner nor a miner; and there seems to be an impression prevailing in some quarters that if you are neither the one nor the other you ought not to have any opinion on the coal question. After all, however, the consumer has a considerable interest in this matter, and, if he finds that there are difficulties in a great industry such as the coal industry, which affects everybody, he is surely entitled to try, however feebly and however ignorantly, to make some contribution towards a settlement of the difficulty. After all, there is no doubt at all about the unsatisfactorines of the present position. Even my noble friend Lord Londonderry does not deny that; he says that the present position is thoroughly unsatisfactory.

Production is insufficient, and is going down very seriously. There is a great difficulty in obtaining more men; indeed, some people say that it is impracticable to do so. I do not knew whether it is or not, but there is evidently great difficulty. How are you going to increase production? There is only one possible way; if you cannot have more men you must, somehow or other, obtain more production from the men who are there. That is quite evident; there can be no other solution. It is a matter of plain reasoning, which cannot be denied. It is suggested that there is, as it were, a reserve of productive power which has not been fully employed. My noble friend gave a great many reasons why this is not so, and among them war weariness, excessive labour, actual physical exhaustion and so on. I do not for a moment deny that all these causes must have their effect, but the point is that this industiy—and this industry, as far as I know, preeminently—shows difficulties which are not found to the same extent in other industries, and which must, therefore, be due to some cause which operates especially within this industry; at least, that seems to me to be the case.

So far as I heard him—I may not have heard him quite fully—my noble friend's only remedy was what he called" more discipline." I confess to a grave doubt about that as an effective remedy. It has too much resemblance, to my mind, to the attitude of the Prussian military man, and his profound failure to achieve by force what he has not been able to achieve by reason seems to me a very great warning against accepting any remedy which rests on the same kind of basis. I cannot help feeling that my noble friend brushed aside a little too confidently what is suggested by a great many people who do know a good deal about the matter, even if I may be regarded as wholly ignorant, and that is that there is a want of co-operation between the employers and employed in the coal industry which does not exist to the same extent in other industries. That is said very freely.

I happened to meet only the other day a friend of mine who had been talking to a gentleman who had gone down a mine for his own instruction, as a miner, and who had worked as a miner for some considerable time. I think it was in a Welsh mine. He had been profoundly struck by the kind of feeling that there were two camps in the industry, and that anything which was proposed by one camp was rejected, or likely to be rejected, by the other. He cited as an instance the fact that an admirable scheme of education had been suggested by the employers and turned down by the men, not because they thought it was a bad scheme but because they distrusted any scheme which was suggested by their employers. That may have been a very unfortunate instance, and of course I agree that it is unsafe to argue from a single case. It may be quite untrue in other parts of the country; but there we have some ground for thinking that this feeling exists. When I came to read the debates in the House of Commons, moreover, I observed that Mr. Greenwood, who speaks with a certain amount of authority on all these questions, said quite definitely and precisely that the real trouble was that there was no sense of partnership between the workers and the managers and owners of the mines. He said that very strongly, and I could not help feeling that there might be something in it. From what we have heard from Lord Sankey, it was also his conclusion, sitting as the Chairman of a Commission, after hearing all the evidence on the subject.

Surely that is a case which has to be met. If my noble friend Lord Londonderry will forgive me—I do not wish to be unduly recriminatory in anything I say—he does not seem to me to have answered that at all. He merely says that he is not conscious of any such hostility, using the word "hostility," perhaps, in its special sense, and that he does not believe that it exists in the mining industry at all. I confess that I feel great difficulty in accepting that. I think that there is a bad state of feeling in this industry, which does not exist to the same extent in other industries. After all, we cannot get over the fact that there have been these continual disputes and strikes. I remember them in the last war. There were continual strikes in the last war in the coal-mining industry, which caused the greatest anxiety to the Government of the day, and since that time there have often been strikes. There must be something wrong. I cannot believe the answer which depends on suggesting that the miners are exceptionally unreasonable, or that the managers and the owners are exceptionally oppressive. I do not think that that is at all likely to be true, and explanations of that kind are nearly always the sort of thing to which people are driven as their only resource when they have no real explanation to offer.

What is the plan which should be adopted to improve the co-operation between the two classes engaged in this great industry? Surely that is a political problem which we ought all to help to solve. I fully agree with those who say that to establish by Statute a system of nationalization at this moment, in the middle of a war, is very difficult, and in my letter in The Times, which excited the contempt of my noble friend, I carefully refrained from saying that I was in favour of nationalization, because I quite recognize the enormous difficulty that there would be in applying it. Nor am I personally and individually convinced that it would be a remedy. After all, we have, as one of my noble friends— I think Lord Addison—has said, already nationalized some industries, such as the Post Office; but that has not resulted in making the Post Office an ideally peaceful industry as far as the relations between the workers and their employers are concerned. Nationalization, therefore, is not necessarily a complete answer to the kind of difficulty which has arisen in this case. But there is a plan which has been adopted in several industries, which was the one that I ventured to suggest— co-partnership. I happen to have a certain knowledge of the immense success of that plan in one particular industry, the gas industry, because professionally I used to be connected with that industry and got to know a certain amount about it. It has been a most remarkable success there.

May I remind my noble friends of one single instance which is very well known? It was about fifty years ago now. The industry of the South Metropolitan Gas Company was in a very bad condition indeed. There were perpetual rows, perpetual strikes, perpetual conferences, and at last Sir George Livesey, who was a very great man and was at that time the manager of the company, determined to try the system of profit sharing and copartnership—the two things are not identical. He succeeded in establishing it after very great trouble, and as far as I know—and I did know quite well the first part of that period of fifty years—there has never been any serious trouble since, never once. I venture to give a little anecdote as to what happened in the last war just to illustrate the kind of temper that existed. In that war, as in this war, wages rose because prices rose, and one day they posted in the works of the South Metropolitan Gas Company that the wages would be raised on the following pay day; whereupon the men went to their employers, no doubt through their representatives on the board, saying they were very doubtful whether this was a desirable policy, that, as far as they could see, the profits of the company did not justify such a rise of wages, and they hoped that it would be postponed. And it was postponed for a certain time—I do not remember exactly how long—till the rise of prices made it absolutely necessary. That may be a very fortunate instance, but it has at any rate had this result that in the greater part of the gas industry of the country now some such scheme has been employed, and employed with success.

I do not think it is an unreasonable suggestion that careful attention should be given to the question whether that system cannot be applied in the coalmining industry. It is perfectly true that profit sharing exists in a form—not the usual form, but in a form it exists in that industry. So far as I know, there has been no attempt to put on to the boards of direction of those undertakings elected representatives of the men employed. If that system was tried it seems to me it would be likely to produce a very good effect on the general atmosphere which prevails in these undertakings, and for two reasons. In the first place, it gives the men an actual share in the direction of the policy of the undertaking; and in the second place—and this is by no means the least important—it gives their representatives the right to see and know every detail of the organization, so that they can be quite sure that there is no hanky-panky about the way they are being treated I believe both of those things are of great importance. At any rate, they have been proved to have been of great importance in some industries where they have been tried.

I cannot help feeling—looking at it as an outsider, I agree—on the reports that reach us, that what really seems to be wanting is not only a feeling of confidence between the two sections engaged in this industry but also perhaps a sense of responsibility, particularly, it may be, among the miners. They think that their business is to get what they regard as their rights in wages matters, and things of that kind, but they do not quite appreciate that they are responsible to the whole community for the way this industry is carried on, just as much as their employers are. There is not the sense that they are discharging a public duty as. well as earning their livelihood, and therefore that they have a public responsibility. I cannot help thinking that that is the thing that we ought to aim at creating. Whether nationalization will create it seems to me to be a little doubtful, but I cannot help feeling that if the miners were given a direct share in the actual conduct of the business, so that they would know exactly what was going on and would see the result of each particular step that was taken, that would create that sense of responsibility without which you cannot expect the best work to be obtained from them.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VIS-COUNT SIMON)

My Lords, as is often the case in discussions in your Lordships' House, the debate this afternoon has been one full of useful contributions and of careful reflection, from which I think the country as a whole will get much advantage. I will endeavour to say a few words on behalf of the Government, only briefly, remembering that there is other business to follow. My noble friend Lord Londonderry happened to observe in his very interesting speech that he was surprised that so few people really understood the coal industry, and I am a little afraid that, though my remarks will be framed in very simple terms, I may easily come under that criticism. But at any rate it has seemed to me, speaking for the Government at the end of this discussion, that the most useful thing I could do would be to state to the House quite simply and clearly what in fact the situation is, and to indicate what are the steps that are being taken to endeavour to improve it. I put aside ultimate discussions about nationalization and the like, because there is a preponderance of opinion—I think Lord Addison agreed, certainly Lord Sankey did, and Lord Cecil—that for reasons that have been given that could hardly be regarded as a resource to be availed of at this moment, whatever the future may contain.

Now what was the situation in respect of the last coal year? Your Lordships probably know that in the departmental estimates the coal year is regarded as ending at the end of April, so the last completed year was from May 1 last year to April 30 last. In that year the simple facts in total are these. Deep mining—I mean excluding outcrop working— produced approximately 200,000,000 tons of coal. In addition to that, there was outcrop production, which is increasing. That year I think it was about 2,500,000 tons. So that you had altogether something like 202,500,000 tons of coal produced. What one immediately wants to know, to get a clear picture, is whether or not that production was enough to balance consumption. Well, it was. Last year it balanced consumption and something more. That was largely due, no doubt, to economies and very strict regulation; but that is the fact. It is just as well to start off with this simple ascertained fact that, whatever can be said about the regrettably low production last year, the production of coal was sufficient to meet consumption and something more.

Now one asks oneself how are things going since April 30 this year. Admittedly they are not going so well. If you take the summer and autumn months, as far as the present records go, and look at production in annual terms, you will see that if the present course of output continues, there will be a reduction in output in the neighbourhood of five per cent. as compared with last year. You cannot tell exactly, but that is the honest fair figure to give, having regard to what we know has already happened in the five months that have passed. Undoubtedly that is a serious situation. I do not think that Lord Strabolgi went a scrap too far when he described it as a very serious situation.

LORD STRABOLGI

And we had a mild autumn and mild weather last winter.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

There are several considerations that by no means Lake away from. the severity of the facts, but it would be for the convenience of the House, I think, to have these bald facts stated in the plainest, simplest terms.

The next question is, what are you doing about it? I do not think my noble friend Lord Cecil quite exhausted all the changes in this complicated matter when he said that obviously there were only two things that could matter—one would be to find more miners, and the other for the miners to give more production. There is another side, and that is the side of consumption. I shall try very briefly to state to the House four or five things which are being at this time most industriously pursued. First of all, on the side of man-power, it is quite true, as my noble friend Lord Londonderry said in his most interesting speech, that at a certain stage in the war, when France fell out, there was the passage of quite a considerable number of miners from the mines into the Services. Your Lordships will appreciate that we had already established a very strong Territorial movement, to which, to their great honour, the miners contributed very notably, and following upon that there was the collapse of France which meant that one of our great foreign markets—a market which, if France had continued fighting, we should have had to supply more abundantly than ever— fell out. All these barges and colliers which we have seen going up the Seine as far as Rouen—not one of them went any more, because France at once ceased to be a country demanding our coal, and there was actual unemployment in a considerable part of the coalfields of this country.

I can quite well understand that this may be a reproach, as not having been very far-sighted, but in fact large numbers of vigorous, active miners then passed into the Forces of the Crown and, as the noble Marquess (Lord Londonderry) said, you may be very sure that when an active, strong young miner gets into the Army and learns his duties, the authorities are very unwilling to let him go, because not only is he a man of great physical strength usually, but he is a man who is, day by day, in the bowels of the earth, exhibiting the highest qualities of courage. He is the very élite of our working classes, and by the time he knows his job in the Army he is the kind of man we want in a Commando, or in any other dangerous expedition, almost above anyone else. Therefore it is quite natural that the authorities should say, "We cannot allow these key men to go because they are of too good a quality."

While that is so, there has been a great effort to get men back to the mines. I think something like 60,000 have been got back from the Army and the Air Force or from industry, and now there is a strenuous effort being made to get back more with the good will of the authorities—men who are thirty-six or over if they can be spared. That is the kind of effort that is made under that head. As against that, it is really necessary to put together four or five important efforts which are being made to reduce consumption where that can be done without injury to the war effort. There is, first of all, the strenuous campaign for economy in user. We all of us in our domestic arrangements know something about that. I believe I may say for all people in this House and out of it that we are very willing to accept it, and if need arose we should willingly accept more, for the truth is that up to the present, though there has been inconvenience, there has been no material suffering in ordinary homes. That intensive campaign has been carried on now for a year, and it is having very considerable effects.

Accompanying that is the provision which restricts the amount of coal you can buy. That is an essential provision, for if you did not have such an arrangement, when supplies were short you would find that in the small streets the small occupier would be without his coal while the person who had plenty of money to spend would get a disproportionate amount of such supplies as were available for domestic use. In point of fact, the great difficulty about regulation under that head is transport and distribution. If your Lordships will consider how much more difficult it is to arrange, when the supply is limited, for that part of the delivery which consists of a single bag in a particular place and another bag somewhere else, as compared with putting in the coal cellar of a larger house so many tons, you will see at once the difficulty of making sure that this is fairly cone as between one citizen and another. Great efforts are being made to secure this. In the same way the Department has been most actively concerned in what are called industrial programmes—that is to say, making quite sure, in reference either to a particular factory or particular branches of an industry that there cannot be some rearrangement of supply or re-adjustment of user which will result in a smaller call on: the available total. We all know that in our ordinary domestic arrangements we are urged, for example, to take coke rather than coal for the same reason. To take another side of it, there is a sustained effort going on all over the country by the Department to see whether there are not more places in which we can substitute a lower grade fuel for the fuels which are really important for war purposes. All that seems to me to be entirely on the right lines.

Nothing or little is said about these things in coal debates, but they are a part of the coal problem, and it is right that we should realize that that is being done. It is based on the principle, first, that there must be no failure to supply what is needed for war purposes, and let me tell your Lordships that it is the pride of the Ministry of Fuel and Power to be able to say—and it is true—that up to the present there has been no war factory that has ever been stopped for want of coal. Other enterprises may have been inconvenienced, but that great result continues to be secured. The further principle is—and it is the right principle— that while the coal that we can make available must be made available first and foremost for the purpose of fighting the war, the rest of us, if necessary, will go short together.

In the next place there has been a very remarkable effort made—it is surprising to those of us who do not know so much about the industry that it has not been practised before—tinder the heading of open-cast mining, the mining of outcrop coal. There are many opportunities for mining outcrops in this country, but some of them are not very valu- able and little has been made of this opportunity until recently. Indeed I believe at first the records were not sufficient to say exactly where all these outcrops were. Of course we have geological maps. But there are great disadvantages, no doubt, connected with outcrops. You do not as a rule get the best class of coal for one thing and the supply soon exhausts itself. On the other hand, in the present crisis there are great advantages in working outcrops because outcrop mining to a very large extent is carried out not by the individual hewing away at the substance that is to be retrieved but by using mechanical grabs which will grasp great quantities of this stuff and haul it out to a place from where it can be washed, sorted, and carried away. The working of outcrop coal in this country in the last year or two has had a most material consequence because, although the coal is sometimes of poorer quality than that obtained in the coal mines, as I have already said, last year 2,500,000 tons were got and this year the Minister's estimate is that we shall get 5,000,000 tons. Indeed I noticed that in the House of Commons debate he said he believed that the year after he might be able at least to double that quantity. That is a very valuable thing indeed.

Then we had a piece of good fortune which may not recur. It was referred to, I think, incidentally, by Lord Strabolgi just now. In the course of working the coal-mining industry there is an accumulation of stocks. Coal hewing goes on and there is a time when coal is not in maximum demand. There is then a piling up of great stocks which, of course, are intended to be called upon, and are in fact called upon, when demand rises. It had been anticipated that we should have to make a larger call on coal stocks than in fact was made, because last winter was not a very cold winter. We got through last winter by the consumption of less coal than had been expected and the call on stocks was therefore less, due to the mildness of the winter. We therefore start this winter with a larger stock than we had supposed we should have. I hope that no one will for a moment imagine because I have mentioned these things that I am seeking to diminish the gravity of the situation. Not at all, but you cannot form any judgment, as it seems to me, of the present actual situation unless you do allow duly for the factors on both sides of the account.

Here let me make a further statement which is of a grave character. Again Lord Strabolgi has made the point and, as I understand the matter, it is perfectly true that the call on the United Nations for coal is likely to increase. We must not proceed on the basis that because we got through last winter therefore we shall simply have next year and in future years to meet a repetition of the same demand. We shall have more demands. Take, for instance, Italy. If the larger part of Italy is acquired by the Allies, whatever may be for the time being its internal administration—that has nothing to do with this point at all—Italy undoubtedly will look for supplies of coal from outside. Previously it has got them from Germany, but it is not going to get them from Germany any more, so far as the area is concerned which the Allies succeed in re-occupying. Even if you were to leave out of consideration the needs of Italian or other nationals there will be a great, and indeed it may well be an increasing, need to supply coal to Europe for the purposes of keeping the electric light going, the electric power going, and for work in connexion with our own Forces and the Forces of the Allies. There is. no doubt that we are likely to be faced with an increasing demand for coal which will be very difficult to meet unless it be by an increase in production.

It is in this connexion that it is of great interest to some of your Lordships, if you have not already read it, to look at the statement published in The Times last Monday as to the coal problems of the Allies. The announcement was there printed of the views of the Coal Supply Committee, which is one of the sub-committees of the Combined Production and Resources Board. Your Lordships will see that though we are naturally thinking of the problem of our own coal measures and our own coal production—and indeed that is a large part of a whole—this problem is not really simply our problem. It is the problem of the Allies. It has therefore been perfectly right that there should be set up international machinery for the purposes of determining what are the total needs of the United Nations in coal and also for determining how you ought to appropriate or allocate the sources of supply from the different United Nations that have coal.

Here you have a conclusion reported from this Committee, a combined coal committee of the Production Resources Board, with the high authority of Mr. Howard Gray, who is the American Chairman, and Sir Henry Self, who is representing Mr. Oliver Lyttelton, the British member of the Board. They recognize that the supply of coal is not exclusively a United Kingdom liability, but that it will have to be provided by a combination of sources of supply resulting from the co-ordinated efforts of the Allies. They make a striking proposal—I am only summarizing—that it may well be that it is for the United States to undertake the supply of coal to the Mediterranean, while the responsibility of supplying coal to North-Western Europe would be undertaken by the United Kingdom. I do not say whether that will be the final arrangement or not; I am only pointing out that this matter has its international aspect, and that its international aspect is being very thoroughly examined.

I think I have now said most of what I want to say, but I should perhaps add this. 1 have reminded your Lordships how, early in the war, we lost a lot of miners because they went into the Army, and how very natural it was that that should happen in view of the fact that France had fallen out and we had indeed unemployment in the coal industry. But as I think has been very clearly shown in this debate, it is not enough just to keep the number of men that we have now in the industry, because 20,000 a year is the sort of wastage which experience shows we must annually provide against. Death, accident (and in spite of all efforts to deal with this matter accidents are a sadly large factor) increasing age and weariness, and medical certification given no doubt quite carefully and professionally, take very large numbers of men out of the mines as time goes on.

You will notice this very great difference—at least it so occurred to me— between the efforts to provide new manpower in the case of mining and the efforts made to provide it in the case of most other industries. There has been a very similar drag on man-power in many other industries, but in the case of the work that is being done above ground the gap has been very largely met by the employment of women. The training of women to use machines and to undertake other work formerly done by men manifestly has done much to prevent other industries suffering to the same extent as the coal industry. In the case of underground coal mining there is very good reason for thinking that that cannot be done and I believe I am right in saying (although I speak only from hearsay) that the men themselves would greatly oppose the idea that their womenkind should be, as a special arrangement, taken underground for work. In this country (and we were the first in the world to do it) we passed legislation to prevent women and children working underground in mines, and it would be a very serious thing to reverse that process.

I do not want to say anything about nationalization—certainly not to argue it— for I flunk most of your Lordships who have spoken are clearly of the view that it could not be undertaken now. As the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Sankey, said, the swing over from public to private ownership is a "big job." It is difficult to see how it could be done when people are so occupied with other things. It would be a transition of great difficulty even if it were the right step, as to which I say nothing at all. I notice that my noble friend Lord Addison in his very interesting speech really took the same view. He observed that to introduce any new method requires time. As we are dealing here with the purely practical problem of how to win the war and fit coal production into the war effort, I think it cannot be doubted that that is right.

The noble Viscount, Lord Cecil, interposed in the debate partly because of a reference to some correspondence in The Times. I would be the last to wish to point out that anybody was at fault, but in order to be quite clear I should say that he did write in his letter that he thought that profit sharing would be something to help the coat problem. He says profit sharing and co-partnership are not the same thing, but if they are not, he did pick out profit sharing.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

No. If you read the next sentence you will see.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

I will read what the noble Viscount says: Admitting that nationalization is impossible during the war—even if that were a certain remedy for the existing evils—surely something can be done to unite all concerned in the industry. Profit sharing would be something. But what is needed is a direct representation of the workers in the controlling machinery. The subsequent correspondent in The Times seems to have thought that the noble Viscount was recommending profit sharing in coalmines as something new. At any rate, in point of fact, 85 per cent. of the proceeds of selling coal is paid to the miners, when all expenses except their wages have been met. I remember that in an interval of our mission to India I sat on a very hot day under a shady tree with the late Mr. Vernon Hartshorn—a miners' leader and a very good man with figures, pencil and paper—and he explained to me in the most enchanting mariner how the profit was calculated and shared. I should be very sorry to have to pass an examination on the subject but I am sure that profit sharing has long prevailed in that industry.

In answer to the question what are we doing to meet miners' grievances now, there are two things I ought to say. In the first place, Government control will not be withdrawn until Parliament has decided what is to be the future of the industry. That is a most specific pledge made by the Prime Minister himself. The other thing is that discussions between the Ministry and the mineworkers' leaders to see if there are means for overcoming the miners' sense of insecurity have been promised, and it happens that this very afternoon Major Lloyd George is having a meeting with the miners' leaders on, I think it must be, the proposals for increasing output contained in the document to which the noble Lord, Lord Addison, referred.

To conclude, I would suggest to your Lordships' House and to any whom my voice may reach this reflection. Of course this is a serious situation. There is no doubt about it at all. It would be utterly foolish to try to minimize it and no sensible or patriotic man would dream of doing it. But at the same time let us look at it in the right light. Let us put the problem in its proper setting. The immediate purpose which is to be served in connexion with coal mining is to secure that by one way or another we do not run short of essential coal supplies during the war. Other and larger questions, both political and economic, are very important, but that is the immediate task. Up to the present it is true to say that by great efforts and all sorts of economies it has been possible to produce the coal necessary to keep war industry going and the work of the Forces at its maximum. On the other side there has been some reduction in consumption. People may complain of the cold, but the people would be prepared to endure far greater privations in the matter of coal than they have had to endure if further reduction in consumption was necessary. We have so far managed to maintain essential supplies. Food by common consent has been admirably managed by the noble Lord the Minister of Food; regulations about traffic have been accepted with good will; petrol has been cut clown to the narrowest possible limits; and in the same way, if it were necessary, the country would willingly accept further restriction in the consumption of coal. That does not in the least excuse any failure to try and keep up supplies, but if the country approaches the question in that spirit, we shall gain the victory.

THE EARL OF LISTOWEL

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Addison has requested me to ask the indulgence of your Lordships, and more particularly of those noble Lords who have spoken in the debate, for his inability to stay and reply to the speeches made. It is due to the fact that he lives in the country and has had to catch the last train home. He also wishes me to thank the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack for his extremely interesting and important speech, and those other noble Lords who have spoken for their contributions to the debate. Now, on behalf of my noble friend, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.