MANPOWER IN THE COAL INDUSTRY

HL Deb 28 March 1956 vol 196 cc883-96

2.46 p.m.

LORD TEVIOT rose to draw the attention of Her Majesty's Government to the manpower position in the coal-mining industry and its effect on the economic situation in the country; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I wish to draw the attention of everyone in the House to-day to the realities of our present economic situation. No doubt your Lordships will have seen in the Press this morning a report on the new White Paper, and you will also have read what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said yesterday. With your Lordships' permission, before I get down to my Motion I should like to make a few preliminary remarks.

Within the last six months, as your Lordships are aware, we have had two debates in this House on economic affairs. Also, statements have been made by the Prime Minister, by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and by other prominent Ministers to the effect that our position is dangerous and extremely grave. I have listened to excellent, learned and academic speeches from Members of your Lordships' House all stressing the gravity of the situation in which we find ourselves; but I have found nothing in any of those speeches which has enabled me to think that we have been given definite suggestions about what we can do to help meet this grave situation, except to produce more and work harder. I do not want to be pessimistic, but in view of what has been said by responsible noble Lords and others in the country, all speaking with authority, surely it is time we tried to find some way of combating the threatened danger of a worsening of the situation. So often—I have no doubt that this has been the experience of many of your Lordships—one finds that when one talks like this to the ordinary individual he says: "But my dear fellow, it cannot be as bad as all that." But, in view of what has been said, it is as bad as all that—or else those people in authority are talking nonsense; and I do not believe that they are.

As I have said, the main piece of advice that we have received is to produce more and work harder. That calls to my mind a statement which was made only a few days ago by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He said quite definitely that we were losing our percentage of trade and commerce in the markets of the world. That is a terrible and a dreadful thought—that we are not maintaining the position that we held in the past in the markets of the world. It occurs to me, perhaps quite wrongly —and I should be glad if noble Lords who are to speak after me would give their views on this point—that, while it is all very well to talk about increased production, are we sure, in view of what the Chancellor of the Exchequer has said, that we shall find markets for a greatly increased production, particularly of industrial goods? I propose to put before your Lordships a definite scheme which, I genuinely believe, if carried out, would provide a real setback to the inflationary condition in which we find ourselves, to the extent of about £100 million per annum. If I can make your Lordships believe that there is something in my suggestion, I shall have accomplished something to help the general situation.

In order to demonstrate my idea, I would remind your Lordships of certain definite facts. I may add that I have taken a great deal of trouble to verify these facts, and I have them from the highest authorities. I apologise for saying some things which noble Lords are bound to know already. We are importing, roughly speaking, 11–12 million tons of coal to the value of £75–80 million per annum—the greater part of it having to be paid for in dollars. We have to pay, c.i.f., £6 10s.-£7 per ton for this coal. At the same time, we are exporting about the same amount of coal, for which we are receiving, f.o.b., £4 7s. per ton. I do not want to be unreasonable, so let me assume that in 1955, when we exported 12 million tons, our exports could have been at least half as much again, if we had had the coal. For these 18 million tons the financial return would haw, been roughly £70 million. We all know that at one time we were exporting 80 million tons of coal per annum, while to-day we are exporting only, about 12 million tons, and I am informed, on good authority, that next year exports will probably have dropped back to about 7 million tons.

That brings me to the question of manpower in the coalfields. The official figures show that there are about 704.000 wage-earners on the colliery books. I do not want to weary the House, hut I think it is necessary to dwell on these facts for a moment or two. These figures of the amount and cost of our coal imports and exports show a situation equivalent to a bank borrowing at 5 per cent. and lending at 3 per cent. This would ruin any business, any individual or any country; and in my view it must stop. Up to the end of 1954, the National Coal Board had spent £273 million in the mines endeavouring to improve mining machinery and general conditions. In 1954, £80 million was spent in like manner, making a total of £353 million.

I would next say a word about wages and holiday pay. I do not want to be controversial about this matter, but I want to bring out the real facts of the situation, with a view to dealing with this question in a way which I believe would help us practically to bridge the gap in our affairs which exists at the moment. In 1947, wages and holiday pay amounted to £247.8 million. In 1954, it was £412.6 million, an increase of £124 million, or 75 per cent., in seven years. This means an average of almost £600 a year, about £12 a week to the wage-earners in the industry. Taring what I would term the "white-collar men," in 1947, £13 million was spent on salaries and in 1954, £26.7 million, an increase of £13.7 million in seven years—that is, an increase of over 100 per cent. The output of coal in 1947 was 184.7 million tons, and in 1954, it was 211.8 million tons, an increase of 27 million tons, or of about 12½ per cent.

These figures show that we have to do something about it. I do not care on what side of the House we sit: all noble Lords must agree that here is a situation of the greatest gravity. But in my view we can do something to help. I do not know whether noble Lords will agree with me, but. I feel that a sufficiently strong appeal has not been made to the mining industry, and particularly to the miners. I am glad to see my old friend Lord Lawson here to-day. I hope he is going to speak, because nobody has better knowledge of the whole subject than he has. Voluntary absenteeism appears to be going up. I will not bother your Lordships with the figures, but it is a fact that it is going up. The gap which was caused by the rise in imports, as the Leader of our House said on March 8, was more than twice the rise in industrial production. The gap widened from £50 million a month in 1954 to £72 million a month in 1955. Last December, roughly speaking, 90 million dollars came back, which is all to the good.

The whole question in my mind, and I am sure in the mind of every noble Lord in this House, is what are we gong to do to attack this situation. It cannot go on as it is now, and I am anxious and worried, as I am sure is every noble Lord about the whole situation, wondering what on earth we can do in a practical way to deal with it, so that we may reverse what is going on now in the way of spending more abroad and receiving less for what we export. We must not Wink this fact. We must remember that other nations are not living at the high standard at which I am glad to say we are living here. It appears that they are working harder, and therefore are producing more at prices that it is extremely difficult, and gradually becoming, I should say, almost impossible for us to compete with. The competition in the world's markets is getting fiercer all the time.

My noble friend the Leader of the House said here the other day that although our present anxieties would not be at an end, they would be greatly lessened if we did not spend so much. I take it that that applies to the nation's spending abroad as well as to what the individual spends at home. That brings in the subject of my Motion: the coal we purchase from abroad. I come now to the practical and constructive part in my Motion. The coal which we now import is here and available, and I feel very strongly that we cannot get out of our troubles without making every possible use of our natural resources; and, of course, coal is the most important natural resource we have got. Does it not seem almost an economic crime that we are importing one of our great natural resources? Coal, to an industrial country like ours, is of vital importance, as your Lordships are well aware.

The National Coal Board have concluded that for many generations ahead there is likely to be no shortage of coal, as such, below the earth of Great Britain. Also there is no question of limiting coal production because of the lack of the reserves of coal in the mines. In the days when we used to export 80 million tons of coal we had 1,100,000 miners at work. It is difficult to estimate what amount of coal we could sell abroad at the present time, but surely when we think of the 80 million tons we used to export, as compared with the 12 million tons we export now, or with what is prophesied by some who know the market, perhaps only 7 million tons next year, it leads one to suppose that something could be done here to increase exports if the labour and salesmanship were available.

Of course it cannot be done at once. But I am anxious that some effort should be made to deal with the situation which seems to me to lend itself to great improvements in our economic condition. The limiting factor on manpower lies not in the demand for coal but in the industry's failure to absorb men. I am given to understand, on the highest authority, that there are vacancies at the present moment for 9,000 men and that there will be vacancies in a very short time for 24,000 more. These necessary miners are available in Germany and in Italy, and in larger numbers than I have mentioned. I suggest that they should be recruited at as early a date as possible; and, of course, any foreign labour introduced must work on exactly the same terms as our own miners. I do not know that any of your Lordships can look into the future and see any likelihood of unemployment in the coal industry, but in the unlikely event of anything like that appearing on the horizon, then, of course, it would be in the contract that the foreign labour would immediately go.

Finally, my Lords, I suggest that there should be at the earliest possible moment a conference, composed of representatives of the National Coal Board, the Ministry of Fuel and Power, the Ministry of Labour and the National Union of Mineworkers. And on an important occasion like this, if it could come about, the T.U.C. also should be brought in. I beg Her Majesty's Government to take the initiative to bring about such a conference without delay. I make the strongest appeal to the miners' leaders to consider this problem sympathetically and from the wider view of the general interest and welfare of the whole country and nation. The nation is already paying the debt it owes to the miners, in that £353 million has been spent on improving conditions and the machinery in the mines. I feel that it is now up to the miners, and I believe that if they are appealed to in the right spirit they will respond. Your Lordships may not think it likely, but for at least eight years of my life I was a miner, and I have always had the greatest sympathy for the miners in the work they are doing. I feel that in order to get all the coal the nation needs they ought not to prevent others who are willing and available from lending a helping hand—on the clear understanding, of course, that our own miners are given security of employment and full protection of their rights and interests. If what I suggest is carried out—if we produce here the coal that we are now importing; and if we increase manpower in the mining industry, and thereby increase the amount of coal available for export, we should improve our situation by £100 million per annum. That is not an amount which should be "sneezed at." My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

3.12 p.m.

LORD LAWSON

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, has rendered a service by raising this matter in your Lordships' House; but, if I may say so, I do not think he will get the best results by making left-hand charges, as it were, against the miners, and working on the assumption that the miner is not doing what he might do as a workman. That was the only inference one could put upon a good many things that the noble Lord said.

LORD TEVIOT

I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend—and I call him that, because we are very old friends, although we do not sit on the same side of the House—but that was not the inference I intended. I intended to put before the House the facts of the situation, and to make a strong appeal to the miners to enable us to deal with that situation by importing labour to fill the gap between what is possible in production and what is possible now with the 704,000 miners available.

LORD LAWSON: I am glad to find that I was wrong in regard to the inferences I drew from my noble friend's speech, as to the miners' doing their duty. If anyone is prepared in this or any other assembly to make any such charge, all I can say (and I speak as one living in the midst of a great colliery area, in intimate touch with the miler and his life, and as one who has seen something of the mines since nationalisation: and if anyone can sum up the present situation more accurately than I can, I should like to know who he is) is that the miners' leaders have never objected to the bringing in of foreign labour.

I made investigations into this matter this morning, and I find that in 1947 the miners' leaders, having given consideration to this subject, issued a memorandum. I will read what was said in that memorandum: In 1947 the Union agreed to the employment of members of the Polish Resettlement Corps and during 1947 and 1948 over 15,000 Polish workers"— and other European victimised workers— were recruited; and by July, 1949, 14,537 were on the colliery books. The memorandum went on to say: that a further 2,348 were recruited in 1949, making a total of something like 18,000 Polish and other foreign workers who had been recruited with the consent of the leaders of the miners. It is interesting to note that most of these were ex-soldiers, and therefore young men. The memorandum then stated that by July 2. 1955, something over 9,000, or about one half, of those workers remained on the books; the rest had left the industry. Later on, the National Coal Board and the Ministry of Labour, under what is known as the Bulk Scheme, interviewed something like 7,500 workers in Italy—and, mind you, they went to Italy to see them. Dealing with this matter, the memorandum says: Of this number, 5,100 were either rejected as unsuitable, or were not called forward for other reasons. Therefore, out of a total of 7.500 who were interviewed, only 2,418 were brought to this country. I believe that to-day there are fewer than 1,000 of those left in the industry. The fact is that when these foreign workers come in they come to get training: they go through their training—and it is a generous training: in period, in treatment and in pay. When they have finished that training and go into the mines, however, there is nothing to stop them from leaving very soon aid going into some other kind of labour. That has been the whole story.

Some time ago the miners' leaders urged the miners to accept foreign workers in the mines, but they would not agree. I ask your Lordships to consider the case of the miners, as well as that of those who had the courage to give them that instruction. I agree with those who gave the advice that foreign workers should be employed, in view of the shortage of labour in this country, but there is another side to the question, from the point of view of the man who is at the coal face. Pits, and particularly deep pits, can be dangerous to a thoughtless miner, even if trained from boyhood upwards. But when you have a stranger coining in who cannot speak the language, that is one of the things which causes the miner to halt.

There is also the fact—and I know these things prevail—that many miners, in spite of the fact they were miners, served in some of the battalions during the last war. I know some of them. While I have heard nice stories about how some people in Italy treated the men when they were prisoners, I have also heard some grim stories. I do not seek to justify the men. I will continue to do what I can to persuade the miners to let these be things of the past. But still they are facts; and when the miners' leaders have to deal with men who have been in that position, they naturally find it difficult to persuade them to accept the conditions laid down. But the fact is that, of the Poles and the Italians who have been brought in, a negligible proportion stay in the pits after they have been trained.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, that it is a serious matter, in the present economic position of this country, that we cannot get all the coal we want, and that we have to import it. That, I agree with the noble Lord, is one question that ought to receive the urgent attention of the Government and their representatives. But is there not another side to this matter? What about the young manhood of this country? Have they no obligations in this matter? As your Lordships know, I am speaking as one who went into the mines at about twelve years of age and spent twenty years there. And I could never understand why people pulled their skirts aside from the mining industry. I was proud of my craft. I was proud of the men with whom I worked. I know young men who, during the time of what was called "the Bevin boy experiment," came into the mines in my part of the county, some of whom stayed there. I know a young man, a real out-and-out Cockney, who was so proud of himself when he was a "Bevin boy"—I remember his enthusiasm for the craft—that he said, "I am staying in the mines." He did stay, and he is now managing a great colliery in Durham. That is only one instance of how those who do not know anything about this craft can be gripped with enthusiasm for work which is known to be dangerous, but of which men who are engaged in it feel very proud indeed.

When the Government consider this matter I suggest that they make an appeal to the young manhood of Britain, as well as to the foreigner, to play their part in this national crisis. If there were a war, the Government would not hesitate, and those young men would not hesitate. Why should they not have the backbone to enter the mining industry and play their part and render perhaps the greatest service they can render to the people of this country in its present crisis? I suggest that when we consider this matter —and I hope the Government will consider it—it should not be forgotten that the miners' leaders have done all they can to persuade their men to agree to the admission of foreign workers. But when one examines the figures, the scheme does not appear exactly a shining success. Some foreign workers use it for the purpose of leaving the industry and going to other work. I hope the Government will make an appeal to the young manhood of this country to play their part in this crisis in our history.

3.27 p.m.

VISCOUNT RIDLEY

My Lords, I wish to say very little on the subject of this Motion proposed by my noble friend. I would approach it mainly from the point of view of the future fuel supply of this country. What figures are available to us show that if we assume, over the next ten or fifteen years, a gradual increase of production in the industries of this country, a gradual increase of mechanisation in all trades, an increase of steel output and an increase of electricity supply, we are inevitably driven to the conclusion that we shall need more fuel of one kind or another practically yearly as the years go by, and in spite of the contribution which nuclear energy may make. There is now much activity in industry and elsewhere in converting a certain amount of consuming apparatus to the use of oil, as opposed to coal. There must, however, be a limit to the length that that process can be taken, and there are the inherent difficulties, not to say dangers, of increasing our reliance upon imported fuels, particularly from the part of the world from which they mainly come. In any case, part of the risk element is surely a matter of imports which must have an effect upon our economic situation.

I do not think we can continue to be complacent about importing coal, as we at present have to do. We must, therefore, rely on our own resources for improving our output. The problem would appear to be almost insoluble. I remember a time when the Coal Board published a document which was known as The Plan for Coal. They estimated the future requirements of this country for coal, excluding oil which may be imported to take its place—actual coal products—at round about 240 million tons a year. They put it in a rather curious way. They thought that this was about the amount which could be sold in the period from 1960 to 1965. Many of us felt at that time that the estimate was too low; it represented the demand rather than the productive capacity. One got the impression at the time that the Board then felt that they could not put up their output beyond this figure if demand at prices which were realistic was justified. The disappointing thing is that, in spite of very large sums invested in plant and equipment, the rate of increase of output has nowhere near kept up to the level required to do that, bearing in mind also that since the war there has been an output of between 9 million and 11 million tons a year from opencast coal, an operation which is justified perhaps as a stop-gap in order to enable the Coal Board to reorganise the industry and to increase their output. The production of opencast coal, however, whatever its merits or disadvantages may be, cannot continue indefinitely. The longer it continues, the more expensive it is apt to become, although now it is, I believe, the cheapest way of getting coal.

There seems little hope of getting more men into the collieries. I am not persuaded by the noble Lord that it is really practical policy to bring in foreigners. I listened with great attention to what the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, said on that point. I am sure he is right: it is cot practical politics to ask the miners to accept Italians and others in large numbers. At any rate, whatever we think of the merits of that case, it seems pretty clear that at the present time it cannot be done.

The only gleam of hope that one can see in this matter lies within the Coal Board itself. It is only too easy to blame the miners for absenteeism and for not working as hard as they might, but those of us who live in colliery areas know very well that miners are much the same in their reactions as other people are, and that they are not the kind of people who behave entirely without reason or sense. I believe that much of the trouble that we have now is due to the fact that the men in the pits are not led by the management in the way they should be. We hear many stories of hostility—or if not hostility, then misunderstanding—between the men and the management, much the same as it used to be in the old days. That attitude grew up over the centuries, with differences between the employers and the men. One is sorry to say that, from everything one can hear now, it has not improved. Indeed, in some cases one hears of a relationship between the two which is worse than it was. In many cases there were small collieries where the re- lationship was very good. One hears now the complaint that the men find that there is no one they can get to and discuss their problems with, and no one with whom to solve their local difficulties. The person they have to meet is responsible for a much bigger part of the organisation and is further away.

There are some significant points in the Report of the Advisory Committee on Organisation of the National Coal Board. There is a great deal of criticism there of the way in which the collieries are managed. I do not want to weary your Lordships with quotations, but at paragraph 283 this Report says: We are told that many of the collieries are not managed as well as they should he. In the same paragraph it further says: The colliery manager has been taught how to mine but not how to manage. And he is expected to do too much unaided. In quoting that, I am not criticising the Coal Board itself as it is now set up and organised. As in the case of the attitude that unfortunately exists in some of the collieries on the part of the men, I believe it is a result of history. That is how the coal mining industry has grown up. It would seem to me to be a matter of the greatest urgency to try to improve that situation.

In the Report to which I have referred, which is a recent one compiled by independent people of distinction and ability, there are some strong recommendations for improvement in the system of the Coal Board. There are suggestions for training, for more and better personnel officers and many other things of that sort. That is the line on which this difficulty must be tackled. More machinery is going in—and, in parenthesis, may I say that I hope and trust that in the present economic difficulties the Government will not be persuaded to reduce the amount of capital investment in the collieries. It has been slowing up in the last year or so but I am quite sure that, without improved equipment for winning and taking away coal, we shall never get the increase of output which we need. Even in the present difficult economic circumstances, one cannot believe that to run the risk of slowing down the increase of production is justified.

Having gradually achieved a higher rate of machinery for handling and cutting the coal, we must simultaneously try to improve the management in the sense of the relations between the officials (and particularly the junior officials) and the men for whom they are responsible. There must be an atmosphere of leadership, of sharing the enterprise together, of making the best use of the new equipment and of looking ahead and evolving new systems locally where they are needed. There are sometimes criticisms of the attitude of some of the men towards new machinery. It is sometimes said that they do not take to the conditions brought about by more mechanical coal cutting and improved haulage, and the management therefore cannot get the returns from them that they should. If that state of affairs exists, it is, to my mind, an instance of the responsibility of the management to take a lead and to find a solution by getting the confidence of the men and exercising a real kind of leadership which will get somewhere.

This is not a question of urging and preaching to the men to work harder. I do not believe one can make men work by exhortation and encouragement. This is a question of using the amount of work that a man is now doing in a more efficient and more productive way. To my mind, there is no other means than that for putting up output. There are many useful and interesting suggestions in the Report to which I have referred. Perhaps it is too early yet to say what the Coal Board and the Ministry of Fuel and Power are going to do as a result of them. The matter would appear to me, however, to be urgent. I should have thought the Coal Board might go even faster than the Committee to which I have referred suggested. It would appear to be possible to send some of the younger and more promising men away to other industries to learn management, how to get on with the men under them and how to deal with organisation problems. Indeed, it would seem possible to bring good young men in and get instructors to teach them how to run things. As I said, one would like to see all this considerably speeded up.

That leads me to a comment which also follows from this Report on the organisation of the Coal Board itself. This is a new organisation which has not had long to find its feet—indeed, in the time that it has had at its disposal it has done a remarkably good job, so far as it has been able. There are in the Report, however, suggestions that the organisation could be improved by alterations at the top. It is suggested that there should be a Chairman and a Vice-Chairman who are completely free from administrative duties, who should sit and think out policy, conduct the relations with the Ministry of Fuel and Power, and so on, leaving the administration to those under them. That seems to me to follow the pattern which has appeared to be successful in other large industries, and would seem to offer much more scope than the more rigid system with which the Coal Board started—namely, of functional members and a chairman who was the administrative head of the machine itself.

These are not problems which arise out of a belief either in nationalisation or in private industry. To me, at any rate, these are purely practical problems of what will work best and what will achieve the best results. It is a curious thing that after the publication of this Report the Government appeared, in their handling of the situation in regard to the control of the Board, to be going entirely in the opposite direction to what was proposed. The appointments which they have made and the change in the constitution of the Board are difficult to follow. However that may be, we now have a new Chairman of the Coal Board, a man who, I am glad to say, is a fellow Northumbrian: he was himself a miner, and he is a man of great ability and one in whom we can all have confidence. I hope that the Ministry of Fuel and Power will give him, in his task of carrying on his coal business, every assistance in regard to reorganisation of the administration of the Board at the top; and I hope they will follow some of the advice that was given in the Report of the Advisory Committee. That being done, I hope that the Board themselves will realise the urgency of improving their relations with their men and their management—and of all questions of that kind. It seems to me that that is the only practicable and possible means of increasing the output of coal in this country.