§ Mr. David Priceasked the Secretary of State for Energy when he hopes to be able to implement his policy of worker control of each colliery within the National Coal Board; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. BennFollowing the personal request which I made last year to the218W National Union of Mineworkers to put forward its views on industrial democracy I was very interested indeed in the important proposals made by the National Executive Committee of the union. They are a significant contribution to the general debate on the subject. I have already taken the opportunity of discussing them informally, and they will come up within the tripartite forum I have reestablished. These proposals are in line with the preface to the evidence submitted by Mr. William Straker, Secretary of the Northumberland Miners Association to the Sankey Commission in 1919 which read as follows:
In deciding what is to be the character of mines administration it is necessary to remember that workmen are more than machines, or even 'hands' as they are so often termed. Industrial unrest is a question about which everyone is concerned, yet there is a general lack of appreciation of what is the real root of this unrest. In the past workmen have thought that if they could secure higher wages and better conditions they would be content. Employers have thought that if they granted these things the workers ought to be content. Wages and conditions have been improved; but the discontent and the unrest have not disappeared, and many good people have come to the conclusion that working men are so unreasonable that it is useless trying to satisfy them. The fact is that the unrest is deeper than can be reached by merely pounds, shillings and pence, necessary as they are. The root of the matter is the straining of the spirit of man to be free. Once he secures the freedom of the spirit he will, as a natural sequence, secure a material welfare equal to what the united brains and hand can wring from mother earth and her surrounding atmosphere. Any administration of the mines under nationalisation must not leave the mine worker in the position of a mere wage-earner, whose sole energies are directed by the will of another. He must have a share in the management of the industry in which he is engaged, and understand all about the purpose and destination of the product he is producing; he must know both the productive and the commercial side of the industry. He must feel that the industry is being run by him in order to produce coal for the use of the community, instead of profit for a few people. He would thus feel the responsibility which would rest on him as a citizen, and direct his energies for the common good. This ideal cannot be reached all at once owing to the way in which private ownership has deliberately kept the worker in ignorance regarding the industry; but as that knowledge, which has been denied him, grows, as it will do under nationalisation, he will take his rightful place as a man. Only then will labour unrest, which is the present hope of the world, disappear. The mere granting of the 30 per cent. and the shorter hours demanded will not prevent unrest, neither will nationalisation with bureaucratic 219W administration. Just as we are making political democracy world-wide, so must we have industrial democracy, in order that men may be free."—[Coal Industry Commission, Vol. 1, HMSO Cmnd. 359, 1919, p. 324.]