Combat on Coal
Mr. Shinwell's fight for the Coal Nationalisation Bill goes on in Standing Committee. Fight is the word. The recent remark that the Minister of Fuel cannot refrain from behaving as if he were still on the Opposition benches receives a new justification every day. Yet most members of the public, without necessarily sharing in the spiritual exaltation which coal nationalisation produces in the breasts of the older Labour members, are willing to give it a chance to do what private industry has failed to do. And the fact that many quite reasonable people see grave flaws in the present Bill is surely no justication for Mr. Shinwell's policy of black .eyes and bloody noses all round. If Mr. Shinwell was right in reading into an amendment for the definition of the powers of the National Coal Board a suggestion that the Board should be forbidden to participate ia the more profitable ancillary undertakings his answer should have been plain enough. Either the nationalised industry must share in the profits of these undertakings or it must increase its call for money from the taxpayers or it must raise the price of coal supplied to these undertakings. All these arguments are capable of reason- able discussion. Meanwhile, the meeting between the Minister of Fuel and the executive of the National Union of Mineworkers, which is due to take place as The Spectator goes to press, bodes little good for the consumers of coal. Its subject is the union's twelve-point charter, which calls for higher rates of pay and allow- ances all round, a continuation of the guaranteed weekly wage and pensions at 55. It also requires complete reorganisation and modernisation of the industry, with the need for which nobody will disagree. Such doubts as exist concern the country's ability to afford the large capital outlays which these reforms entail. If these are to be accompanied by bigger and bigger current outlays to meet the ever-rising demands of the miners it becomes doubtful whether the job can be done. And this is tantamount to saying that it is doubtful whether this country, of which the miners are citizens, can survive as a first-class economic 'power.
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