WHEN WINTER COMES
AT Morpeth in Northumberland last Saturday 5o,000 miners and their families, attending a gigantic gala, picnic and band contest, paused to listen while three Cabinet Ministers and the secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers gave them their views on the economic situation. There was something symbolic about this mixing of summer revels with wintry forebodings. The fact is that, if a majority of the British people could be brought to follow the example of the miners of the Northumberland district (whose production record, incidentally; gives them a high place among the coal-mining regions) and to consider at this season the possible course of economic events next winter, there would at least be a chance that the worst would not happen. The outlook is anything but encouraging, but provided that it is sufficiently clearly seen it may have a galvanising effect. There is hardly a point of the economic compass at which the prospect pleases ; and points as various as coal, exports, American aid, national planning and the chances of a trade recession have all come under review during the past week. Anyone who feels confident that a single item on this list can be put to rights in six months—that is, in time to avert another major breakdown next February—should perhaps consider the chance that in not one but all of these fields we shall be clear of danger by then, for any one of these matters could upset the apple-cart.
The effort which a solution, or even the beginning of a solution, implies must be made now. Last winter's experience at least drove home the lesson that merely to hope for the best is to accentuate the worst. Foresight there must be, and above all there must be foresight about coal. It is therefore a little surprising that it should have been left to the Communist Mr. Arthur Homer to point out that our requirements for 1947 will not be met. Now all Mr. Homer's remedies for the coal shortage are wrong and dangerous. Subordination of individual liberty to a plan on the Russian model, more and ever more " inducements " to the miners to do a day's work, more and more recruits drawn from the country's inadequate man-power resources to fill the inexcusable gap left by voluntary absentees—if the object were to upset the balance of industry and accelerate economic breakdown, such measures as these could hardly be better chosen. Mr. Homer knows as well as anybody that the only solution to the immediate difficulty is that the existing mining labour force should work harder and more regularly.
Yet if he reaches the wrong conclusions he starts from the right point—the probable total production of coal in 1947. The aim is a production of 200,000,000 tons this year. Produc- tion in the first six months of the year was some 98,000,000 tons. Consequently, an output of 102,000,000 tons in the second six months does not sound unattainable. But the chances of reaching it are such that Mr. Shinwell is silent and Mr. Homer says that there will be a deficit of 5,000,000 tons. Recruitment, after its recent spurt, is falling off and is now barely sufficient to build up the required force of 730,000 men by the end of the year ; absentee- ism is rising ; the holiday season is by no means over ; and the increased weekly production forecast for the autumn is likely to be handicapped by a shortage of railway wagons. In short, relatively narrow as the gap may seem, it will not be closed except by a greater effort by the miners than seems likely at the moment.
It has been said over and over again, and proved by bitter experience, that if coal fails all fails. First and most obviously exports fail. Mr. Bevin has twice pointed out during the past week the enormous effect which direct exports of a few thousand tons of coal could have. In practice we shall import several thousand tons, at a very high price, from the United States. Indirectly, exports depend on coal production too, and there is a sense in which 1947 exports have failed already. Here the figures leave little room even for hope. The aim is a volume of exports 4o per cent. above the 1938 level by the end of the year. At the end of 1946 exports were already r z per cent. above pre-war, and the out- look seemed good. But that was before the February crisis. So far exports have managed to stagger back to 107 per cent. of the pre-war volume. The fact that in June exports in money terms were the highest for any month since the war is neither here nor there. The right measure is quite clearly not value but volume, and in volume terms exports are still below the level of the fourth quarter of 1946, and the chances of their rising to 14o per cent. of pre-war by the end of this year are remote. Why should it be left to the statisticians to unearth that fact from beneath a pile of complacent verbiage? What has, say, Mr. Herbert Morrison to lose by proclaiming it from the convenient housetop of his weekly Press conference?
Perhaps Mr. Morrison in London, and the Ministers at Morpeth. felt that too stern a comparison between fleeting present joys and solid future hardships would do no good. Perhaps they feel that a little gentle encouragement along the uphill road is better than a word picture of disaster to come. And perhaps they are right, since the main danger to Britain is not so much a sudden catas- trophe, to be averted by a spasmodic effort, as an inexorable slide into poverty, to be arrested only by years of hard work—a prospect containing few dramatic possibilities. Nevertheless, if Cabinet Ministers cannot take the responsibility for pointing to the black- ness of the economic outlook, somebody must. Such is the dislike of the public for meeting trouble half-way that it might otherwise be forgotten at this critical moment. And the gloomiest prophet can steel himself with the reflection that, even had he possessed the tongue of Jeremiah, he might not, at this time last year, have been able to convince the multitudes of the magnitude of the disaster which was to overtake them six months later. Today Jeremiah could hardly go wrong. The coal situation is bad. Even if the improbable production of zoo,000,poo tons is reached—or the impossible 220,000,000 tons for that matter—it would still not be very good. The export prospect is very bad. The difficulty of selling abroad becomes greater every day ; the 1947 target of 140 per cent. of the 1938 volume is scarcely visible ; and the further objective of 175 per cent. (said by the experts of PEP to be too low) is quite out of sight. American aid, which really could make all the difference and still represents the main hope in a gloomy scene, is tied ever more closely to the Marshall plan, which is steadily emerging not as a wide promise but a set of very hard conditions without which no aid will be given.
The main condition is that the countries of Europe shall plan jointly. That seems to imply that they shall also plan severally, and invites the question—has Britain a plan? We have an Economic Planning Board, and the beginnings of a staff to assist it. On Monday theBoard received the instructions of Mr. Herbert Morrison. But this in itself is not planning–Indeed it is difficult to say what it is, so vague were the Lord President's remarks about a " General Staff " and a ." background picture." It is possible— indeed so far as Congress is concerned it is very likely—that American ideas about European planning do not go beyond an agreed list of requirements and priorities. -That will be difficult enough to get in all conscience, but it will probably be more easily obtained than a precise statement of how the British Government intends to allocate the national resources in the next few years. But it is of little comfort to the British people to know, or even to suspect, that their Government's talk about planning is just talk. Even an inspection of the traditional auguries of free enterprise conveys no comfort. Several of the phenomena which used to be associated with a business recession are present. There is a drop in the demand for some types of consumer goods (books for . instance), a slight abatement in the spendthrift fervour of house- hunters, rumours from the holiday resorts that there is still room for a few more visitors, and a certain souring of the market con- ditions in which a cheap money policy is possible. It is true that this can hardly mean a slump of the old-fashioned kind. But the history of trade-cycles shows that no recession is quite like another, and we may yet find in Britain that there are worse depressions than those mainly induced by monetary factors. It is already hinted that the coal shortage of the coming winter may be relieved, in the least acceptable of all ways, by the difficulty which some manufacturers will have in meeting their requirements of other raw materials. That would mean unemployment or under- employment of our human resources—the worst disaster that can befall British economy, dependent as it is on the skill of the people. If we avert that danger next winter there will be hope for us. But the effort must begin now, grimly and against the grain, in the dog- days and doldrums of summer.
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