Steel Skirmishing
As usual, it is, necessary to look beyond the question of steel prices, which the Commons were supposed to be debating on Monday night, to the question of the control of the steel industry, which is what they were really interested in. There was no genuine need for the Minister of Supply to go once more through the argument that the recent rise in steel prices by an average of £4 a ton was not made to inflate profits but to off- set partly a rise in costs. The arithmetic is just as plain now, as it was when the House dragged over this ground five weeks ago. Costs have gone up by £75 million and prices have been allowed to go up by only £56 million. Nothing that the Minister of Supply in the last Labour Government, Mr. Strauss, can say will alter that simple fact. But, it must be repeated, all the talk about prices and about the exact circumstances of the departure of Mr. Steven Hardie from the head of the Iron and Steel Corporation was only a smoke-screen. Mr. Strauss's main object was to bring up the question of denationalisation by accusing the Government of boosting profits in order to make the shares of the steel firms more acceptable to the inves- ting public when the time comes for the transfer. The fact that profits have not been boosted, as Mr. Sandys went on pointing out, made no difference. Mr. Strauss was talking politics, not economics or simple arithmetic. All this skirmish- ing goes to confirm that when the battle over the ownership of the iront and steel industry is finally joined Parliament will be in for the heaviest fighting it has seen so far. The steel industry will only be in for a prolongation of uncertainty and the country as a whole for a most boring and unhelpful spectacle.
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