Winter Coal
Mr. Hugh Gaitskell no doubt owes some of the success of his first statements on the coal situation to the fact that he has taken office at the Ministry of Fuel and Power at the end of a summer in which sustained fine weather has made possible the building up of stocks and at the beginning of the autumn season in which output from the mines invariably rises. But the fact remains that his soberly-presented statement of the production prospects for the winter months and the outline plan of distribution for that period provides a refreshing contrast with the often partial and seldom civil pronouncements of Mr. Shinwell. The comfort which can be derived from a relatively healthy stock position, the prospect of a production some three or four million tons above that of last winter and increased allocations to industry, is to a great extent offset by the facts that much of the stock improvement has been achieved at the expense of the overseas trade balance through an increase in imports of coal and a decrease in exports, that the probability that the 1947 objective of 200,000,000 tons is now officially admitted and that the shortage of railway wagons is likely to interfere seriously with the winter distribution: The reasonable assurance that there will be no repetition of the February breakdown and that the substantially increased allocation to the steel industry will be accompanied by measures intended to ensure that it is not wasted in unessential uses, still does not remove the danger that industrial expansion will be held in check by an inadequate coal output. But the most marked con- trast of all with the relative sweetness and light of the Press con- ferences of Mr. Gaitskell and Sir Stafford Cripps is produced by the National Union of Mineworkers. It is now likely that they will at last begin to work longer hours at the beginning of November, three months after the acceptance of the increase in principle, but this concession to sanity is hedged about with reservations intended to safeguard the five-day week and accompanied by a demand for a pay increase of Lx per week with no assurance whatever of increased output. In fact the foundation of industrial recovery still remains the weakest part of the structure.
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