Steel Plans in Public
Basic facts and figures concerning the steel industry are now laid on the table with such regularity, and with such frankness, that the critics will have the greatest difficulty in arguing in future that the steel industry plots, but never plans. That, of course, is not to say that they will cease to try. It is not difficult to foresee the time when the old argument that the industry clings to worn out and antiquated plant will be trotted out once more, and when the revised figures of the reconstruction plan, published by the British Iron and Steel Federation this week, will be cited as " proof." The plain and unconcealed fact is that the industry has decided to raise the planned production capacity in the year 1953-54 to 18,500,000 tons, mainly by retaining old plant which was due for scrapping. It has made this decision on the perfectly reasonable ground that demand is still so insistent, and the cost of new plant is so high, that it is an economic proposition to keep the old installations at work side by side with the new works which are now coming steadily into com- mission. The points to note are first that it undoubtedly is an economic proposition, and second that no critic from the Government or further left has denied the fact. Indeed. it is a remarkable com- ment on the attitude of the left-wing Press that the publication of a plan to increase the planned capacity of the crucial and controversial steel industry by 2,500,000 tons, or over 15 per cent., received no notice whatever in either the Daily Herald or the Daily Worker. It is almost incredible that the pretence can still be kept up that the Government, and Socialists generally, know so much about steel production that they are capable of taking it over. So far the total effect of the nationalisation proposals has been to prevent the industry from planning any further ahead than 1953-54, when its natural tendency would no doubt be to go ahead with new schemes.
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