COAL BOARD UNDER FIRE
NOT long ago it was the custom for all statements by the Government on economic policy to begin with a recital of the difficulties created by the war and by what were usually called "world causes." A revival of that custom will become more difficult as the war becomes more distant.. It will be doubly difficult if the recent slight improvement in the terms of inter- national trade is confirmed. It will be trebly difficult if there are any more cases, such as that of steel, in which the difficulties are clearly of the Government's own making. But this week's state- ment on organisation by the National Coal Board is a sufficiently sharp reminder that the will to make excuses rather than modify policies exists unimpaired in some very high places in the new hierarchy of industrial control. Those members of the public who have taken the trouble to study the grim subject of coal production and come to the obvious conclusion that the organisa- tion of the nationalised industry is top-heavy, unrealistic and ineffective are now, it seems, to be asked to disbelieve the evidence of their senses. For the Coal Board is clearly not disposed to make important changes. This week's statement takes the form of an extended commentary on a partial paraphrase of some of the main recommendations of the Burrows Committee, which was set up last May to examine the organisation of the industry. An appendix reproducing the passages from the Board's reports for 1946 and 1947 which emphasise the difficulties of its earliest months occupies half the statement. In short, the Board has made its excuses. It is now necessary to point out that excuses are not what the public wants.
Nobody blames the Coal Board for trying to make the nationalised industry work. Nationalisation is accepted by all parties. Nobody blames it even for trying to justify its methods and policies. Without some sort of conviction on the part of its officials no new enterprise can be effective. But everyone must condemn an attempt to prove that wrong is right. It may be the Board's misfortune that its statement on the Burrows Report appeared in the same week as Sir Charles Reid's considered views on the changes which are necessary in the structure of control, and an unusually telling political pamphlet on the same subject written by the Conservative M.P., Col. C. G. Lancaster. But it is also to some extent the Board's fault, since it has had the Burrows report in its hands for some months before issuing the present expurgated fragments of it. This is simply not good enough, and it would be doing no service either to the Board or to the coal industry to pretend that anyone feels happy at the Board's explana- tions. Sir Charles Reid is first and foremost a great mining engineer. But he must be listened to as an authority on general organisation, not only because he is a former member of the Coal Board, but because engineering problems are at the root of the present failure to produce enough coal. In the simplest terms, the central difficulties are the persistence of absenteeism and the failure of output per man-shift to go up pan i passu with mechani- sation. These difficulties can only be settled on the spot, in the mine itself, by men with local knowledge and technical com- petence. It is incomparably more difficult to answer them in general terms away from the spot, in London. But the present structure of the industry prevents the local man, who in most cases must be the mine manager, from applying his own solution directly, and at one and the same time frustrates any attempt to have that solution applied by the more roundabout method of reporting to the centre and receiving the necessary authority from there. The Coal Board, whether it knows it or not, is failing to find the solution and at the same time, by its cumbrous organisa- tion, preventing anyone else from finding it.
Nor does the indictment end here. for the general public outside the industry is actually hampered in its attempts to understand what is literally its own business. It would be perfectly possible to gain from the Board's statement of this week the impression that the original Burrows Report was a rather inept and self- contradictory document. But in the absence of the text it is impossible to find the truth. All that is published is the Board's own version, which anyone can see does not provide a convincing answer to present difficulties. And whatever imperfections the original report may have had it is at least clear that it aimed at decentralisation and a more direct chain of command. It did not recommend the abolition of the eight Divisional Boards which are at present interposed between headquarters and the forty-nine local planning units or Areas. But it envisaged their abdication of executive authority. Sir Charles Reid went further and suggested that the divisions should be abandoned, the forty-nine areas replaced by twenty-six corporations, and the Coal Board itself transformed into a body controlling what would in effect be twenty-six separate businesses. Colonel Lancaster would go still further and have the areas made separate from the Coal Board and owe their existence directly to Parliament. These outside proposals are drastic and precise. The Burrows recommendations were probably less drastic, but the Board prevents us from knowing whether they were precise. The changes proposed by the Board are limited and vague.
Here another question arises. How vague has the Board a right to be ? It gives various reasons for not publishing the Burrows Report verbatim, the most telling being that much of the evidence was given in confidence. Those reasons may well be conclusive. But if the Minister refuses to answer detailed questions on the work of the Board, and the Board itself does not volunteer the answers, what happens to public control of the coal industry ? Is it to operate in the dark ? It is true that the nationalisation scheme provided for consumers' councils, but very little has been heard of them. It would be interesting to know whether they saw the full report of the Burrows Committee and recommended its suppression. If this whole question of information concern- ing the working of nationalised industries is allowed to drop, the outcome may be disastrous. It has been repeatedly insisted in this journal that new nationalisation schemes should not be under- taken until it is known how the existing schemes are working. But all that the public really knows is that no scheme is working well. Even the annual reports of the Coal Board, full as they are, have an air of advocacy and devote much space to the diffi- culties of the task. But those difficulties themselves point straight to the dangers of over-hasty nationalisation. The burden of the Coal Board's complaint is that there has never been time for proper planning. This week's statement points out that whereas large private undertakings have grown gradually, "the Board's organisation has had to be created suddenly." The key words are "had to be." The time-table for the creation of the nationalised industry was set by the Government. All the other nationalisation time-tables come from the same source. By all means let the Coal Board be blamed for its failure to improve its organisation. But let the Government be blamed for its original imperfections.
But the most urgent need for clarity lies right at the other end of the scale—at the coal face. A central purpose of any organisa- tion is to provide knowledge of what goes on in the depths of the mine, and to use that knowledge to put right anything which may be wrong. It is the grasp of this elementary truth which gives force and conviction to statements such as that which Sir Charles Reid published in The Times this week. It has both knowledge and purpose, and those are the qualities which are most needed. More coal is wanted at once. With the pits 75 per cent. mechanised at the face, far more should be coming up and every competent engineer knows it. What is mare every competent manager knows how to get it. But in the face of absenteeism, of restrictive practices, and of the difficulty of harnessing the enthusiasm of the men to the new cycle of mechanical operations, he must have the full weight of authority behind him if he is to succeed. At the moment too much of that weight is dissipated along the chain of command. The miners recognise the full concentration of power in the National Coal Board. It was their insistence which did most to achieve that concentration. It must not be wasted. There is not the slightest doubt that the dead wood of the Divisional Boards should be cut out. But it would be dangerous to reduce the authority of the National Coal Board to such an extent that it became a mere advisory body. It is this fact which gives Sir Charles Reid's proposals an unmistakable pull over those of Colonel Lancaster. Sir Charles sees clearly that there must be somebody to keep the area corporations up to scratch, and not least in making as good a financial showing as possible, even where a surplus cannot be achieved. The miners themselves will require no less. But in return they must produce the coal.
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