The Goal Mines Bill Last week the Government gave an
astonishing exhibition of weakness in capitulating before the threats and propaganda of the powerful interests opposed to the Coal Mines Bill. It is not often that a Government so clearly surrenders national interests to purely sectional ones ; and the indignation of the House of Commons was only pacified by Mr. Baldwin's promise to reintroduce the Bill, as amended by Mr. Runciman, and to present a White Paper explaining the amendments. Yet on Tuesday, asked whether they intended to proceed with the Bill and when they would present the White Paper, neither Mr. Baldwin nor Captain Crookshank could give any reply. So this matter too is left involved in the obscurity with which the country is by now becoming familiar. Mr. Runciman's amendments were in such flag- rant contradiction with the expressed purpose of the Bill that the Government may now think it wiser to introduce a new measure altogether. That will mean more delay, and meanwhile the same opposition in Parliament proposes to attack the schemes for central selling agencies Provided for by Part I of the 1930 Act. The Government must surely recognise that no reorganisation of the coal industry will ever be achieved by nervelessness.
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