ORME'S WISDOM
THE, Labour energy spokesman, Mr Stan 'rine, made the best comment on .the stupendous losses, £2,225 million, announced by the Coal Board this week. Complaining that public money had been abused to defeat the NUM, he said: 'No Private company would have been in a position to use money like this to pursue an industrial dispute.' One imagines that he omitted to draw the obvious conclusion from his remarks, namely that the coal in- dustry should be privatised as soon as possible, merely for fear of insulting the intelligence of anyone who might be listen- ing to him. Never again should the miners' leaders be allowed to encourage their members to inflict mortal damage on their Pits, in the knowledge that most of those Pits would shortly afterwards be brought back to life by the first aid technique custo- marily used to resuscitate dead British in- dustries: a transfusion of very large sums of money from those parts of the economy still showing signs of life. Mr Scargill's oft- repeated boast is that the miners' strike has cost the nation an enormous amount. On Monday he put the figure at £8,000 million. This figure should, admittedly, be treated with caution. Whatever the true loss, the Chancellor of the Exchequer will only have been right to call the strike 'a worthwhile investment' if the industry is now transfer- red into private ownership as quickly as possible. Unlike some of the businesses sold by this Government, coal mining is not an inherently monopolistic activity. An imaginative administration could find very wide scope for vesting the ownership of individual pits in those who work them. Many miners already own their houses. It remains to be seen whether they will be given the opportunity to control their in- dustry, by owning that too. A Government which talks so much about an 'enterprise culture' ought at least to be enterprising enough to give them the opportunity. As with the sale of council houses, Mr Stan Orme would end up seeing the sense of it.
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