Coal and the Customer
By JOHN COLE THERE is something about the coal industry which enlists for it the affection and kindly interest of every outsider who studies it. Perhaps it is because although we were all potential engine-drivers in our youth, few of us ever thought of life down the pit as our ideal career, and now we have to work off our guilt complexes about the men engaged in this dirty and danger- ous occupation.
Allowance having been made, however, for this prejudice in favour of the coal communities, Who can deny the justice of the congratulations to the National Coal Board and the miners as the reign of Sir tames Bowman draws to a close and that of Mr. Alfred Robens begins? The pits have fought their way back from the near-tragic days of 1957, when the word 'closure' sent a shiver down the spines of miners and their wives Who thought that this meant a return to the 1930s.
Under Sir James, the Northumberland pitboy Who rose to the head of his industry, the NCB has moved from a crisis of over-production to a position where it can cheerfully prophesy that its huge stocks will have melted down to the lowest safe level—of 10 million tons—by the end of 1962 or 1963. Nearly 203 million tons of coal were sold last year, allowing 6 million tons to be lifted from the stocks which have imposed such a grave financial burden on the Board. Output per manshift, the most effective gauge of productivity in mining, rose by 1 cwt. to 28 cwt. Coal prices went up, but for the first time since 1957, which suggests that coal has Played its part in the stabilisation of prices over the past two or three years. Since the New Year, the miners have been given a wage increase of ' about 41 per cent., but Mr. Robens, at his first negotiations, seemed certain that he can take this into his budget without a further price increase, if the miners will just give him another cwt. per manshift this year. With the drive for mechanisa- tion reaching top gear, the Board thinks this is quite possible.
Is all, then, lovely in the garden? It is difficult to distinguish the statements being made by the new chairman for the worthy purpose of restor- ing confidence in the industry among miners and potential recruits, from those which represent a realistic assessment of coal's prospects. But one cannot escape the conclusion that the Board is showing an understandable, but perhaps unjusti- fied, optimism in basing its planning on a government estimate that 300 million tons of coal equivalent will be needed in Britain by 1965. The Board expects coal to provide 200 million tons of this total.
The more one hears of the basis on which such forward estimates of demand must be made, the easier it is to realise what an imprecise process it all is. The National Union of Mine- workers has produced a separate estimate, which is that the total fuel demand will be only 280 million tons by 1965, and that coal's share of this will not be more than 182 million tons. The miners quote a number of independent inquirers who have come to similar, or even less optimistic conclusions.
The truth, of course, lies nowhere. A number of imponderables, including the state of the economy as a whole, the extent and type of industrial expansion, and the price of oil, obscure the crystal ball. All that the coal industry can do is to go forward in hope—in the hope that the Government's experts, and not those from outside, have done their calculations, or made their guesses correctly. They can also take three limited, but essential steps in self-help.
The first is to ensure that productivity does continue to rise at a rate which will hold the price of coal steady. Associated with this is the need to provide all kinds of customers, industrial and domestic, with an assured supply of the type of fuel they need at the times they need it. This is where Mr. Roberts's request to the miners for talks on resumed Saturday working comes in. While it may be tempting for area councils of the union to refuse an immediate response to the Board's accelerator, when the application of its brake has worried them for so long, this would be a short-sighted policy. If Mr. Robens is to recapture the initiative, particularly in the domestic market, from oil, he must be given adequate supplies of large house coal.
This brings us to the third point—distribution. All the sales drives which the new chairman has heralded will be useless if the distribution system is not to the public's satisfaction. It is one of the great tragedies of the doctrinaire controversy over nationalisation in this country that the Board and its merchants have never really felt free to bring their deep-seated disagreements into the open. The merchants have been the less in- hibited of the two. They have tended to blame everything from 'dirty' coal to the long waiting time for deliveries in February on the Board, and that body has often been afraid to hit back effec- tively, for fear of political consequences.
Some people in the coal industry who are not doctrinaire Socialists favour the nationalisation of coal distribution. Although few in the Board are likely to climb out on a limb to advocate a policy which they know will not be accepted, the signs are that coal distribution is going to be discussed more frankly and publicly by the people who arc in the know. If coal cannot be got to customers at the right times and in the right quantities this winter, we really must be told why, and who is to blame.
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