Coal By Exhortation
The Government presumably wished to express in quantitative terms their concern with the fuel situation when they allocated no fewer than five Ministers to Wednesday's meeting with the Executive of the National Union of Mineworkers. This would have been too many to devote to the straightforward task of telling the union leaders to tell the miners that they are not producing enough coal ; and since one of those present was the Prime Minister and another was the Foreign Secretary, both of whom might be presumed to have even more urgent calls on their time, it was probably too many in any case. In the circumstances there can be no complaint about the fact that the Minister of Labour was not there, though there may be some derision at the curious excuse that he stayed away because the meeting was about production'and not about manpower. How could the meeting have avoided dealing with manpower when the principal ways of increasing output in future are by improving the effectiveness and, if possible, increasing the number of miners 7 The official announcement after the meet- ing chose to relegate to an evasive final sentence the fact that the miners' leaders were much concerned with the fall in the mining labour force, and had suggested that new inducements should be offered in the form of more pay, special pensions, longer paid holidays and double pay for Saturday shifts. This continual harping on the need to get more miners is wide of the mark. In the long run the number of miners is practically certain td fall, and what hope there is lies in getting more work out of those who remain. That means less absenteeism now, and an undertaking to get the best out of mechanisation and reorganisation schemes in the future,and this will hardly be achieved by one more " appeal," even when it comes from the Prime Minister.
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