COAL SIEGE Little immediate relief in U.K.

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32846, 21 February 1972, Page 13

COAL SIEGE Little immediate relief in U.K.

t.V.Z. Press Association— Copyright)

LONDON, February 19.

Fleets of trucks and trains ground slowly into gear yesterday to lift the coal siege of Britain’s starving power stations as Mr Edward Heath’s Government licked the wounds of a two-day battering, the Associated Press reported.

Mr Heath himself, the central pillars of his domestic and foreign policy severely cracked, retired to his country residence at Chequers to ponder the cost to the nation and his administration of a six-week strike by 280,000 coalminers.

A peace formula—yet to be accepted by rank-and-file workers — was thrashed out at Mr Heath’s London residence in Downing Street very early yesterday morning.

It amounted to unqualified victory for the National Union of Mineworkers and unbridled defeat for the Government’s economic policy of curbing inflation-feeding pay raises.

It meant little immediate relief for millions of Britons who have borne for more than a week electric power black-outs, turning homes for hours at a time into cheerless, dark worlds of cold food and candlelight. Electricity supply authorities said today that the situation could get worse before it got better. The Central Electricity Generating Board said that coal started moving to power stations again as the miners lifted their picket blockades, but quantities were limited. "The situation is grave and will remain so for some time,” a spokesman cau-

The Trade and Industry Minister (Mr John Davies) forecast: “Perhaps we will be back to normal conditions a little before Easter,” Additional electricity restrictions, planned to take effect Wednesday, would no longer be necessary, he said. Under the present system of cuts rotated among districts, entire areas are blacked out in three-hour periods amounting in many cases to 12 hours a day. This would continue for the time being, Mr Davies said. An armada of ships, trains and trucks had been readied to move mountains of coal, stockpiled when the miners were working but immobilised by watertight picketing.

Five million tons were locked in store.

For most of yesterday the relief lines were bogged down by confusion—pickets were unsure whether they should still be picketing, and electricity authorities were uncertain whether the miners had lifted their siege. N.Z.PA.-Reuter said that the industrial crisis has shaken the Government, placed its economic policy in peril and strewn political roadblocks on the path to Europe. Some observers sketch visions of a near-revolution-

ary situation which reminds them of the “hungry thirties” in Britain or of the; striking and riots during the events in France of May-| June, 1968. The shock administered to public opinion and to the I Government’s own self-confi-dence comes at a critical moment.

The miners’ victory will encourage others in the lineup for wage increases—notably railwaymen and engineers—to try for increases greatly exceeding the Government’s unofficial ceiling of 8 per cent.

However these claims are met, it seems likely that one aspect of Government policy is stone dead.

Mr Heath came to power 20 months ago dedicated to

a non-interventionist, freeenterprise philosophy of government. This philosophy was expressed in the phrase “stand on your own two feet” or in its most extreme form by a minister’s classic word that the Government was not in business to help lame ducks. The coal strike, as one observer put it, proved that the miners were lame ducks wearing hobnailed boots. They had too much muscle for the Government and they won.

It can be regarded as virtually certain that Mr Heath’s Administration will now be at pains to enquire into the social conditions underlying each wage demand instead of letting clashing interests battle it out blindly.