OPERATION COAL

Evening Star, Issue 26029, 18 February 1947, Page 7

OPERATION COAL

Troops Clearing Roads

For Collieries

Miners Will Work Sunday

Some Easement of Crisis

(Rec. 10.50 a.m.) LONDON, Feb. 17. The miners, the railway workers, the dockers, and the transport workers agreed to work again next Sunday to keep coal moving, after the Government had told their unions that the fuel crisis was expected to last another seven days. Six hundred lorries and 1,200 troops of the Northern Command went into action to-day on “Operation King Coal,” and began moving 5,315 tons of coal from 49 colleries between Nottingham and Sheffield. The Northern Command has 2,610 British troops, 2,635 German prisoners, and 1,120 Poles engaged in snow clearing. A Ministry of Fuel statement shows that London power station stocks of coal increased by 19,000 tons yesterday" to 1.072,000. wnich is about equal to days’ supply on a pre-restriction basis. London gas stocks rose by 2,000 tons. The total savings for the first full week of the restrictions were 202,000 tons, equal to 29 per cent, of normal consumption. The Ministry of Labour states that persons who claimed the unemployment benefit between February 8 and ■ 15

total .1,136,200. It is estimated that an additional 945,000 workers who had been stood off had not claimed the unemployment benefit for various reasons. • . , Reuter says the Prime Minister’*, special coal committee will meet tomorrow, probably, and fix a date for partial resumption o| industry.' ' • There will be no cancellation of domestic cuts this week. Two factors causing anxiety ar* the possibility of another heavy snowfall, which would again hamper the coal trains, or fresh, gales to slow up shipping. Tens of thousands of. seamen, miners, railwayman, and steve- . dores worked throughout the week-end in falling temperatures in an effort to break the crisis. The miners have

broken output records, and 100 coal trains started moving south at the week-end from the frozen mEirshalling yards and pitheads with more than 50,000 tons of coal. Sixty-seven coal ships from

early Saturday until this morning arrived in the Thames, carrying

about 135,000 tons. A constant stream of ships has been returning north.