BRITAIN WARNED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21934, 31 January 1946, Page 5

BRITAIN WARNED

RISK OF _DISASTER COAL INDUSTRY STATE RULE JUSTIFIED LONDON, Jan. 29. The drift of soured, embittered men from the coal industry was appalling, and the efficiency of the industry is distinctly backward compared with Continental competitors, said the Minister of Fuel. Mr. E. Shinwell, in moving the second reading of the Coal Nationalisation Bill in the House of Commons. He added that 694.000 men were now producing 174,000.000 tons of coal compared with 1,172,000 men producing 267,000,000 tons in 1924. “It is my duty to warn the House that the existing position contains an element of industrial disaster,” he declared. “Radical reconstruction of the industry cannot be done except under national ownership.”

The Government did not propose to appoint to the new board directing the industry either discarded politicians or amateur directors. The salaries of the men selected would be in the commercial rather than the civil service range. “We fear, as so often happens with a monopoly, that the consumer will be fleeced in the interests of the producer or that the Coal Board will have to come to the Chancellor for financial assistance which the taxpayer will have to pay,” said Mr. Anthony Eden in opposing the bill. He credited Mr. Shinwell with a sincere belief in the merits of nationalisation, but he said the scheme put forward in the bill was not nationalisation but syndicalism. All the bill proposed was to establish a monopoly for the production of coal. There was nothing in the bill to show how the industry would be run when it was transferred. That, surely, was an essential problem not only for the industry but for the nation.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Dr. Hugh Dalton, announced that the Mining Association had withdrawn its opposition to the bill’s principles and added that a Coal Board would be given wide powers and great responsibilities by directions from the Minister. The purpose behind the bill was to substitute for admittedly private industry what the Government hoped and intended to make an efficient public industry. “We are setting forth on a great adventure,” he said. “It is conceivable that the experiment may fail as private enterprise has failed down the years, but I believe it will succeed.”