COVENTRY: A BRITISH WAR-TIME CITY

Grey River Argus, 1 August 1940, Page 10

COVENTRY: A BRITISH WAR-TIME CITY

(By >

Anthony Hern

in ’’The Tribune”.)

Men came to Coventry in ever-increasing numbers in the months before the war. With the war, Coventry became the Klonayke of the Midlands. . . .. To-day Coventry is a teeming, busy and—therte is no doubt about it-a prosperous city. In the centre of the town found only three smallish shops to let—how strange' a contrast with the change that war has brought to many a London street !

In the week before the war registered unemployed at the Coventry Labour Exchange totalled 2,700 men and 700 women. Last week the numbers were 600 men and 500 women. The great majority of these were casually unemployed—“stood off" for two or three days. The assistant manager of the exchange told me that they were now registering women for factory work. (The Mayor of Coventry issued an appeal the day before I arrived, asking women who had worked in factories in the last war to do similar work this time). Some five hundred had already registered when I was making my enquiries, and they were ■ being rapidly drafted into the waiting factories.

The Coventry Co-op.

The Coventry Co-operative Society —which, I was pleased to notice, is the biggest store in the city—is enjoying a boom at the moment. This is general with the shopkeepers of Coventry. The Co-op. manager told me that they were receiving between a thousand and 1,200 new registrations a week. There are snags, of course in this sea of prosperity. In the week I was there the men’s wear department of the Co-op. had been, alone among the departments, floundering in the depths of a slump. The reason? Since the introduction of the 12-hour day and night shifts (seven to seven) the men have been unable to get to the shops to buy what they want. With the influx of women into the factories (of which more presently) the shopping problem is likely to grow more acute. The solution appears to be staggered shopping hours. Will the conservatism of tradespeople give way to some sort of planned shopping? Thousands of Coventry workers pay through the nose for inadequate and sometimes unhealthy accommodation because they happen to be making arms for profit in a country in which profit has been allowed to obstruct planning. Postscript—Sjr Alfred Herbert, ma-chine-tool manufacturer and man of wealth, has written a letter to the local press advocating a Box and Cox principle for lodgings. He would like to see the day shift come off work and occupy tfie beds just vacated by the night shift —in order that Coventry could absorb to a greater degree the men for whom industry is screaming. The law of obscene libel prevents me from passing on to readers of the “Tribune” what I judge to be a typical worker’s comment on Sir Alfred’s brainwave. Organised Workers There are 15,000 members of the Amalgamated Engineering Union in Coventry, and the numbers are likely to grow in the near future. This gives some idea of the strength of the organised workers in Coventry’s factories. The A.E.U. does not cater for women, but the increasing numbers of women workers in the factories are being organised by the Transport ant General Workers’ Union. Women

shop stewards have already been elected in most factories. The labour decrees stirred Coventry’s workers deeply. I spent many hours talking to rank-and-file members of the A.E.U., T.G.W.U., Vehicle Builders’ Union, Sheet Metal Workers’ Union; to men and women shop stewards; to trade union organisers. Most factories were working the twelve-hour day and night shift when I arrived at Coventry; in one or two the women were just starting nightwork. Too Much Overtime The organiser of the T.G.W.U. told me they were determined to fight for one night a week for those men and women working a 12-hour shift—particularly the women. “Otherwise,” he said, “the strain will be too great.” This view was upheld by a man who is normally the bete noire of the man on the conveyor belt—a time-study engineer (i.e., an exponent of the Bedaux system). He told me that the 12-hour day was economically unsound and that if it was continued it would hamper rather than assist the nation’s war effort. “Roughly speaking,” he said, “the time after ten hours is wasted effort. Week-ends, when they come without a break, are pretty fruitless too. And an 84-hour week for women is really impracticable from the point of view of production.” He was definite about this. The A.E.U. District Committee have passed a resolution making overtime voluntary, and insisting that there be no victimisation of a man who wishes, for personal reasons, to avoid overtime on a particular occasion. The shop stewards are determined, wherever and whenever possible, to maintain workshop organisation and militancy. It means something to them that Bevin is now Minister of Labour, that Morrison is in charge of Supply. “But,” said one shop steward frankly to me, “there are two Things at least that we are a bit cautious about. One is all this talk of ‘cooperation’ coming from employers who in the past have been our bitterest enemies—we want to wait a bit to see how genuine their change of heart is. The other is that Bevin has not been —well, he’s not always worked in harness with the engineers; and we want to wait a bit where he’s concerned, too.”

Employers Ignore Fundamentals On the employers’ side, I found an almost too-ready assumption of implicit co-operation from the workers, without guarantees. It is this attitude—blandly ignoring the fundamental question of the profit motive —that I found most irritates the workers of Coventry. With its suspicion that the emergency is being used for profitable ends, it will lead to discord if it is maintained.

The. way to avert discord, it was made clear to me, is to give definite assurances that the employers, too, are to make equivalent sacrifices. And the assurances must be followed quickly by action definitely reducing (not merely limiting) the profits of the industrialists,