AN ANXIOUS TIME

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 14 April 1926, Page 5

AN ANXIOUS TIME

BRITAIN’S COAL INDUSTRY. CRITICAL STAGE REACHED, SUBSIDY NOT TO BE RENEWED. BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION —COPY BIGHT. ' LONDON, April 13. The coal situation is causing increased anxiety in view of the termination of the subsidy payments on April 30. The owners and men meet again today, when the men will communicate tlu> decisions of th e delegate conference against lower wages and longer hours. Thev will also make a statement in connection with their attitude towards the Royal Commission’s report, in which connection the Daily Herald says the miners, like' the owners, do not accept all the recommendations. 'Phe Daily Express says it is expected that Mr Stanley Baldwin (Prime Minister) will summon the representatives of tiip owners and miners to meet him i" n hlv on "Wednesday to demand a clear definition of the terms which each side is willing to enter into a new agreement from May 1. Mr Baldwin’s task will then he to bridge the golf between the two sets of terms. This cannot he effected by renewing the .subsidy. The Government caused it to be known to-night that it adheres definitely to the decision to end the subsidy on April 30. There may be limited assistance in a few hard cases, but only on the understanding tha.t an agreement is reached.

Lord Jelticoe, at a meeting at Croydon in connection with the organisation of a service for the maintenance of supplies, said that, in the event of a general strike the population would be reduced to starvation in a few days. Tho, organisation aimed at supplying voluntary man power for the essential services.. He emphatically denied that ■t was a. provocative or strike-breaking organisation. It would intervene only when the life of the, community was threatened.