The Times THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 1938. Nationalising Britain's Coal

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 82, 7 April 1938, Page 6

The Times THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 1938. Nationalising Britain's Coal

The most important domestic measure with which the British Parliament is concerned this session is the Coal Bill, which passed its third reading in the Commons yesterday. It is designed to put into effect certain reforms which have been recommended by all disinterested competent authorities for more than fifteen years, including a Royal Commission in 1926 —reforms for lack of which this great basic industry has been the breeding ground of incessant discontent.

The nationalisation which it is to promote, it should be explained at once, is not the nationalisation of the coal industry which the Socialists desire. It is the nationalisation of the “royalties”—that is to say, ownership of the coal and the power to lease coal-getting rights to the mining industry.

The State, acting through a body known as the Coal Commission, is to buy out the royalty owners for the sum of £66,000,000; and since it will be able to borrow this money more cheaply than private borrowers it will be in a position to reduce the charges payable by the collieries. Henceforward, after an interval of preparation, all the coal in Great Britain, whether now worked or remaining to be worked, is to be the property of the Commission. It can make its own conditions for new workings.

Thus armed, the Commission will be equipped with further powers to promote the re-organisation of the industry. One of the most cogent grounds of complaint among the 750,000 men, the majority badly paid and poorly housed, has been that the industry is inefficiently conducted. This complaint has been justified. It is not that all or even a majority of individual owners are incompetent; but waste has arisen from the fact that the mines are managed in economic units which are too small; amalgamations which would have reduced duplication of services and other waste have been resisted by individual companies. Amalgamations should decrease overhead expenses and provide co-operative services.

It will be one of the chief functions of the new Coal Commission to arrange amalgamations, voluntarily if jiossible, but in the last resort by compulsion. It is a defect in the Bill as at present drafted that it still leaves too many loopholes for obstruction; the procedure when compulsion is contemplated is too cumbrous. The Bill may be amended in the Lords if the Government listens to its more progressive supporters. But even under the measure as now drafted the Coal Commission will be a body of authority so great that it will not be easy for reactionary mine-owners to resist its demands for effective re-organisation.

The strengthening of the industry which will result from this measure might present dangers to the consumers. The Government has not forgotten that, and proposes to protect the interests of coal-users by strengthening the safeguards provided under a previous Act.

The reforms proposed are long overdue. Mr. David Lloyd George and the Liberal Party advocated measures similar to these in 1924. If they had been adopted, there would have been no General Strike in 1926. Britain’s prosperity is intimately bound up with the proper use and exploitation of coal. The Government, though the action is belated, is at long last doing well in pushing this measure through during a period of comparative prosperity. For as soon as the reforms become operative the coal industry will be in a better position to maintain itself, and to provide power for other industries mote cheaply, whether in the form of raw coal, or oil, or electricity, and under conditions more favourable to its own workers.