BRITISH COAL STRIKE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19470, 28 October 1926, Page 9

BRITISH COAL STRIKE.

more peace efforts. CONVERSATIONS RESUMED. trades union action. £ POSSIBLE SETTLEMENT. GOVERNMENT'S ATTITUDE. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyrigr-H. (Received 9.35 p.m.) A. and N.Z. LONDON. Oct. 27. A deputation from the council of the Trades Union Congress had a long interview with the Prime Minister, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, last night. The council is in a most difficult position as it cannot induce the miners to give it freedom to negotiate, although tho leaders of the miners are most anxious to gave their faces and to a raid the appearance of defeat. The members of the council are also anxious to rehabilitate their organisation as the mouthpiece of trades unionism. Parliamentary opinion is not optimistic regarding the proposal of the council of the Trades Union Congress that there should be another conference between the miners, the mineowners and the Government in an effort to reach a settlement of the dispute. The council will to-day convey to the executive of the Miners' Federation the reply of Mr. Baldwin to the deputation. Reports early this morning hint at the possibility of something eventuating from conversations which are to take place between Mr. Baldwin, Mr. Winston Churchill, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and others and the council of the Trades Union Congress, headed by Mr. Arthur Pngh, e.vohairman, who recently appealed for a negotiated peace. The Daily Chronicle says it is reported that the Earl of Derby, who has offered to act as mediator in the dispute if he is asked to do so, and perhaps the Marquess of Londonderry, will be present. The Daily Express predicts the possibility of a settlement based on district agreements. It suggests that the owners are now prepared to offer more generous terms for an immediate return to work. Mr. Churchill, speaking at Wanstead, Esses, said the Government was as ready ss ever to use its good offices to bring the parties together. It was even ready to legislate if one or other of the parties made demands that were outrageously unfair. The mineowners early in September refused the request of the British Government that representatives of the Mining Association should attend a three-party conference with a view to discussing the most expeditious means of ending the deadlock in the protracted coal dispute. In a covering letter to Mr. Winston Churchill, the president of the association, Mr. Evan Williams, said: — "Is there to be any national agreement at all, or is the industry in future to bo regulated purely by district agreements without any national wage-negotiating bodv. With the exception of one small inland district, the 24 district associations have replied clearly and emphatically declining to give tho Mining Association power or authority to enter into agreements on their behalf in regard to terms of employment of the workmen in their respective districts. You will accordingly see that the meeting which you propose could serve no useful purpose. There is no person who would be entitled to speak or to listen on behalf of the coalowners, and I am sure you will agreo that no good, bnt harm, would result from a meeting held under conditions which would expose the parties to a charge of insincerity. "The district coalowners' associations itave been, and are, willing and anxious to meet the miners' associations in their districts at any time without ceremony or any preliminary procedure whatsoever. There is no valid obstacle to this. There is no question of principle that need delay them. None of the district associations raises any objection to the principle of wage regulation by reference to ascertained results, the principle of a minimum percentage below which wages cannot fall, or the principle of subsistence wages. Tho quantitative determinations on these and all other points can only be made in the licht of the circumstances of the districts by those who know them and have to face the results. "A realisation of these facts is imperative, and it is failure to recognise them that stands in the way of these negotiations being entered into at once, and is * alone responsible for the prolongation of the stoppage. I desire to add that the decisions of tho districts arise from a deep and earnest conviction that settlements on a national basis, by linking the indnstry with politics, inevitably take the consideration of purely industrial questions out of their proper economic sphere, have been destructive of peace and prosperity to those engaged in the industry, and, as experience of the immediate past has shown, are a menace to the community as a whole."