SIX MONTHS ON STRIKE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19474, 2 November 1926, Page 9

SIX MONTHS ON STRIKE.

BRITISH COALMINEB.S. NO SIGN OF AGREEMENT. COOK'S LATEST THREAT. SABOTAGE IN THE PITS. WARNING TO THE OWNERS. By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright. (Received 7.5 p.m.) A. and N.Z. LONDON. Nov. 1. It is now exactly six months since the coal strike began. Although many men have resumed work three-quarters of the total who are ordinarily employed on the coalfields are still idle. More than 100 additional trains will cease running from to-day in order to conserve the coal supplies. Household coal is fairly plentiful. The Government has even been able to increase the fortnightly ration to each household from one to two hundredweight, but the minimum is being bought owing to the high prices charged. The Prime Minister, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, in a letter, says he has never desisted from his efforts to bring the parties together. • The difficulty throughout has been the impossibility of finding any solution which both sides would agree to accept, even as a basis for discussion. The general secretary of the Miners' Federation, Mr. A. J. Cook, speaking at Liverpool, warned the nation that if the miners were driven back to longer hours they would not work them. They would go down the pits, but they would destroy more than they would construct. •'"We will fight a guerilla warfare," said Mr. Cook. "We will continue the battle more than ever if the miners are forced to work at the point of the bayonet. "To starve the miners will not do the mineowners any good. The miners are not yet beaten. There is a world shortage of coal and the economic conditions are in the miners' favour," Ho appealed to the miners not to become a routed rabble to be massacred by the Government and the owners. 11 the trades unions reiused to back the miners the lattei might be compelled to consider their position.

The coalminers of Britain went on strike on May 1, since when all endeavours to settle the dispute have proved futile. In July. 1945, the mineownexs proposed to pay reduced wages and to ask the men to work lougei hours. The men flatly refused to give up the seven-hours day or to accept lower rales oi pay. When a crisis was imminent the Prune Minister, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, stepped in with a dramatic eleventh-hour ofier of a Govern-* ment subsidy to be paid from August 1 until April 30 of this year. He also promised to set up a commission to inqune into the conditions in the industry, lemporary peace was thus secured. Both promises weie carried out. Ihe subsidy- cost Britain upwards of £22,000,000. The commission was duly set up and it issued its report -on March 12. ,Its recommendations included one that the subsidy should cease at the appointed date. It also recommended a revision of the minimum percentage addition to the standard rates of wages fixed in 1924 in a time of temporary prosperity as being indispensable to wive the industry from the impending disaster. The wages of the lowest paid men would be safeguarded by a continuance of the system of subsistence allowance. The miners declined to accept the report of the commission and ceased work. On May 3 the council of the Trades Union Congress launched a genera! strike in sympathy with them. This failed to achieve any result other than that of causing unprecedented industrial dislocation. It ' brought the miners' case no nearer to settlement. When the general strike had been called off by the trades union leaders r who had initiated it the British Government advanced Eresh proposals for the settlement of the coalmining dispute. These wer based on the recommendations of the commission.

The' Government offered to grant an additional subsidv to the industry of £3,000,000. This offer lapsed on June 1, the miners having failed in the meantime to agree to the other proposed terms. These included a provision to the effect that for an unstated period the men should accept an unstated reduction in wages other than subsistence rates, the owners to make up a proportion of the reduction and the Government to make up the remainder. In the meanwhile a board would be established consisting of three representatives each of the mineowners and miners, with an independent chairman, to frame a national wages and hours agreement governing the principle on which a wages minimum percentage might be ascertained.

The dispute still dragged on and at length the Government put through Parliament a bill under the provisions of which an eight-hours day was permitted to be worked in mines and the Sevenhours Day Act was suspended for five years. Numerous proposals for a settlement on varied lines have since been made. The miners' leaders throughout have been firmly opposed to longer hours, but latterly they had shown more inclination to accept some reduction in wages, provided that any agreement made should be on a national and not on a district basis.

Some weeks ago proposals which led to abortive negotiations between the mineowners and the representatives of the men emanated from several bishops and Free Church leaders. Broadly, they proposed that the Government should continue to assist the industry to some extent while reconstruction plans were put into operation, the men m the meantime to resume work under pre-strike conditions. At the end of September efforts to bring about a settlement were again made by the Government, which proposed a basis of district settlements under a system of national supervision. This scheme was rejected by the miners, who had previously proposed an immediate return to work for three months at reduced wages while an Arbitration Board with an independent chairman assessed the valne of the reforms under the report of the Coal Commission and decided on the ultimate wages to be paid to the men in the different districts. The men demanded the retention of the seven-hours day. All through the mineowners have insisted upon district agreements. The miners at last took the desperate course of calling upon the safety-men employed in the pits to strike. Tim order the safety-men refused to obey. The past three weeks have witnessed a campaign in the Midlands directed by the miners' council of war. the object of which has been to persuade men who have returned to work to again leave the pits.