DIRT AND DANGER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26904, 16 October 1948, Page 9

DIRT AND DANGER

MINERS AT WORK INCREASED PRODUCTION IN BRITAIN SURPLUS FOR EXPORT By Reece Smith, New Zealand Kemsley Empire Journalist NOTTINGHAM, Sept. 20. Dirt, gloom, cramp and danger are the pleasures of the coal face from which hard, begrimed men pump black blood into the heart of Britain’s' industry. I went to-day to watch some of these men at work. It was a good mine. The four-foot seam was being mechanically cut and transported. The roaring machine was flinging black dust thick on to sweating torsos and faces. Strong workmen were stooped all day to the four-foot ceiling. They laughed at my wonderment, advised a visit to some mines nearby where 20-inch seams were being hand-cut. Men squirming in a 20-inch crevice in the rock, thousands of feet below ground, to get coal for their country's furnaces, locomotives and household hearths. This year there will be enough left over from their efforts, and the efforts of their colleagues, for 15,000,000 tons to be exported in exchange for food and raw materials. These men at the face, personal producers of Britain’s prime fuel, are working. It may be that the miner to-day is not getting as much coal per man as his predecessors. It may also be that former standards of production, and the working conditions attendant on them, are not the best models to aspire to. Recruiting publicity gives the impression that most of i a miner’s time is spent in canteens or pithead baths. Occasionally, perhaps, a clean face and clean hands hold a drill against a coal face while the photographer does his stuff. Which puts it about as far from facts as most recruiting “ dope,” and about as successful. It can be said for private enterprise that many of the canteens, baths, and a solarium were in action before nationalisation. But miners remember more clearly the mines- that bestowed little on ' them except short time and decaying techniques. In some sort of a modification of Gresham’s law, the bad memories drive out the good. It is possible to grow bitter about neglect, real or imagined, while grovelling at a coal face; and the fear of falling dividends is conceivably less haunting, considered from all angles, than the fear of a crushing fall of rock. After the day's work these respective perils can be considered more calmlv in a suburban home and garden than somewhere in a blotch of miners' cottages. Some proof of this lies in the fact that in Nottinghamshire, where the mininp villages for the most part are set tidily on a farming countryside, and where owners kept improving their mines, there has never been industrial trouble as it is known in the blighted areas of South Wales, for instance. Yet the Welsh seams are considerably larger and easier to work than those out-producing them in Nottingshamshire. What is it that takes men to the coal face to-day? It is no longer the case that it is the only job in the village that a man who calls himself a man would consider. Miners, as a whole, urge their sons away from the mines. Yet, according to Lord Hyndley, “ Boys are coming into the pits far better now than for many a long day.” Only the desire for a manly job can be taking to the mines such youths as a trainee we met who had had a factory job assembling prams, earning better money than the mines would give him for quite a time, little dirt and no shift work. Miners, particularly the older ones, are not an easy crowd to understand from afar. Their history has bred in them a belief that no one will give them anything except at the pistol point. They stick together with a cohesion which has long been the envy of other unions and the exasperation of employers. This comradeship, too, has its appeal to recruits.

The British miner, according to several I asked, now feels safe and free. In a first fine careless rapture he expected nationalisation to bring him the sky. There was disillusionment when he did not find himself and his mates ousting the manager. Some of the lads, misconstruing the finer ideological points involved, thought nationalisation was the transfer of the shareholders’ dividends to their own pockets.

The heritage of hatred, and the deeprooted suspicion of management, is dimming. Acts of nationalisation, and smooth words on public occasions, will not do away with them in a week or so. . Trust must be taught through understanding management and wise union leadership. As I saw the British coal industry at Nottingham, it is coming. *