The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1926. THE COAL BUSINESS

Southland Times, Issue 19939, 4 August 1926, Page 4

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1926. THE COAL BUSINESS

Now that the two parties to the coal strike are displaying a readiness to get together with some desire to reach a compromise, there is a tendency to ask Mr Baldwin to hurry up. The British Prime Minister is noisily accused of having bungled so badly that the general strike was called on, although it is now known that the interference with the newspapers was premeditated, that the men declared at the time they were acting under instructions, and that the notices calling the strike were actually distributed. The Trades Union Congress employed the general strike as a threat hoping to effect a settlement at the eleventh hour, but when a basis of negotiation offering possibilities of peace was devised the miners summarily rejected it, making no secret of the fact that they

were not going to be led by the Congress. This meant that the “bluff” was called. The Trades Union Congress had threatened to use the general strike weapon and it found iteelf compelled to make good that threat. At the outset it was plain that the much-heralded general strike would fail, and the Congress leaders were in the unfortunate position of having waggled their bogey so hard that everybody could see the sawdust and straw in it. Mr Ramsay MacDonald, in a recent statement about the general strike, makes absurdly clear its aim, which was: At the general body of capitalists in the hope that they might bring pressure to bear on the mine-owners.

Mr MacDonald also says that the general strike “was not (because in its nature it could not be) of help to the miners ... It is best as a threat, but once exposed can no more be used in that way.” Mr Baldwin, with a pistol at his head, calmly requested the holder of it to press the trigger and so “exposed” the threat. After the strike was called off, the Trades Union Congress found the miners as stubborn as ever, and the Government soon discovered that the mineowners were equally mulish. The two parties were content to glare at each other because they felt that in the end economic pressure would comj>el the State to pay them to compromise. This “bluff” seems to have beeh called, and though the dignitaries of the Church have made an appeal for a compromise, involving the State in the payment of a subsidy, surely the industry, which was quite prepared to fight it out while the State went without fires, should be asked to help itself. The mineowners to-day are readier to accept the recommendations of the Samuel report, and the miners are agreeable to consider reductions in wages, but the Government is not prepared yet to renew its offer of a £3,000,000 gift to induce the parties to make peace and resume work. Probably Mr Lloyd George would have achieved wonders with his wily tongue, but the result would have been an industry paid to keep quiet, while it still contained within itself all the elements of a first-class industrial upheaval. The “general strike” would still have been an unexposed threat, ready for future use against nervous Liberal Governments, and the mine-owners would have been just as ready to resist any schemes for the reorganisation of the industry. If the coal upheaval is considered as an incident in party politics, it becomes a rather expensive item. Lord Oxford was anxious to rise above party politics; Mr Lloyd George saw a chance .to hammer the Government and prepare for future co-operation with the Labour Party. That was the reason for their disagreement, and it explains why these two men can work in harmony only so long as Lord Oxford is forbearing. Considered as an industrial contest, the coal strike has been expensive, but not without benefits because it has brought two quarrelsome sections of a vital industry to realise that they cannot expect to lean on the State for everything, or rely on the Government to provide the purse as well as the costa of the battles they wage for it. Out of this expensive war will come a reorganisation that would have been impossible without a strike to bring the two parties to a realisation that compromise

means both give and take. The medicine has been expensive, but the effects will be better than they would have been if a more pleasant and cheaper concoction had been employed.