The Problem Of Coal

Wanganui Chronicle, 25 February 1947, Page 6

The Problem Of Coal

Why Has Production Declined So Much ?

By

Frank Tilsley

The other day. at Oxford Circus underground .station I reached the lifts .just as the gate closed. As it moved upwards, a few incites before my baffled nose. 1 heard a snatch of conversation between two brisk looking business men carrying brief-cases. “It all comes back 1o coal . . was the phrase which whirled through the locked gates' as the lift went up to street level.

It all comes back to coat. That phrase must be uttered 10,000 times a day, in 10,000 different contexts; it might almost be the signature tune of post-war Britain, the leit-motif of the modern English newspaper. The subject of coal disappears from the front pages quite frequently, to be replaced by unofficial strikes, UNO, Test cricket, the latest murder, a new air crash, starving Europe, the Football Association Cup, the newest British film but alter all these other things have had their day, perhaps only their edition, it all comes back to coal. Can the newly nationalised pits give us the coal we need? That is the question, for coal is Britain’s life blood; we in Britain live and breathe by coal as does no other nation in the world. Ninety-five per cent of all the heating and lighting in the couutry—in the home and the factory alike—comes directly or indirectly from coal. Nearly all our factory motive power comes from coal.' Many of our imports from other countries, 40 million pounds worth before World War 11., were paid for with coal. Now we have not enough coM for export, not enough coal to buy in sufficient quantities the bacon and eggs from Denmark, the meat from the Argentine, and the other goods we so sorely need from a score of different countries. Coal is the one thing these other countries need m|re than anythinng else. But coal is also the one thing we ourselves need more than anything else. We have cut our consumption of coal down to the bone, and still we are short. A Simple Answer. Why has our production of coal declined when from so many other industries ue have so much heartening news of bigger production, more efficient methods, improved quality and better marketing? The answer is simple—we haven't enough miners. The miners we have are growing older -almost a quarter of them are over 50 years old—and the young men will not go down the pits in sufficient numbers. Why won't, the young men go down the pits? I found the answer easily enough on a recent visit to a couple of mines in the English Midlands. At the coal face I talked to several colliers with an average of 20 years’ service down the pits, and they all said the same thing. "My lad isn't going do :t the pit. I don't care what else he ..tes, but he’s not coming down here. I’ve seen too much of it.” They all agreed that conditions have become immeasurably better these last few years, and believed that the nationalisation of lhe mines will in time give them all the main improvements miners have worked and fought for during the past 50 years, but they just didn't want their sons down the mines. Facts and Figures. "It's too dangerous,” said one, and produced a crumpled newspaper cutting from his wallet, full of facts and figures about the mines. I have since checked these figures, and they are true. They showed that more than a quarter of all the miners working are injured every year—injuries sufficiently serious to keep a man off work for more than three days. That maizes 175.000 accidents a year. And then there are the mining diseases, like silicosis, which also take a heavy toll of the men.

Even more important than the danger. though, is the legendary pessimism about the future which seems to have been inlralned in all the old

generation during the great strike ot 1926. One young chap in his early twenties confirmed thij. "The job's all right really.” he said. "Dangerous, aye, and hard work, but conditions are getting better, and wages are really good, especially If you're at the coal face. But these old chaps have grown up to suspect, all the new improvements, specially mechanisation —they're so used to being thrown out of work. Some of them still hate the employers, you Know, say they'd sooner go their own pace. They're even frightened of the prospects of atomic energy and think its going to close down all the pits in four or five years. Well, you can't blame the young 'uns choosing some other job when they get' that sort, of talk day in and uay out. can you? Especially from their mothers —the women are against the pits. But It's all wrong, all prejudice. Mining's a good job now. with good prospects, and getting better all the time.” Modernising the Pita. Mechanisation, whatever some trf the older miners think, is the solution. In the main, experts seem to be agreed that mechanisation can double present production, and that this eventually will give us the coal we need with a labour force even smaller than we I have at present. The Coal Board has launched a scheme to spend a 115 U million over the next five years in modernising the pits and converting the young miners into highly skilled technicians capable of producing more coal per man than ever before, at. a higher rate of pay. The training centre established at Sheffield is training younsters in the new machinery methods, and this is always full. But it all takes time.