It had been hoped that the device of the spread-over
—which was introduced into the Mines - Act by the House of Lords and. turned out to be a godsend—would tide over several awkward- weeks or months. There was a fair hope that when the marketing schemes came into operation the question of hours and wages would be seen in a different light and might be much more amenable. In this waiting period the most unwise thing for anybody to do was to fly into a tantrum or make a mountain out of a mole-hill. Neither miners nor owners in the past, it is true, have given us much reason to expect that they would suddenly become appropriately helpful by relaxing their rigid attitude towards details, but we did not expect that Mr. Shinwell,
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the Secretary for Mines, would 'import an inopportune prejudice into the whole issue by declaring that the spread-over in South Wales was a complete farce. Yet that was what he did. No doubt all the arrangements under the spread-over are technically illegal as they have not received the consent of both the Miners' Federa- tion and the Mining Association, but as the Law Officers are apparently content to wink at them it was surely unnecessary for Mr. Shinwell to become a partisan in a matter in which he must be, in a sense, the final arbiter. He added the duties of the jury to those of the judge.
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