COAL FIRST
By WALTER TAPLIN
THE right to be ignorant on the subject of coal-mining does not exist for any British citizen. The importance of the issue is clear and the facts are available. Few industries anywhere have been so closely examined and so often reported upon. The published statistics on coal are extraordinarily detailed. The organisation of the industry has been examined ad nauseam and has recently been put on an entirely new footing by nationalisation. Its technical problems have been carefully and thoroughly stated in the Reid Report of May, 1945, a document whose relevance today is not merely clear, but startling. In fact the light of knowledge seems to have blinded the people. The search for a way out of the present emergency is ceaseless, but it has tended to be aimless and it has certainly been fruitless. The political and economic life of the country after the fuel crisis presents the appearance of a disturbed ant-heap, with the difference that the purposeful reconstructive activity of ants seems to be missing. In these circumstances there is much to be said for spelling out the problem in the simplest terms, even at the risk of reiterating the obvious, for the real problem now is not to ascertain the facts but to envisage them—to realise them as sharply and as freshly as possible. We are not seeking the unknown. We are trying to grasp the known.
It is .necessary to recite the alphabet of coal production, but not parrot-fashion as alphabets are usually recited. It must be gone over step by step, with the fullest possible realisation of what each letter means. The first step is to be clear about what we want to do. We want to increase the production of coal. We want to do it and we must do it. So far nobody has denied this first proposition, and if there were any who ever doubted its truth, their doubts have been removed by the shortage of dollars and the events of February, 1947. So the first step is plain. The second is equally plain and equally elementary. We know how to increase the production of coal. That statement needs to be made rather more frequently and more em- phatically than the first. There are always a number of the would-be profound who take satisfaction in the pseudo-tragic attitude of one who knows what to do and doesn't know how to do it. At present there is less time than usual to be wasted on these persons. To deny that we know how to increase the production of coal is to deny the published evidence. It is also to deny the existence of .a vast reservoir of skill, intelligence and technical knowledge in British miners, managers and engineers. The Reid Report makes it overwhelmingly plain to those who did not know it already that a substantial increase in British coal production can quite certainly be brought about by three things—reorganisation and replanning of the mines, the ex- tension and improvement of mechanical aids, and the full co-opera- tion and effort of the miners.
Once again it is necessary to insist on the obvious. The would-be profound are apt to argue that it is easy to state the need for re- organisation, mechanisation and effort, but that it is difficult to state exactly what these things mean. It may be admitted at once that the needs are obvious. But it is precisely the tendency to overlook the obvious which is at the root of the present emergency. The obvious must be re-stated, and re-stated in such a way that this time it strikes home. As to exactly what is meant by reorganisation, mechanisation and effort, it cannot either be expressed by or made comprehensible to the outside observer. To expect to grasp all the details is to waste time. Only the man who has sweated at the coal-face knows exactly what it means. Only the man who has tried to solve in detail the key problem of the mechanical loading of coal grasps its full difficulty. Only the man who has had to work out in practice the size, layout, power supply, ventilation and haulage system of a new mine sees the real problem. But millions of people now know what it means to go short of coal. And an alert minority have a fair idea what it will mean if the shortage is not cured. For the general public outside the mines, the important point is not to comprehend all the details of the problem, but to get its major elements in the right order. The object is not to give a complete set of right answers, but to ask the right questions.
The really searching question may be arrived at by a process of elimination. Major reorganisation includes' new surveys, planning
the mines on the optimi,un scale, amalgamation, shutting down old or incurably inefficient pits, and re-designing those which need it. It has been too long delayed under private enterprise by landowners who grasped after royalties and resisted the principle of amalgama- tion. Those miners who point to these things as major causes of our present distresses are right. But now the barriers are down. The coal industry has been nationalised and the Coal Board can go ahead with large-scale planning. Undoubtedly it will make a vast difference in the long run. Moreover the success of mechanisation in detail depends on it. But, as the Reicd Report says quite explicitly, the whole conception of large-scale planning is opposed to a policy of quick returns. In fact although it is just conceivable that some small results of such planning may appear in the next twelve months, it could hardly make much difference to the amount of coal produced.
It is also doubtful in the short run whether mechanisation will make much difference either. First of all it is statistically unlikely. In 1945, 72 per cent. of the total British output of coal was already cut by machinery, and 71 per cent. was mechanically conveyed. In a certain proportion of the remaining mines conditions were un- suitable for mechanical working. There is scope for more and better cutters and conveyors, but it is a limited scope. There is an enormous gap to be filled in power loading—the transfer of the coal from the cutter to the conveyor. The percentage of coal so loaded in 1945 was less than 2 per cent. of the total. But the technical problems to be solved are great and their full solution may involve radical changes in cutting as well. Likewise there is plenty to be done to improve haulage, winding, cleaning and all the other operations of mining, but not much of it can be completed in 1947, or more precisely in the -critical six months from May to October in which the stocks for next winter must be built up. Something might be done in the short run to improve the supply of switchgear for use under ground. It is a key item, and the Reid Report calls not only for more of it but for some changes in design. But it is less than honest to blame present levels of production on shortages of this one item.
Increased numbers of men cannot do much to solve the immediate problem. Training takes time ; even a former miner who comes back to the pits will not be fully effective until he has fitted in to a routine which has been considerably altered in the past years by increasing mechanisation ; and in conditions of all-round shortage of labour the decision to transfer men from one industry to another cannot be made lightly. Moreover there is little doubt that in the long run the effect of reorganisation and mechanisation will be to reduce the total labour force required. Such considerations tend to take second place in a crisis, but they remain considerations, particularly for the men concerned. In sum they mean that although some increase in the labour force is inevitable, if only to put willing men in the place of unwilling, anything which can be done to limit its size should be done. And the things which can do most to limit its size are harder work and better attendance on the part of the present labour force.
That is the real answer. That is the climax of the obvious. Only the miners oan provide the coal we need this year. It is useless to talk about planning, mechanisation, foreign labour and the rest and to pass over the miners in discreet silence. The miners must be talked to—not talked at. And the Government and their union must do the talking for the whole .country. Planning can do much in the long term. Mechanisation and recruitment can do something in the medium term. But in the short term everything depends on the miners. At every point in the Reid Report it is made perfectly plain that progress with planning and machinery is so much waste of time unless the men make it work.
" The first point to emphasise is that no amount of mechanisa- tion can do away with the necessity for regular attendance and a full and fair day's work."
" The problem of securing full co-operation between the em- ployers and the workmen is the most difficult and urgent task the Industry has to face."
Those are the crucial words of a crucial Report. They point straight to higher real wages, better food, better housing, every possible kind of incentive. But they do not point to the five-day week in 1947. The five-day week will surely come. The efficient working of mechanised mines, as well as reason and equity demand it—bur not this year. In the long run the five-day week is a necessity. This year it will be a disaster. But the National Union of Mineworkers have not dropped the demand, despite the fact that it is just as clear tO them as to anyone else that it is certain to reduce production. Why is it not postponed—this demand which will prevent the willing majority from working six shifts and make no difference whatever to the unwilling minority who already work less than five?
Before the war the miners had some excuse for not co-operating with the employers. Nearly all that excuse disappeared on January 1st, 1947, when the business changed hands and the State became tUe employer. It was still just possible for the miners to refuse full co-operation. They had always been an exclusive community and they felt that they had been worse treated than the rest. Anyway they did not co-operate fully. In January absenteeism was still more than twice the pre-war figure. Output per manshift was still well below pre-war. On February loth industry broke down. Presum- ably the miners are now convinced that full co-operation is necessary.
At this last stage the whole nature of the problem changes. It is no longer a question of realising the obvious, but of stating it in such a way that it cannot be misunderstood by the miners. Abuse is inappropriate and ineffective—, When mud intended for the idle minority spatters the industrious majority, it does not help to increase production. But bribery is no good either. The miners are grown men, capable of seeing the problem for themselves. They are not so many temperamental prima donnas who have to be buttered up. Nor are they a race of second-rate poets, whose susceptibilities have to be considered at all costs. Special advantages will only be justified to the extent that they increase output. More coal must be produced, and in the next few months only better attendance and harder work by the miners can do it. It is not the task of the country as a whole to abuse or to coax the miners. They must be convinced. In the meantime anything which can be done to put men to work in the places where they will produce most must be done.
[D. N. Chester will iurite next week on "How to Use the Miners."]
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