BRITAIN’S 1950 ELECTION TO BE FOUGHT ON STEEL NATIONALISATION

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 40, 12 January 1949, Page 5

BRITAIN’S 1950 ELECTION TO BE FOUGHT ON STEEL NATIONALISATION

Will Subject Have Mass Interest?

(By Reece Smith, New Zealand Kemsley Empire Journalist) London, Dec. 11. The Tories have said they will fight the 1950 election on Steel Nationalisation. This may cheer the Socialist strategists. So soon after an American illustration of voter preoccupation with food and shelter, some may consider it surprising that the Tories select a battle ground steeped in high finance, and stratospheric consideration of the fate of steel shares the common voter is never likely to see or care much about. , A brief look round the British steel industry, and some discussion with men of experience in the business, has persuaded me there is force in some criticism of the steel masters’ performances. The industry has let itself get out of date, badly so in some cases, and the slide began well before the war. Of this the steel masters say let bygones be bygones, and point to considerable plans for the rejuvenation of the industry. (The whole British steel production could come from gour plants of American capacity). These are reaching projects have come from the mind of private enterprise, but as it is the same private enterprise as let itself get into a state where such spectacular salvation was necessary it may be questioned whether any great virtue thus accrues. American Machinery

Pointing to record production and exemplary industrial relations, proponents of private enterprise proclaim the steel industry virile, and in no wise lagging. I have not asked why it is .that the great new £6O million strip rolling mill going up at Margam Abbey, South Wales—the greatest capital enterprise under construction in Britain today—will be equipped with American machinery. Britain’s only other strip mill, Ebbw Vale, is also run largely on American mills. Welshmen are' well aware that

importation of new methods. Consolation comes in some measure from the explanation that the American rolling and tin plate industry was launched and guided by Welsh brains. Why then did British steel masters let such brains and skill go! No one has given an answer to convince me that between the wars the steel masters were as mindful of the future as they might have been. Whether a nationalised industry could have done any better is, in the absence of any evidence, only a good debating point. -Equally proof against final answer are questions as to whether private enterprise could have done better than the State has in coal, railways and airlines. Who Else Has Money? As Ebbw Vale' had to call on the Bank of England for help in building, and as Marggm Abbey is the co-operative work of four great steel concerns, there arises the question of who else but the Government in Britain today has, the money required for capital developments in steel.

Outshone by the Lynskey Tribunal, the Steel Debate in the Commons has so far failed to come up to its advanced billing. Voters may be excused for recalling the fervour of Commons debates over the nationalisation of coal and railways. Some arguments now advanced on either side are practically carbon copies of those advanced then. The voter will then perhaps recall that the Tories have now accepted coal and railway nationalisation, with a tolerably good grace, and concern themselves chiefly with the efficiency of management. May the same, then, not happen over steel? ’• This is not to deny that steel is far and away the most controversial nationalisation issue yet presented to the House.

My impression is that, as in America, the mass of the people will vote on some issue bearing more directly on their day