Hokitika Guardian & Evening star THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21st, 1920. THE BIG STRIKE.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 October 1920, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening star THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21st, 1920. THE BIG STRIKE.

)»» xij!;is tne tnreai> or tne coal strike wa made in late August last, the Dailj J Mail of London as a. result of sendinj J its special Labor correspondent to tin J fount of all information, went on t< I say that public resentment at the min ers’ threat to strangle the nation’s in dustry and to cause wholesale misery and want by stopping coal supplies is intensified now that Mr Smillie has re. vealed the plot behind the strike move Instead of being a strike to get cbeapei coal for the people, as we have been told, Mr Smillie has made it clear that the real aim is nationalisation of the mines. Miners’ wives are raising theii voices against a strike, in unison with the wives of other trade unionists whose homes are endangered by the miners’ threat. Many trade-union leaders and their followers also are against a strike. To mothers and wives it is a rob-tlie-bome strike. For it would force prices still higher, throw millions idle, stop railway and other transport, endanger food supplies and cause widespread misery and want. Mr W. Holland, an expresident of the Notts Miners’ Associations, colls it a “huge revolutionary plot,” which would be defeated if boys were not allowed to vote. "Mr Baker, president of the Leicestershire miners, says ho declines to support any attempt to defeat the Government. The public generally declines to believe that Mr Smillie honestly wants to get the public cheaper coal. The miners themselves would not benefit. They get all the coal they want at 5s a ton. Their interest is in the demand for 2s a day more wages and the hidden aim of nationalisation. The demand for 14s 2d reduction in the price of coal is just so much salt poured on the tail of the sparrow, and the sparrow is not to he caught by any such childish device. The Government’s reasons for refusing the miners’ demands are:—Coal is supplied to homo consumers at the present cost of producing it. The present profits on export ooa lbelong to the country and should benefit it through the Exchequer. This plain statement of the case makes the position understandable. The fact that this was the position, less than two months ago, can make it believable that the strike cannot he popular, and is doomed to failure. Mr Smillie counselling courage to the strikers at the very outset does not suggest that the situation is very inspiring, and it would appear that Labor is entering a cul do sac by the misguided action in striking in the manner now being followed.

Mr Smillie says that the millers are “de- 1 termined that the nation shall own the mines.” Mr Hodges says that “in urging nationalisation, we do not do so for immediate gain, but for the benefit of posterity.” Mr George Barker, the Cardiff miners agent, says that ‘ ‘the , South Wales miners are entitled to no less than 105 per cent, increase owing to the enormous prices charged for Welsh steam coal.” Mr Williams, the Garw (Glamorgan) miners’ agent, complains that the coalowners have been guaranteed profits of twenty-six millions, as compared with pre-war profits of only thirteen millions. Mr Vernon Hartshorn, M.P., has told me that one year’s present profit from the South Wales coalfield would suffice to buiy it outright, and that under the system of regulating wages which has prevailed for forty years past the South Wales miners are entitled to an increase in wages of 7s 6d to 10s a day. Mr Greenall, of the Lancashire and Cheshire Min era ,lias represented to me that the chief grievance of the miners lies in the confiscation by the Government of £66,000,000 a year produced by the industry. In short, every leader appears to have a different reason , for advocating a strike. There is a general unanimity of disagreement. Would it not be well then to get the issue defined by a general consultation of trade unionists before the country is plunged into the appalling calamity of a coal strike The nation is at last entitled to know just exactly what the strike is for. Puksuing this truly national matter further, the correspondent continues his story of the strike as follows in alate copy of the “Daily Mail.” The issue in this coal dispute,” said a Labour M.P. to whom I submitted the point “would certainly gain in clearness if it were frankly discussed by representatives of all the trades which a strike would affect. Instead of one issue it seems to me that at least four issues are involved. There is the claim of the miners to higher wages. There is the claim that the colliery owners’ profits are exorbitant. There is the claim that the Government have no right to appropriate the abnormal profit on exports. And there is the general claim that the miners ought to be nationalised in accordance with the majority report of the Sankey Commission, and with the implied promise of the Government to carry out the recommendations of their own Commission. Now the latter claim strikes me as by far the most important. Indeed, it embraces all the rest. If the' mines \yere nationalised no strike would be threatened. Ought not the miners, then, to concentrate on that one dominant issue by appealing to the Trades Union Congress at Portsmouth to take it up in grim earnest instead of paying mere lip service to a pious but hackneyed annual resolution on the subject? That course, if adopted, would substitute a clear and definite fighting policy for the present confused tangle of wrangles. “If the trade unions are really in faI your of nationalising the mines, their ! united and active support would posi- ’ tively ensure the immediate proposal i of legislation to that effect as soon as : the Labour Party was elected to power. 1 But if the trade unions are only lukewarm about nationalisation, they will be distinctly frosty about a strike which would paralyse the whole of our industries for the sake of a principle of taxation.” Another M.P. here interviewed with the remark that “the incidence of taxation is clearly a matter for parliamentary, not industrial, action. So is the nationalisation of the mines. Instead 0 f threatening their fellow workers with the suffering of wholesale unemployment, the miners ought to make up their minds as to which of their multifarious objects is the most mportant and go for it “baldheaded, with the help of the Parliamentary Party. If they will sound the slogan of Nationalisation, my political snickersnee is at their service to the hilt. But in regard to so deadly a hazard as a coal strike, I am a pacifist.”