BRITAIN’S COAL PROBLEM

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 26 July 1929, Page 3

BRITAIN’S COAL PROBLEM

"( oml. li> list* lilt l appropriate metiiplior, is tlic open pit. which it will he periioos to approach and impossible to avoid,’’ Mr ,1. L tlarvin wrote in the “Observer" on the advent of lip. La hour Onvernnient. “We held the opinion ift 1926 that, for political and in duslriu) reasons taken .together, Itlie degree to which hours weiy then lengthened was unwise, l’.nl a trade working competitively on small margins is now, at the most critical time in its history, based on the arrangements then adopted. Any abrupt shortening of hours would he disastrous. Ihit the miners demand it. The Labour Party is pledged to it up to the teeth. We cannot yet conceive how the Cabinet will'propose to deal with this grim problem]. The temptation to propose nationalisation at once in order to postpone premature reorganisation of hours may become desperate. Hot this would mean the almost certain overthrow of the Government and the political convulsion of the country. Both the Oppositions would insist on the Samuel report as the alternative. If the Government is sanely advised it will adopt the Samuel report with such revision us the intervening years have made necessary. It will decline to go further in the present Parliament; and will firmly entrench itself against its own left wing on the commonsen.se ground that it docs not possess an independent majority of the House of Commons.’’ However, Air Garvin considers that a far-reaching mistake was made in passing over Mr Wheatley, since the best way to manage the left wingers was to place this representative of them in the Cabinet.