Why we don’t get the coal
The prospect of a coal crisis has produced the usual crop of enquiries about the coal industry. What exactly is wrong with it?
As might be expected, the Sunday Express has the answer. It has gone to the expense of sending a journalist, a Mr. Gwyn Lewis, on a three-week tour of the coalfields. Mr. Lewis has now produced his report: it appeared in the Sunday Express on February 4th.
The article covers nearly thirty-two inches of column-space; and more than three-quarters of it (over twenty-four inches) is taken up with complaints about the idleness of some of the miners. :If every man on the payroll did an honest day’s work the present hardships would have been greatly mitigated.” The article avoids statistics which would give the exact position over all the coalfields: instead, there are vague allegations, interspersed with figures applying only to single pits on single days, which are of no use at all to anyone who wants a true picture of the situation, but which are none the less valuable for propaganda purposes. This is the kind of thing: “In Midlands colliery towns I saw miners’ welfare institutes filled with men playing cards when they should have been working.” There are no details given with the aid of which one could check up on the accuracy of the observation. Which Midlands colliery towns? Which miners’ institutes, and how many of them? What exact number of men is the vague verb “filled” intended to convey? How did the reporter know they “should have been working?” After all, there are some men in a miner’s institute at every hour of the day: in the morning, the afternoon shift men, and in the afternoon and evening, the day and night shift men. Perhaps Mr. Lewis is skilled in telepathy; at any rate, his information did not come from the men themselves, for in his next sentence his complains that “when I tried to get their point of view I could only get ’whose deal?’ and a request not to interfere with the card-playing.”
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Contrast
What a contrast this makes with the recent incident at a club which caters for another class of the population. On the one hand we have a group of miners, spending their leisure hours in their own institute, accosted by a Tory journalist who wants to know why they are not working harder: and all they do is to request him politely not to interfere with the game. And on the other hand a group of “gentlemen” in a London club last month were so incensed with the mere inoffensive presence of a man whose political views they consider too Leftish, that one of them, who learnt his manners at Eton and Oxford, made an unprovoked physical assault on him as he left.
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Duties as Citizens
But to get back to these idle miners. A printed sheet was distributed to every one of them containing a New Year’s message from Mr. Attlee, appealing to him to work harder; but Coal Board officials say it has had no result. A Coal Board assistant director tells this woeful tale: “We tried giving the men lectures on their duties as citizens. Most of them listen, but some call out 'Tell us when you are finished.’ ” The lecturers’ task would probably be easier if the duties were the same for all the citizens. As it is, the miners can be forgiven for taking up a cynical attitude when they read an article by a man who hints that colliers are lazy because they are paid too much, but who doesn’t mention the £14,000,000 a year paid to the ex-coal-owners; and who says it is becoming a “common practice” for miners to take Monday off, and sometimes Friday as well, but who has no harsh remarks for the shareholders who take all seven days off and still draw an income.
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No wage-earners need apply
Do you want to be a Conservative M.P.? You stand a poor chance if you come from the lower income groups.
“Comment,” which describes itself as a right-wing magazine run by undergraduates, has published in its January, 1951, number some statistics about the social background of the Conservative members of the House of Commons. Of the 298 M.P.s, the schools of 52 are unknown: but of those whose schools can be discovered, 214, or 87 per cent, went to public schools (including 79, or 32 per cent., to Eton). Again, of the 298 M.P.s, 62 per cent, went to Oxford, Cambridge, or “one of the military colleges—nearly always Sandhurst.”
The occupations of Tory M.P.s are also listed, though no attempt is made to divide them into two or three big groups; “Comment” says it would be difficult to know in which group to place a man “who is perhaps a landowner, director of a big industrial company, and was for ten years in the regular army." Readers of the Socialist Standard might enlighten the editors of “Comment” as to which social group an M.P. with these particular qualifications would belong. But the statistics given are quite interesting enough in themselves. 36 are farmers or landowners; 37 are in business; 16 are in industry; 17 are publishers. These groups provide 106 M.P.s, or 36 per cent, of the total number. Then there are 31 (or 10 per cent) from the Services, and 124 (42 per cent.) are professional„ men. Of those M.P.s who are not listed in any of the above categories, 6 are women, and 59 are put down as “unknowns’’—this figure, which" is 19 per cent., includes all the full-time politicians. Furthermore, “Comment” calculates that there are anything from 500 to 1,000 directorships spread among the 298 members.
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Good opportunities for smart aristocrat
Even after five years of Labour Government with its “inevitable fall in the number of knighthoods and baronetcies conferred on Conservative members,” there are well over 100 M.P.s, more than a third of the total number, who “either hold titles themselves or are intimately related to title-holders.”
And how do these sirs and honourables get into Parliament? Elsewhere “Comment” quotes from a forthcoming book by Mr. Herbert Nicholas on the General Election; and it appears, even allowing for the fact that the Tory definition of “working-class” is more restricted than the Socialist definition, that 54 per cent. of those who voted Conservative last year are working-class electors (compared with 89 per cent. of the Labour voters). So both big parties get most of their support from wage-earners.
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Incomes
Last October the Commissioners of Inland Revenue published their report for the year ended March, 1949; and according to this, in a country which some simple Labourites continue to refer to as “Socialist Britain,” there were eighty-six people left with an annual income exceeding £6,000 a year after payment of income-tax and surtax. There were more than five thousand people having incomes of between £80 and £120 a week, and nearly 80,000 with between £40 and £80 a week after payment of taxes. On the other hand, there are eight and a half million given as having incomes between £3 and £5 a week, and 1,113,000 with between £2 14s. and £3 after tax. Those with less than £135 a year are not mulcted of income-tax by a generous government, so they are not dealt with in the report.
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How to suffer in style
These figures go some way towards explaining the news which appears every so often in the Tory papers about the activities of the rich, and form a strange commentary on the statement of the Continental Daily Mail (26-7-50) that “the wealthiest classes have been almost destroyed by the tax-collector.” If we believed the Continental Daily Mail we would find it difficult to understand how the Eton entry-list is filled up till 1963, when its costs £308 a year to send a boy there, “plus a small amount for extras ” (Daily Mail, 12-12-50); and why Harrod’s think it worth while to insert an eight-inch two-column advertisement in the Observer (11-2-51) devoted to the charms of a fur coat which costs £357—more than most workers get in a year; and how Sir Bernard and Lady Docker can afford to give an “epic” cocktail party at the Royal Thames Yacht Club, which was just large enough, so we are informed, to take the hundreds of guests, while motorists queued for a mile outside to get to the party (Sunday Express, 17-12-50). For good measure we are told, in the same paper eight weeks earlier, that Sir Bernard is having a car made specially for his wife, complete with cocktail cabinet, radio set, silver- equipped vanity case, bookshelf, and fluorescent lighting. Gallant Sir Bernard. And wealthy Sir Bernard. The car is costing £5,622.
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Dodgers and super-dodgers
But the official figures apparently do not tell the whole story. The report issued by the income tax authorities cannot be wholly accurate if some people do not reveal their real incomes to the tax inspectors; and it seems that evasion is being practised on a large scale. One inspector of taxes says: “There are roughly 20,000 dodgers, but half the £40,000,000 withheld from the State each year can be accounted for by approximately 2,000 super-dodgers.” (Sunday Express, 31-12-50). This would make the super-dodgers withhold an average of £10,000 a year each. And what is the total income of a man who should pay tax at the rate of £200 a week”
Yet the Tories still tell us that the wealthiest have been almost destroyed.
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Undesirable familiarity
It is comforting to think that Mr. Millard Caldwell, the head of US Civil Defence, has confidence in us. Mr. Caldwell said in London: “ You will find that your people will take atomic bombs just like they took others.” (Reynolds News, 11-2-51).
An official of the Ministry of Supply agreed with him. He said: “ It would be just the same as in the last war. The more familiar we get with atomic bombs, the easier they will be to deal with.” But just how familiar do we have to get with atomic bombs? J. Bronowski, writing in the Observer (4-2-51) says that whereas the type of atomic bomb used in the last war caused a circle of destruction only two miles across, a hydrogen bomb weighing a ton would “cause irreparable damage over a circle on the ground which measures twenty miles across.” That is to say, it could destroy London from Barnet to Croydon, and from Hounslow to Woolwich; and burns and fires from it would reach through a circle of thirty miles in diameter. Such a bomb dropped on London “would kill far more than 1,000,000 people.”
Has the Ministry of Supply worked out how many bombs of this size will have to be dropped before we consider ourselves familiar with them?
Alwyn Edgar
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