Letters and Papers Concerning the Trans-Persian Railway and Other Railways in Persia [‎181r] (361/442)

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Coal Mines
294
[ 25 May 1914 1 (^Northumberland) Bill.*
county of Northumberland is as great as
the number anywhere else in Britain.
Does the noble Lord allege that the miners’
agents and the miners’ Members of Parlia
ment returned for Northumberland are
negligent or incompetent ? What was the
explanation given to my noble friend ?
Though my experience, I admit, does not
cover the county of Northumberland, my
experience of miners’ Members of Parlia
ment and miner’s agents in Lancashire is
that they are both competent and willing
to bring any grievance before the proper
authorities. And I will go still further and
say this, that in nineteen cases out of
twenty those grievances are adjusted
without the public as a whole ever hearing
anything about them. What is the matter
with Northumberland ? If this grievance
is so widespread, if the whole Eight Hours
Act is to be torn up, if the whole trade in
Northumberland is to be revolutionised—
because that is what my noble friend is
going to do—is it not very singular that the
question should never have been raised in
the House of Commons, that no Labour
Member for either Northumberland or any
other county should have introduced a Bill
on the subject ? I cannot help thinking
that there must be some misapprehension
or some misunderstanding, and that though
the grievances to which my noble friend
alluded may exist they are probably less
widespread than he imagines; or
else the accredited leaders of the
colliers in Northumberland have come
to the conclusion that the removal of
these grievances would involve even greater
hardships.
The noble Viscount who represents the
Home Office offered a thoroughly un
compromising opposition to this Bill from
beginning to end, a remarkable contrast
to the attitude of the Home Office when
the Eight Hours Bill -was being forced
through. The Home Office seem to
attribute the difficulties to the Eight
Hours Act. That may or may not be the
case. I have no doubt the Home Office
are aware of the consequences of the Act
passed two or three years ago. But if
you pass this amending Bill you will add
tenfold to the difficulties of the Eight
Hours Act. In fact I think you will
make the working of this industry almost
impossible. And when my noble friend
says that we must not turn our backs
upon these difficulties—good gracious me,
who wants to do so ? We object to this Bill
because it will not remove the difficulties.
The miners’ agents and the miners’ Members
of Parliament for Northumberland, just
the same as the employers there, equally
object to this Bill, not because they wish
to turn their backs on the grievance;
far from that; but because they know
that the Bill cannot effectively remove the
grievance without inflicting greater hard
ships. It is not to the benefit of any one,
however mercenary, to turn his back on
difficulties of this kind. It is not to the
interest of the working collier who suffers
under the grievance. It is also not to the
interest of the miners’ agent or the
miners’ Member of Parliament, whose
duty, business, and privilege it is to deal
with these grievances, and to whose
credit must be laid the fact that so many
grievances have been removed. The miners’
agent and Member of Parliament, men of
great experience, are as opposed as anyone
in this country to the final arbitrament of
a strike, because they know the cruel hard
ships which that involves. Nor is it to the
interest of the employer; he desires to
remove the grievances as much as any
i one.
The one thing that interferes with the
harmonious working of a coal pit is that
these hardships, grievances, and fancied
injustices should exist. My noble friend
talked about limited liability companies,
and said that there is no personal touch
now between employers and employed.
My noble friend little realises, as I said in
my opening remarks, how great an
organisation a colliery business is ; and I
will engage to say this without fear of
contradiction for one part of England, and
I have no doubt it equally applies to
Northumberland, that not only week
after week but day after day conferences,
prolonged conferences, take place between
■ the management of these huge industries
and those who represent the workmen
in the trade unions in order to remove
difficulties and asperities. Whatever may
be the result of the present state of things,
the conferences which take place between
employers and employed to-day are
infinitely more numerous than they were
in the so-called good old days fifty years
ago, wffien, according to my noble friend,
difficulties of this kind never existed.
Therefore I say that those who oppose
this Bill must not be charged with a desire
to turn their backs upon these difficulties
| and to ignore them.