Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 4 Tachwedd 1965.
The hon. Gentleman's remarks are not confirmed by Lord Robens at all. Lord Robens has never made the kind of remarks the hon. Gentleman constantly makes.
What I am trying to describe are the feelings, and I think that I have correctly represented them, of people who have seen their industry built up from the lowest by huge efforts and now see it forced into a decline again, by whatever may be the means that force it, whether economic circumstances assisted by Government decision, or what. That is the feeling, and no one can deny that this is a cruel disappointment that has befallen these people.
We are confronted with an extraordinary situation—that many of my hon. Friends have mentioned today, and which was underlined by my right hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Ness Edwards) in yesterday's debate—in which at the time when the South Wales miners and other miners are conducting campaigns to halt the closures, many mines are crying out for miners. That is the central paradox of the whole situation.
What is the cause of it? It is not easy to give a simple answer, but I will draw the attention of the Government and of my hon. Friends to an article in, admittedly, the newspaper Tribune. They do not always take account of what is in the Tribune, though they should. The article was written last week by Mr. Will Paynter, General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, and an extremely important article it was, in my opinion.
I have heard Mr. Will Paynter speak in Wales, in Durham, in Scotland, and elsewhere, and I do not believe that any member of the Government would question the support he has given to trying to build up the coal industry, and contribute to its well-being. He analyses the figures very carefully. He says:
My general conclusion is that the future of the coal industry will be decided less by the Government or the Coal Board than by the marching feet of miners. The future and size of the industry will depend on the number of men prepared to work in it and they are getting less and less wish increasing rapidity.
That conclusion is elaborated in this article with what seems to me to be well-nigh incontrovertible facts. So the situation may very well be that in a few years' time the Government will not be able to maintain even the target for coal they have set in their Plan. That would be a very serious situation for the country
and, for the reason stated by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare (Mr. Probert), very serious from the balance of payments point of view.
It is no good suggesting that all the miners can be crowded into the two prosperous areas. That will not happen. They will not move there. They will move to industries paying much nearer the wage levels of the steel works as compared with the mines. So I say to the Government—and recognising how complicated the problem is, I say it not in any passion for criticising them—that I do not believe that they have yet produced the fuel plan the country requires. Even with this statement or the previous one I do not believe that they have produced it. I believe that Mr. Will Paynter's analysis of what is happening in the industry is correct, and my hon. Friends from Wales will know that if it is true of the whole country, it is even more true of Wales.
The Government must go further. They have already done a considerable amount, but I must say this—and I do not wish to be cantankerous. The Government's capitalisation programme for the industry is extremely good, I do not doubt it at all. It was action that the Government had to take, but I believe that if we had had that action within a month or two of their coming into power it would have made a great psychological difference in the industry. As it was, it was badly timed. In the same way, I think that it would have been better if the Government, in introducing their fuel policy, had produced the financial methods to be employed to assist the transferences that are to take place.
Over and above that, my most important conclusion about it is that I believe that the Government will have to go very much further, maybe to a fresh capitalisation programme, which would alter the test of which pits are uneconomic. Therefore, I plead with the Government not to be content with the measures that they have so far presented, because, although they have striven to assist the industry, I think they will have to go much further still. We certainly do not need any advice from the Opposition benches about the matter, because all of us can well remember how the Govern- ment's proposals about recapitalisation were received when they were announced by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Power.
In conclusion, I would merely say that I agree very strongly with my hon. Friends in what they have said about the Local Employment Act. We are glad that our areas are covered by it. I am very glad that the week before last the Government made an announcement about Ebbw Vale and Tredegar, an area which covers part of my constituency, which was not previously covered by the Act but is now to be covered. However, it is clear from previous experience and from what has been said from these benches that the Act by itself is insufficient to deal with the problems of the towns in the heads of the valleys—Ebbw Vale, Tredegar and so on. Ebbw Vale is in a slightly different position. We need to have a much bigger programme for varying the kind of industry that we have in such areas.
The resurrection of the coal industry after the Second World War was one of the great industrial feats of this country, a feat which has contributed so largely to the better position in Wales. This never receives any acknowledgement from the Opposition. They cannot boast of it because it has been done under public ownership. Most of the revivals in Wales have been done under public ownership. There was the money put into the coal industry and that put into the steel industry, particularly in the right hon. Gentleman's constituency—all of it done under public ownership. In the same way, it can only be by an extension of the methods of public ownership and by Government direct intervention to assist these areas that we can carry through the change in those places that we desire, and establish what I believe to be an obvious fact for anyone who has seen Wales or has a home there, as I have, that it is much better to live in the valley towns than down the coast. Anyone who had a choice between living in Tredegar and living in Newport and chose Newport of his own free will should be examined. So the Government start with great advantage in this respect. Therefore, I plead with them to consider how the application of the principle of public ownership has rebuilt the Wales of our time and how an extension of that principle can carry it very much further.