Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 4 Tachwedd 1965.
The right hon. Gentleman nods his head. But the indecision and the agony of mind existed for many years under a Tory Government while they dithered and, while firmly declaring that they would take over the publicly-owned steel works of Llangwern, placed everybody in a dilemma. However, the steel workers of Monmouth and the right hon. Gentleman's constituency knew what they wanted, and well they showed it when they voted against the right hon. Gentleman, so that he evidently had such a traumatic experience that he even declares that he is now a Welshman for a Welsh constituency.
The fact is that the steel workers who live in the right hon. Gentleman's constituency know what public ownership means and they know that they do not want to be destroyed in the way that Tory policy wants to destroy them by handing over that great steelworks which in pamphlets which he distributed during the Election the right hon. Gentleman exhibited as if it were a product of private enterprise. The steel workers know quite well what would happen to them and their future if by any mischance we ever had a return to the government which has just gone.
I know, too, that legitimately much criticism has gone against the comments of the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Box) on the coal industry. But I did not find the comments of the right hon. Gentleman any less disturbing. He is concerned now that the National Plan shall be well integrated with the proposed closures. His questions were directed to seeing whether the closures were part of a preconceived policy embodied within the National Plan, again a new attitude from the right hon. Gentleman who is apparently now concerned that we should not only plan, but plan very well.
I find that there is a sinister undercurrent in such a proposal, for if there were anything in the questioning by the right hon. Gentleman, it was to suggest that even the closures taking place were not the whole story. Such comments spread even greater alarm than the nonsense spoken by the hon. Member for Cardiff, North, who has so frequently spoken in so extravagant a manner on mines that no one in South Wales any longer takes any notice of him. But it is sinister of the right hon. Member for Monmouth to suggest such a thing to miners, who this moment are so replete with problems, and so full of anxieties that they are not, perhaps, seeing the full consequences of the situation, and I hope that speeches of that kind are not going to be made again, in this House or elsewhere. The problems we have within our mines are real enough without being added to by what I regard as mischievous comment. The problem is complex and sophisticated.
In South Wales it is a problem, because there are, on the one side, mines which are uneconomic and, on the other, we have, as in Monmouthshire, mines which are economic and yet could be rendered uneconomic because there is insufficient manpower, because they may not remain manned, and because the men are being attracted to other industries. If we are going to resolve this problem and are not going to reach the situation which my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale rightly points out could arise—that long before this nation could afford to dispense with its mines, long before alternative fuels are available which we can afford as a nation we were to find ourselves without miners prepared to use the mines—then we will be in a disastrous situation. The indigenous fuel which we have would not be able to be deployed, and our balance of payments would get into a situation that could totally undermine all the National Plan and all the targets which we have set ourselves. That situation is not remote.
I know, representing, as I do, a valley that has some economic mines and has other diversified industry within the region, how difficult it is to put the view to the sons of existing miners that they are needed in a mining industry. Unless in the West, where there is so much insecurity, because of closures, the Government take action to give these men there the feeling that they are not going to be abandoned, then their morale will fall. It is already falling and could spread into Monmouthshire and the economic mines, with the consequence that the men will run from those mines into other industries. If this nation opts, as it is opting in its present fuel policy, for a smaller sector of its fuel to come from coal, and if it says it is going to use gas and oil, then it is no good looking to the Coal Board or to the union to resolve the problem of our mines. It immediately becomes a national decision and therefore a national problem. The nation must accept responsibility. There is a way of getting men down the mines. The hon. Member for Cardiff, North said he would be prepared to go down the mines.