Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 4 Tachwedd 1965.
But he would not have the safety and security which he enjoys as a professional worker above ground. He would have to face all the hazards that are there. With his singular insensitivity he has been speaking of how good it is to work in the mines today. It is quite true that they are different from the rat-holes of yesteryear, when they were owned by the coal owners. Those of us who have been down them, have seen the distinction between one and the other, but they are certainly not factory conditions. If the hon. Gentleman would look at the industrial injuries suffered in the mines he would understand the hazards that exist, and perhaps, if he represented a constituency which included miners, he would hear them coughing their lungs out and begin to understand what it means to be working in the mines.
It is no good him talking flippantly, as he does, about absenteeism. There is a good reason why there is absenteeism in the mines. Nobody finds absenteeism a feature of ex-miners now working in the nylon factories and steelworks. The reason for absenteeism in the mines is that it is an unpleasant job and a rotten occupation, and anybody with a ha'porth of sense looks forward to the day when this country can be emancipated from the need for mines. In the meantime, the nation must face the fact that we cannot have miners unless we are prepared to make them the aristocrats of labour and to subsidise them by giving them higher wages, if necessary, than are earned by stockbrokers or lawyers, because it is an irksome occupation which people do not wish to follow.
We have to think of providing miners, not with miserable pensions, but with worthwhile pensions at the end of their working lives. We have to give them shorter hours. A high percentage of miners will not work in the mines for a full working week because they are not prepared to tolerate the conditions for a full long week. It is not surprising. In some parts of the United States a four-day week was being worked by miners years ago, and they have earned wages which would have staggered many hon. Members.
If we are to have miners, they will have to be cosseted instead of being kicked round as they have been kicked round for generations. It is no good abusing them, and it is no good decrying them. We have to get to the stage of giving them pride of place among the British working class. That stage has not yet been reached.
I do not want to minimise what the Labour Government have done for the miners. There is a great gulf between the way in which they were treated by the last Government and the way in which they are treated by ourselves. We know of the capital reconstruction which has taken place. We know of the relief given to the obsolescent fund. We know about the 5 per cent. preference in respect of Government buildings and the guaranteed market in the gas and electricity industries. In principle, the Government have taken the problem to be a national responsibility. Nevertheless, it is not enough.
In the White Paper the Government say that they will make a 50 per cent. contribution to the Coal Board's social burden. I do not regard that as enough. If we are to move people from one end of Wales to the other, as perhaps we should, we will need very good resettlement grants and a considerble sum to cover removal costs. We shall have to have enlarged severance grants and higher redundancy payments. We have to treat miners with the consideration which alone will keep them underground. Unless we face these realities, there will be no miners in South Wales. On present trends, there will not be a miner left in Wales in a decade.
I turn to two other particular problems. I want first to talk about something which is causing deep concern in my constituency and which should be causing deep concern in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Monmouth. There are traditional industries in Wales which have to suffer agonising changes as a consequence of technological advances or because the national interests compel options to be taken up which adversely affect us in the Principality. However, what is quite intolerable is that severe and irrevocable damage should needlessly be inflicted upon any of our great new industries as a consequence of the private wars of rival capitalist groups or because of the personality conflicts of competing tycoons.
Three years ago, the 6,000 employees from all over Monmouthshire who are employed in the nylon industry in my constituency—many of them live in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Monmouth—looked on with dismay as they saw the man-made fibre industry, which in Pontypool was jointly owned by Courtaulds and I.C.I., made the object of a senseless and tasteless battle between rival directorates. To their disgust, my constituents found themselves booted around as a football buried amidst a scrum of undignified and brawling directorates battling for personal power, shareholders' profits and capital gains.
The dismay of Monmouthshire was all the greater because we knew that British Nylon Spinners was a splendid success. Constructed in Pontypool because of the Labour Government's pressure, it triumphed as a consequence of a long co-operative effort by management, research, and commercial staff and operatives in which all who have participated rightly take pride. But, as we all know, the trail of acrimony which was evidently left behind as a result of I.C.I.'s abortive bid to take over Courtaulds led to an untenable situation; and without reference to all those who had built this great industry in Monmouthshire, as part of the unscrambling deal to clear up the mess caused by this wilful and unnecessary quarrel, I.C.I. took over B.N.S. totally and absorbed it in the I.C.I. Fibres Division.
Now the headquarters has been brutally wrenched away from Pontypool and placed in, of all places, that area of high unemployment, Harrogate—hardly a place, I should have thought, which could be looked on with favour by a Government concerned that this industry should not become a satellite of an English company. Already denuding has taken place of some of the technical senior staff and worse may follow. An ultimate threat exists to 1,000 to 1,500 men employed in administrative, technical and commercial departments. The brains and quality of the men and women who over the years have been attracted to those departments have splendidly leavened our community in Monmouthshire.
To close down the research and development departments in Pontypool and to treat this huge industry as a mere satellite of an English-based company is a dismaying prospect. If these thoughts are in the minds of I.C.I. it is surely time that they thought again. I trust that I can have the Minister's assurance that the Welsh Office will not passively accept the development of such an unfortunate situation.
There is another matter I want to speak about before concluding my remarks. Sometimes we get so bogged down in present problems that we do not lift our eyes enough to look forward to the future, and occasionally schemes come into existence which may be ignored or buried. Few schemes touching upon the industrial future of South Wales and Monmouthshire could be more imaginative than the proposal that a completely new deepwater port on an island site should be created in the Severn Estuary.
This concept, coming from one of the leading firms of consulting engineers in Europe, is that the land around Denny Island, which is exposed at low time, may be raised to form a large artificial island, thus providing ample space for a new port which the authors of the scheme have named "Britport". This reclamation would enable an airport of international standards to be placed alongside the deepwater port with all the advantages of general communications and Customs facilities. In addition, it would have the dual merit of being close to the Severn Bridge, the nub of the new motorway, yet clear of any densely-populated area.
Those of us who do not represent any particular port in Wales must have felt that all the schemes affecting the Severn Estuary which have been submitted to the National Ports Council and discussed in committees were designed to suit particular needs, such as the discharge of iron ore, or the improvement of existing port facilities, but all have lacked a national approach. Yet the Rochdale Committee Report recommended the building of deep-water berths in large numbers as a matter of economic necessity for the United Kingdom and forecast a 100 per cent. growth of foreign trade in the United Kingdom by 1980—itself a conservative estimate in the light of the N.E.D.C. target growths.
With the Rochdale Report and the Iron and Steel Board forecasts of foreign trade spending in the South Wales ports by 1980 by way of dry cargo and iron ore—a further 12 million tons per annum—there may well be a demand for more than 20 deep-water berths linked to the northern shore of the Severn Estuary, apart from two special deep-water berths to meet the iron ore demands of the South Wales steel industry. The Denny Island scheme envisages that the island will accommodate 30 deep-water berths and could take vessels of up to 65,000 tons deadweight. In this respect it would match Europort. By its proximity to the Severn Railway Tunnel and the Severn Bridge, the heart of the inland transport network, it could share with Portbury the trade from the Midlands. It would have access to the Severn deep-water channel with a minimum of dredging, be linked with the main roadway network and clear of any major built-up area. It would satisfy the demand for all possible deep-water facilities. What is obvious, too, is the need for an international airport to take advantage of the great possibilities which exist in freight cargo.
This scheme, which could do so much at a future date for Wales, is one which, of course, requires examination by the Government, but the proposers believe that there is a need for an initial and detailed economic planning study in the Severn Estuary as a whole to test their conclusions, and if those conclusions are satisfactory there clearly will be a need for a detailed engineering study involving hydrological and geological research.
I hope the Minister today will encourage the sponsors of this bold scheme to place it before the Economic Council for Wales with an assurance that such a bold scheme, coming from so responsible a quarter, will not be ignored, or stifled by any vested interested. If we have the courage to face up to the complex problems which exist for Wales in the present whilst at the same time raising our eyes to see what could be a great future, then I am quite certain that, with a Government of the calibre of the Government we have now, Wales and Monmouthshire can look forward to a fine future.