April 26, 1918.

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

847

THE FUTURE CONTROL OF
COAL MINES.

On Saturday last, Mr. G. H. D. Cole, secretary of
the Research Department of the Fabian Society,
addressed a meeting of representatives of the lodges
of the Northumberland Miners’ Association, held at
the Burt Hall, Newcastle, on “ The Future Ownership
and Control of Industry, with Special Reference to
Coal Mining.” Mr. Wm. Weir, president of the asso-
ciation, occupied the chair.

Mr. Cole said that during the period of the war the
demand that the workers themselves should control
their industries had gone ahead by leaps and bounds,
so that it was almost accepted as a commonplace by
the majority of trade unionists to-day. That idea
was becoming recognised amongst other classes of
the community also. If they looked at any of the
proposals put forward by the Government or The
Times for reconstruction, they would find that what
was being put forward was some scheme which would
seem to give the workers more control over their
industry without, as a fact, doing anything of the
sort. The road by which the workers would get control
of their industry was not through joint machinery
with the employers—conciliation boards or Whitley
councils. Conciliation boards under right and proper
conditions might be necessary at the present stage of
industrial evolution, but such a board was not and
could not be made a method for securing working-class
control of industry. If the workers wanted control
of industry, they would have to take out of the
employers’ hands altogether certain things which the
employers claimed to do on their own account. At the
present time, all the disciplinary rules of industry
were supposed to be made by the employer. No doubt
the worker did constantly interfere with those rules,
but, however strong his organisation might be, all that
he had was a veto. He could not say, “ This is how I
am going to do a job ” and make the employer toe the
line. They had got to pass into a stage where the
trade union “recognised” the employer, as a first
step towards getting rid of the employer altogether.
That was not a simple business, or a thing that could
be done in a week or merely by whistling for it.

Industrial Unionist Structure.

The miners had the strongest trade union organisa-
tion in the country. They had the enormous advan-
tage, in addition to their numerical strength, that
their organisation, by its very nature, was necessarily
based on the right principle. The trade union branch
in their industry tended to coincide very largely with
the places in which their work was carried on. That
was an advantage that was not common to other trade
unions. It was the greatest advantage the miners’
trade unionism possessed, because it made far easier
the assumption of control of their industry by them-
selves. Even in the mining industry, however, they
had not complete trade unionism. They had all the
colliery workers, other than the miners, in other
organisations — though in Northumberland and
Durham, he believed, they had a fairly close common
organisation. Apart from that defect, they tended
to get together on an industrial basis all the work-
men employed in a group of pits in a particular
district. Theirs was the one union which really had
an industrial unionist structure—not because they
wanted it but just because it happened. They had
got that structure without fighting for it, and they
were extraordinarily lucky to have it.

There was nothing in particular in the working of
an ordinary pit that afforded any insuperable obstacle
to control by trade union. It did not call, in the
ordinary course, for the action of a superman to keep
the pit running. Before, however, they could
develop the mine at all, they required an enormous
capital expenditure. Mining was always a hazardous
experiment. They could never tell whether a new
seam or a new pit was going to pan out well at all.
From the capitalist point of view, mining must always
be a speculative business. There were, too, many
technical difficulties in connection with the working
of pits. The right way out of these difficulties lay in
a combination of suggestions which were sometimes
made from the working-class point of view for the
future of the mining industry. The one suggestion
was the nationalisation of the mining industry; the
other was the suggestion put forward by Marxian
Socialists for the complete control of the mines by
those employed in the industry. He was a National
Guildsman—or, as he preferred to put it, a Guild
Socialist. He wanted to see the nationalisation of
the mines, in the sense of their ownership by the
State, but he wanted to see the actual direction and
management of the pits placed in the hands of the
various miners’ associations.

Nationalisation.

During the war they had had an elaborate system,
on paper, of State control of the mining industry.
The mine managers had been left to carry on very
much as before, with the exception that they might
have had to tear rather more coal out of their seams
than they would have done under ordinary condi-
tions. Apart from that, the management had not
been actually interfered with. The only form that
State control had effectively taken had been a sort of
financial supervision over the mines as a whole, and,
secondly, a form that had brought the miner, for the
first time, face to face with the State in wage negotia-
tions. He did not want that system of State control
to continue after the war; nationalisation was much
easier and so much better policy from every point of
view. If they got the mines nationalised and taken
quite definitely out of the present ownership, they
got a much more easy opening for the assumption of
control by the miners. Nationalisation of mines would
be good for the State. In the past, the State had
always come up against bodies of workers who were
not really strong enough to stand up to it. It had
been able, to a certain extent, to bully the Post Office

employees, and, to a greater extent, the men in the
Admiralty dockyards. He should like to see the State
try it on with the miners; it would be exceedingly
good for the State to have the experience of employing
a million of the best-organised men in the country.
It would be well if, when an industry was nationalised,
it was demonstrated that the State had not the right
to behave to its employees as the private employer
behaved towards his. If the miners could do that,
they would make the future more easy for the other
workers when the latter’s industries came to be
nationalised. They needed nationalism for the pur-
pose, mainly, of absorbing the surplus value which
at present went into the pockets of colliery owners.
He did not say that all collieries made large profits;
he knew that some of them did not; but, on the whole,
the owners made a good deal of profit. He did not
want nationalisation of mines for the purpose of
establishing State administration over the mines.
State management of industry was neither good nor
efficient. He wanted to see the management of the
mining industry by the miners themselves. So far
as the purely financial management was concerned—
the trading in coal and, more particularly, the export
of coal—the miners were not yet organised in such
a way that they could take over these things—he did
not say that they would not be in the future—but he
believed that they were organised so that they could
take over the business of running the pits.

Colliery Deputies.

The colliery deputy corresponded roughly with the
foreman in other industries. He did not think that
the deputy should be appointed by the mine-owner
but by the miners’ lodge. Meanwhile, the miners’
lodge should do every thing to keep control over the
deputies when appointed by the owner. There were
some counties where there were actually three organi-
sations competing for deputies. There were deputies
in the Miners’ Federation, deputies in their own
organisations, and deputies subsidised by and working
in close conjunction with the management. It did
not matter whether the workers’ common organisation
was called a federation or a single association, pro-
vided that, in its relations with the management, it
acted as a single association and that they made it
their object that the selection of the deputy from their
own ranks should be a matter for the rank-and-file
miners and not for the owners.

If the miners wanted to assume more control over
industry, they would have to take more interest in
technical education, especially so far as the boys
between 14 and 18 were concerned, so that a sufficient
proportion of their own members would get a suffi-
ciently good technical education to enable them to
play their part in mine control. The miners’ success
would depend upon the extent to which they had, in
their own ranks, men capable of undertaking the more
difficult technical jobs.

He believed that the most important of the points
he had mentioned was that the choice of the deputy
should be a matter for the men. It was not a point
which applied to miners alone, but to every other
aspect of industry. The really big step was for the
trade unions to have the right to choose their own
immediate superiors. There had been a very marked
advance in the organisation of these supervisors of
industry, especially so far as the railways were con-
cerned. If these supervisors, with their new sense
of unity, were not welcomed by the rank-and-file
workers, they would tend to be driven more than
ever on the side of the employers. They should be
treated handsomely by the unions, given special repre-
sentation rights therein, and have their interests
properly safeguarded. These men were not born
servants of the employers. They were employers’ men
because the rank-and-file of the trade unions had lost
control of them. As soon as a man got promoted he
had to transfer his allegiance, in many instances to
resign his membership of the trade union and to have
nothing further to do with the Labour movement.
The workers should not allow the employers to pick
over their brains in that way and to take away the
men who had the most push and go and driving force
—although not necessarily the men with the most
virtue—because push and go and driving force were
very valuable in Labour matters.

As the trade union was pushing out the employer
from the management of the works, it was the business
of the State to push him out of his control over finance
and his securing of the profits of industry. The
ultimate destiny of the employer was to be ousted from
the industry altogether. The trade unions had hardly
financial power to take over the trading side of
industry. These aspects of industry did not, after all,
employ many men. There was no great man-power in
that aspect of the industries, but, in the workshops,
the men could overcome the employers. He believed
the political aspects of the working-class movement
to be very important, and he wanted to see the nature
of the State changed alike by industrial action and
by political action of the workers. The position of a
free producer could only be attained by the worker if
he and his fellows had direct control over the condi-
tions under which the work was done.

Concluding, he affirmed that they did not want the
control of industry by the worker to mean the absorp-
tion of the surplus value in that industry by the
workers themselves; they wanted that surplus value
to be distributed equitably over the whole community.

DISCUSSION.

In reply to questions, Mr. Cole said he thought the
control of the deputy by the miner involved, also, the
control by the miner of technical education. In the
initial stages of the scheme, before the employer was
dispensed with, he suggested—and he hoped they
would not think he was advising the “butty” system
—that the workmen through their lodge should con-
tract collectively for the working of a particular seam
and share the proceeds alike. He wanted to see a
big development of the system of inspectors appointed

by the workmen to inspect the mine from the work-
men’s point of view.

Mr. John Cairns, financial secretary of the associa-
tion, said fie understood Mr. Cole meant to give speed
and acceleration to co-operative production. The local
lodges at present appointed the deputies—inasmuch
as they were generally drawn from the leading men
in the lodges. He assumed that Mr. Cole proposed
that the State should purchase the mines. That would
take a very large sum of money. If the acquisition
was not to De on the purchase system, on what system
was it to be? They would need to have the constabu-
lary and the military behind them if they passed
nationalisation by legal enactment.

Mr. Cole replied that the only way by which they
could get the mines out of the hands of the mine
owners was by nationalisation. Political action was
one way of helping towards that, but he was quite
sure that the best way to get nationalisation was to
make themselves very unpleasant. If the Miners’
Federation made itself sufficient of a nuisance to the
employers, they would clear out and live on annuities,
and if the Federation were sufficient of a nuisance to
the general public, the latter would say, “ For heaven’s
sake, nationalise the mines.” He advised them by all
means to keep their political action going, but to
remember that they would always have to be ready
to back it up by industrial action. Political action
was very useful as a mouthpiece, but the real power
was industrial. When he said they should treat the
supervisors handsomely, he was not thinking that
they should allow the supervisors to exploit the rank
and file, but that these men must have a certain
amount of freedom to act and must be able to give a
certain number of orders.

Mr. R. J. Taylor (Plenmellor) said that tendering
for certain work in the mine and pooling the proceeds
would be very unfair. They would have the strongest
section of workmen in a colliery banding together and
taking work at the lowest prices, doing their weaker
brethren out of a job. Under nationalisation, what
was going to happen to that section of the British
coalfield that was poorer than the others? He did
not say that the owners of that section did not get
profits—otherwise they would not put their money
into it—but he did know that the workers there were
not as well paid as the others, although they worked
equally hard. Besides the difficulties already
enumerated by Mr. Cole, there was the difficulty of
human nature. Were they sufficiently intelligent and
just to manage the pits themselves in the way
indicated? Where would the discipline come in to
safeguard the position of a supervisor?

Mr. Cole replied that if the workers wanted control
they would take control, even if it included being
mutually tolerant and decent towards each other. The
mass of the workers did not want these things suffi-
ciently to make all that he proposed possible at once.
As to the poor mines under nationalisation, what
would happen under trustification? Twice on the
north-east coast, once in the 17th century, and once
early in the 19th, there had been an elaborate kartel
system for the purpose of maintaining prices by
restricting production, and he was convinced that that
system would be adopted after the war if private
ownership were adhered to. The result would be that
the poor mine might not produce a ton of coal but
the owner would not go without his profit. There was
a far better chance of getting decent conditions for
the workmen under the Guild system than there was
under private ownership. He believed that, at first,
there would be a perfect tornado of indiscipline when
the industry was controlled by the workers. Every-
one would think it was going to be a picnic. They
would find, however, that picnics did not turn out
the goods, and, bit by bit, there would be a new kind
of discipline introduced, not the discipline imposed
from outside but the discipline which they would
impose upon themselves for the purpose of getting
the work done—a very much higher form of discipline.

Mr. Harry Dunn (West Wylam) spoke of the regu-
lation of wages in accordance with profits, and asked
Mr. Cole’s opinion.

Mr. Cole said he was afraid he did not think it
made very much difference how they calculated wages
so long as they had got the wage system. Wages did
not depend upon the system under which they were
computed, but upon the wage system itself. Over a
long period, whatever system they adopted would more
or less square itself up. Although the workers had
got to try to get improvements in wages, it was very
largely like a cat chasing its own tail. So long as
they had a system under which one man was allowed
to buy the labour-power of another, that condition of
things would obtain. Answering another question, he
said he wanted the workers to take over the buying
of their machinery and the marketing of their own
goods ultimately.

Asked by Mr. Hogg, treasurer of the association,
whether the appointment of supervisors should be
made by a committee or by the rank and file, Mr. Cole
replied that it depended upon circumstances. Where
a man was needed to have a very good technical
knowledge, committee appointment might be neces-
sary. The essential point was that the whole of the
personnel of the supervision of the industry should
be appointed by the men.

Mr. William Straker, general secretary of the
association, said he thought that private ownership
of industry was incompatible with collective control.
He was not so much in favour of nationalisation in the
old crude form as he used to be. The sort of auto-
cratic controllers we had had did not appeal to him;
but he was in favour of nationalisation with the
control by the people in the industry. In the Miners’
Federation Bill for the nationalisation of the mines
they proposed to issue national bonds to the present
owners. It was calculated by the late Mr. J. H.
Merivale that the capital invested in coal mines would
equal about 12s. per ton upon one year’s output—small
pits probably had a greater proportion of capital to