British Commonwealth of Nations: Winnie's Plan

Purse-potent British mine owners chomped their breakfast bacon and kippers contentedly. The coal strike they believed was cracking. Premier Baldwin, sometimes inclined to be sentimental toward the miners, was away "water-curing" at Aix-les-Bains. When the Times was brought in by many a butler last week, many a mine owner let it lie negligently for a moment beside his plate. Perhaps it might contain a new outburst against the miners by half bald and otherwise red-headed Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill. There was no sentimentality about "Winnie"—a grandson of the Seventh Duke of Marlborough. A little loud, perhaps, but "Winnie" would keep the Cabinet on the coal owners' side while Premier Baldwin was away. . . .

Somersault. Thus musing, the mine owners opened their Times, suddenly became conscious of the Adam's apples in their throats. With wrathful eyes they read that "Winnie" had somersaulted. In the absence of Premier Baldwin, though presumably at his direction, Chancellor Churchill had reversed the whole policy of the Cabinet, had turned it from encouragement of the owners in their demand that the miners accept longer hours to support of the miners in their resistance to accepting regional instead of national wage agreements.

Statement. Chancellor Churchill declared publicly: "The Government would never have secured passage for the bill extending the hours of mine labor from seven to eight (TIME, July 12) had they known that the owners would thereupon refuse to discuss a national wage settlement. The Government never thought for a moment that opening the door* for district settlements meant shutting it in the face of a national settlement. We wish both doors to be open and settlements to be achieved through both."

Having thus blazoned the Cabinet's shift toward the miners, Mr. Churchill invited the representatives of the Mine Owners Association to confer with him at the Premier's residence, No. 10 Downing Street. Though the owners continued obstinate in their demands that the coal strike be terminated by regional agreements which would shatter the power of the great unions, Mr. Churchill remained firm in the Cabinet's new position and submitted a plan of compromise for consideration by the owners in detail.

Plan. "Winnie" proposed that: 1) a three-cornered conference should be held between the miners, the owners, and the Government at which the broad principles of miner-owner relationships should be fixed and agreed upon by all. 2) Subsequently regional agreements should be made in each mining district, taking local conditions into account but harmonizing with the broad principles of the national agreement.

Significance. The apparent "fairness" of Mr. Churchill's proposal, coming as it did from the principal die-hard Tory in the Cabinet, was shrewdly calculated to benefit the Conservative Party at the next election. Aside from its political aspects, the plan has the advantage of opening an entirely new avenue of escape from the coal dilemma down which both miners and owners can travel without loss of amour-propre.