25.01.1996

Government plans for saving

From 'The Workers’ Weekly', paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, January 22 1926

A BIG government scheme is announced to meet the coming crisis when the coal subsidy ends in May.

... Certain members of the government are to form an ‘inner cabinet’ and 14 other ministers will be placed in charge of districts.

These ministers will have complete powers in respect of all supplies of food, postal services, transport and distribution of coal ... This is the scheme in outline.

It will be used of course to smash any attempt by the miners to resist an attack on their wages and conditions. That attack is quite certain.

The Coal Commission has now concluded its public sittings, and has retired to concoct its ‘remedy’.

The evidence submitted to the commission has unquestionably established three things:

• That capitalism has no solution for its ever more pressing problems of bankruptcy
• That the coal owners are utterly callous to the welfare of those they exploit
• That any scheme of reformism aimed at a revival of the capitalist system in the mines is doomed to failure.

... The ‘proposals’ of the owners, as we showed last week, involve (1) wage cuts, (2) lengthening of hours, (3) dismissal of 100,000 miners, (4) district agreements and the smashing of the MFGB, (5) a 25% cut in rail rates, to be accomplished by driving the railway workers down to worse than pre-war conditions.

Quite a number of capitalists and capitalist spokesmen are uneasy about the owners’ proposals ... They are not at all sure of their powers to crush the workers next May.