M.A., LL.M., C.B.E.; Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; Secretary of Coal Conservation Committee, 1916-1918; Secretary of Advisory Board of Coal Controller, 1917-1919; Secretary of Coal Industry Commission, 1919 (Sankey Commission).
Mr. McNair said:—Need I labour the point that there is a problem of the Mines? Can any one, looking back on the last ten years, when time after time a crisis in the mining industry has threatened the internal peace and equilibrium of the State, deny that there is something seriously wrong with the present constitution of what our chairman has described as this great pivotal industry? What is it that is wrong? If I may take a historical parallel, will you please contrast the political situation and aspirations of the working-class population at the close of the Napoleonic wars with their industrial situation and aspirations now. Politically they were a hundred years ago unenfranchised; more or less constant political ferment prevailed until the Reform Bill, and later, extensions of the franchise applied the Liberal solution of putting it within the power of the people, if they wished it, to take an effective share in the control of political affairs.
Industrially, their situation to-day is not unlike their political situation a hundred years ago. Such influence as they have got is exerted almost entirely outside the constitution of industry, and very often in opposition to it. Their trade unions, workers’ committees, councils of action, triple alliances, and so forth, are not part of the regular industrial machine, and too often are found athwart its path. They are members of an industry with substantially no constitutional control over it, just as a hundred years ago they were members of a State whose destinies they had no constitutional power to direct.
This does not mean that a hundred years ago every working man wanted the political vote, nor that now he wants to sit on a committee and control his industry. It meant that a substantial number of the more enlightened and ambitious did—a large enough number to be a source of permanent discontent until they got it. The same is true to-day in the case of many industries. Many men in all classes of society are content to do their job, take their money, go home and work in their gardens, or course dogs or fly pigeons. They are very good citizens. Many others, equally good citizens, take a more mental and active interest in their job, and want to have some share in the direction of it. This class is increasing and should not be discouraged. They constitute our problem. The Liberal solution of a gradually extended franchise has cured the political ferment. Political controversy is still acute, and long may it remain so, as it is the sign of a healthy political society. But the ugly, ominous, revolutionary features of a hundred years ago in the sphere of politics have substantially gone or been transferred to the industrial sphere.