I know from my personal knowledge of him that he is very anxious to smooth over the Crisis in the Mining Industry.
Mr. HOPKINSON: Previous speakers in the Debate, with the exception of the hon. Member who spoke from this side, have started with the assumption—and there are certain newspaper proprietors who have endeavoured to inculcate it—that a very severe Crisis in the Mining Industry is inevitable within the next few weeks or months.
He did not submit the figures, but he, apparently, forgot that in 1923, as a result of the dislocation in the Ruhr, there was an artificial advance in the coal trade of this country, and, possibly, if it had not been for such dislocation, there would have been a Crisis in the Mining Industry long before 1924.
It, in fact, seems to fix the date for the next Crisis in the Mining Industry.
Now we are brought to another Crisis in the Mining Industry.
We had the Crisis in the Mining Industry in 1921, and then there was the strike, but between 1921 and 1938 output was actually increased from 15 cwt.
Do I understand from the right hon. Gentleman that he, too, is still of opinion that there is no Crisis in the Mining Industry, in spite of the fact that there are all these stoppages and that they are continuing?
Many of them find it very difficult to understand how we could have reached this point of Crisis in the Mining Industry without having had a national fuel policy long ago.
It briefly states the main factors which signified a new but none the less important Crisis in the Mining Industry.
It is always a very good thing to listen to the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. M. Foot), but, while he might recognise that there is a Crisis in the Mining Industry - which I, also, fully appreciate - I do not think that he realises that there is a crisis in the country.
I should like to put forward some new points to show the background to the present Crisis in the Mining Industry.
Propaganda will create a labour Crisis in the Mining Industry and in other industries in turn.
The House wants to know the answer to one urgent question: will the Government use the opportunity given to them by this important report to find a way out of the Crisis in the Mining Industry?
That, and the problem of cheap imported coal, has produced a Crisis in the Mining Industry.
Although I appreciate that his colleagues do not tell him much these days, may I remind him of the mass unemployment, record bankruptcies, escalating repossessions, the debacle over the exchange rate mechanism, the troubles over Maastricht and the Crisis in the Mining Industry?