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.

The miners and Laborites who have not seldom hanged "Murderer Churchill" in effigy, proved so receptive to the new compromise that a slogan ran through the coal fields last week: "Churchill will fix it!" The owners, slow to relax their demands, nevertheless announced that "in deference to Mr. Churchill" they would take his proposals under intensive advisement. Finally it was apparent to all that Premier Baldwin displayed great shrewdness in letting "Winnie" turn the Cabinet's somersault.

The English will indeed take almost anything from Winston Churchill with relatively good grace. As a young man, just returned on leave from overseas service, he once exuberantly climbed a pillar in one of London's most fashionable music halls and demanded cheers for the ladies of pleasure to be found in the lobby. Theirs were, he said, the only breasts on which a roving English soldier's head was always sure of comfort and repose. . . .

Young "Winnie" did not lose social caste by this escapade. Chancellor Churchill, still winning in middle age, was thought to have gained prestige for the whole Cabinet by his acrobatics of last week.

Developments. The annual British Trades Union Congress met last week at Bournemouth and went on record by a sizable majority against future employment of the "general strike" weapon by British labor. A feature of the meeting was the announcement that Russian trades unionists will contribute 1,000,000 more rubles ($500,000) to the support of the coal strike.

* i.e. Extending the hours of labor made it possible for the coal owners to offer higher wages and thus tempt the miners back to work through the "door" of regional agreements which they would not have contracted at the seven-hour wage.