South Yorkshire Times – Saturday 16 October 1943
Miners And Sailors
Lord Chatfield Stresses Kinship
Coal Sunday at Denaby had a nautical atmosphere, the main speaker being Lord Chatfield, formerly First Sea Lord, who, attired in Admiral’s uniform, told a packed audience in the Miners’ Welfare Hall that miners and sailors had much in common in that hardship and danger was part of their every-day life.
Local colliery officials, members of miners’ branches, the Urban Council and officials, the Home Guard, A.T.C.. Police and Special Constables, Trades Council, Civil Defence Units and Ambulance Brigade paraded from the Lord Conyers Hotel, Conisbrough, headed by the St. John Ambulance Band.
Lord Chatfield had a few words with members of the Ambulance Brigade Band and the Special Constables and inspected the Home Guard, accompanied by Sergt.-Major L. Mosley.
Warrant Officer T. C. Swinbourne was parade marshal, Mr. J. Halford, manager of Denaby Pit, who presided, read a letter sent him by Dr. H. S. Houldsworth, Regional Controller of Fuel and Power, and written by Major G. Lloyd George, Minister of Fuel, who wrote that he hoped Coal Sunday would impress upon everyone that we had now reached the stage when coal production had become of most urgent importance for military operations.
Bunkering
Lord Chatfield said miners provided the lifeblood of Britain and the sailors connected that lifeblood with the rest of the world. He recalled that when he first went to sea over lust over 55 years agoships of the Navy that did not sail were moved by steam and therefore coal. Sailors had to fill their bunkers with coal and it was hard and tiring work. Gradually they found ways of getting the coal in quicker. At the beginning of the last war, when he was Captain of the battle cruiser Lion, they used to go into harbour every ten days and take on 2,000 tons of coal in eight hours, compared with the 24 hours required to coal the old steamships. When he thought of those days and the hard work he believed he could understand what it meant to be a miner.
Describing the dangerous duties of men at sea during war, Lord Chatfield said men in ships were taught to put the ship first and themselves last, and because a sailor was not always thinking of himself he was happy. Miners who saw another miner in danger would give their life for him, just as the seaman would give his life for his ship or shipmates. That was the inspiration we had had today. We had got to urge ourselves put that extra amount of energy into our work.
Lord Chatfield said behind the work of the armies and navies was the work of the civilian army and wars could no longer be won by armies, navies or air forces only. Everyone in this country was competing against their opposite number in Germany and whether we sank or swam depended on whether the civilian army were prepared to put more into their work than their opposites in enemy countries.
Tom Williams, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, told the miners that for 3 ½ years he had been pleading with farmers and those connected with the farming industry to produce more food to save shipplng and men’s lives, Starting with every known disadvantage and the loss of 1 ¼ million men between 21 and 29 years of age, the country had doubled its output of food in three and a half years, thanks largely to the Women’s Land Army.
Mr. Williams said he knew what the miners went through between 1926 and 1929 and he knew the psychological outlook in the industry, but we were confronted with the biggest enemy we had ever been faced with and It was necessary to go all out to deal with the enemy. We wanted something like 4,200,000 tons of coal weekly, and we were only producing something like 3,800,000 tons.
Mr Halford had told him that on the day war broke out the two local collieries had lost 400 men called up with the Territorials. That happened in other parts of the country and in the last few years they had seen the age limit of miners gradually getting older. Some of them might ask, seeing that we were not exporting coal in large quantities, where was the coal going to? The answer was that factories throughout the country were burnlng coal at a colossal rate and coal therefore became the jewel politicians talked about, It was no use sending thousands of men and women to factories to produce weapons of war unless the coal was re to operate the machinery. Coal and food had become two of the primary commodities in the country. “If we want to win the war at the earliest possible moment, save the expenditure of 14 million pounds a day on destruction, save it so that those in the mining industry can enjoy the standard of life they are entitled to after the war, we have to do our best,” said Mr Williams