The adjournment debate, strictly limited in time, took place two months later, on 5 July. Driberg deployed his argument at such length that only a few minutes remained for other comment. In this time Herbert briefly stated his accusation that Buchman had falsified his entries to Who’s Who, while Quintin Hogg (later Lord Hailsham) ridiculed both Driberg's and Herbert's arguments as 'tittle-tattle which would not do credit to the senior common room of a girls' school'. 'What are we coming to in this country if we act on such grounds?' he asked. The Home Secretary stood firm, and censured Driberg for 'taking so long to develop his case that it was impossible for other Members to intervene'.4

This was the last public attack which Herbert made on Buchman. Acknowledging his lack of success, he remarked in his autobiography, 'Like Mr Churchill, I cannot maintain my hatreds for ever.'5 Driberg, on the other hand, continued his onslaughts until Buchman's death and after.

In his first weeks back in Britain Buchman was particularly interested to talk with two whole-time MRA workers who, during the war, had enlisted to serve in the coal-mines. While still in America he had heard from another former miner, Will Locke, who had entertained him in 1937 when he was Lord Mayor of Newcastle upon Tyne. Locke had been spending the previous months travelling the coalfields by bus and on foot, and had written, 'The industry is not in a healthy state. There is discontent which is above man's power to alter, but we must try and reach the rank and file as best we can. The MRA spirit is needed. There is great promise in the Doncaster area where a group of six mines, each employing 1,500-2,000 men, have got hold of the subject quite correctly, and men at the coal-face and the officials are working finely together. We are fighting fit and going on: no rusting for us. And what about yourself, young man? We hope your health is equal to the foraging that must go on . . .'6

Britain had many problems - one-third of her dwellings destroyed or damaged; industrial plant run down and overseas assets of four billion pounds credit in 1939 transformed into a debt of nearly three billion; the impossibility of increasing exports quickly to the necessary seventy-five per cent above pre-war; the need, as the Soviet Union's stance became clear, to maintain a million and a half people under arms. Yet Buchman's thought, after receiving Locke's letter, was, 'Coal is the key.'

Here, unconsciously, he was in tune with Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Minister in the new Labour Government, who told the miners, 'Give me thirty million tons of coal for export and I will give you a foreign policy.' The national miners' leaders were also appealing for increased production. But exhortation does not dig coal. Absenteeism, for example, had risen from 6.4 per cent in 1939 to16.3 per cent in 1945. 'It is my duty to warn the House', said the Minister of Fuel and Power, Emmanuel Shinwell, in the Commons in January, 'that the existing position contains the elements of industrial disaster.'7

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