Heroes of Labour
It was never really credible that the significance of the dispute on railway enginemen's lodging turns lay entirely on the surface. If it had, then sheer derision might have settled the whole matter, for how can engine-drivers stand by and see their hard-won reputation as the supermen of the labour force lost to commercial travellers and newspaper reporters, who do not blench at the hardship of a night away from home ? There is much more in this dispute than meets the eye. An unofficial strike over the grievance of a mere handful of men cannot go on week after week through the sheer will-power of the malcontents who promote it. However malignant these unnamed organisers may be they could not do their dirty work so effectively unless there were other factors working in their favour.
Those factors are coming out one by one. At the very beginning the uneasiness of the Railway Executive over falling traffic and of the unions over wage restriction had put both parties into a potentially dangerous mood. The separate dispute over the unions' claim for an extra ten shillings a week has provided a background of unrest—mainly expressed in the go-slow movements in London goods depots and elsewhere. The competition between the National Union of Railwaymen and the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen for the allegiance of the enginemen should not be Ignored. The fear of redundancy which haunts trade unions—who have even now not grasped the nature of full employment—has played its part. There is finally the plain fact that nationalisation has done less than nothing to improve labour relations on the rail- ways. It is no passing irritation, but a deep-seated malaise which is the cause of the trouble. And the main source of infection is in the National Union of Railwaymen, whose general secretary, Mr. J. B. Figgins, actually chose the platform at the Blackpool conference of the Labour Party as the point from which to claim a greater measure of" workers' control" on the railways.
