12 NOVEMBER 1948, Page 5

Belief in the growth of human intelligence is almost shattered

by the strike at the London docks precipitated by the introduction of a new machine called a Stacatruc, designed to save man-power in the operation of stacking cargoes. So we are back to the old Luddite riots of a century or more ago, when angry weavers smashed the new stocking-frames whose introduction, they thought, would reduce the number of handicraftsmen needed. Just so might the cab-drivers have engineered a riot on the introduction of taxis, or the stage-coach drivers combined to tear up the new-laid railway lines. Vat the time when an Anglo-American Commission on Productivity is urging above all things the need for more mechanisa- tion in industry is a singularly unhappy moment for the dockers' perverse veto on progress.