The calamity of the dock strike, which knocks trade backwards
just when it was making a tardy recovery, was not made any easier to bear by the ironic reflection that it certainly ought not to have happened. We cannot acquit either side of blame. In 1920 the Shaw Report urgently called attention to the casual nature of dock labour, and recommended that a process of decasualization should be taken in hand. Nothing of a practical nature has been done ; a rise in wages means less to dockers than to other labourers, because it may mean no actual increase of pay to a man who is not taken on as often as before when he makes his daily applications for work. Of course, the whole problem is appallingly difficult. An obvious way of decasualizing the industry would be to put into effect some form of insurance against unemployment, but unfortunately it is precisely the industry that depends on casual labour which cannot define itself for the purpose of maintaining its own unemployment insurance fund. Still, the years that have passed since the Shaw Report gave ample opportunity for inquiry.
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