The "sympathetic" strike of railway goods-yard men at Liverpool, Birmingham,
and other Midland centres was settled last Saturday, the companies undertaking to reinstate any men who left work or were suspended, and are willing to handle the traffic which the company are bound by law to accept for conveyance. In the circular letter addressed to their branch secretaries by the executive of the National Union of Railwaymen, urging them to accept these terms, it is pointed out that "the traffic shipped from Dublin cannot in any sense be termed 'blackleg' traffic, inasmuch as it is loaded by members of the Irish Transport Workers' Union." At Birmingham, where the demand for a national strike had been loudest, the strikers unanimously decided at a mass meeting held on Sunday to return to work at once. This sudden change is attributed to the conviction that the moment was inopportune and that the issue was not clear, and in no way affects their resolve to husband their resources for the great fight over shorter hours and higher pay. As a set-off to the cessation of the railway dispute we have to record a strike of eight thousand Welsh miners in the Aberdare Valley as a protest against the employment of non-unionists.
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