Strike Action in South Wales On Monday 120,000 miners in
South Wales handed in notices to cease work in fourteen days' time. Their decision was due to the threat of the Bedwas Colliery Company to dismiss 1,000 of its employees who wished to withdraw from the Miners' Industrial Union and join the South Wales Miners' Federation, the officially recognised trade union of the miners. Rather than enter into negotiation, the Bedwas Company has left the South Wales Coal Owners' Association, which is willing to meet the Federation ; and on Monday the miners' representatives appealed to the Minister of Mines to intervene and arrange a meeting between them and the Bedwas Company. The Federation has every reason for believing that the question in dispute is one which affects every miner in the coalfield ; and it is difficult to see that the Bedwas Company has any justification for this attempt to restrict the workers' elementary right to freedom. of industrial organisation. Even if it had, the company might well hesitate to persist in an attitude which will bring the whole of the South Wales coalfield to a standstill and add the miseries of a strike to the other miseries South Wales has already to bear. It must weigh heavily with the Ministry of -Mines that the Bedwas Company's threat implies coercing the miners to join a union against their will and must prove a serious obstacle to the gradual improvement in relations between masters and men in South Wales.
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