TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE BELFAST STRIKE.
Belfast strike has some features of exceptional _1 interest. It is mixed up with a question with which it has no necessary connexion, the disaffection among the Irish Constabulary. Partly through this circumstance it has given occasion to an unusual display of military force. And, in view of the working of the Trade Disputes Act, the methods resorted to by the strikers call for careful observation. Upon the merits of the strike itself we shall say nothing. There is no call for public comment on a dispute between employers and workmen unless the strikers make a special appeal for public sympathy and support. The Belfast strikers, we believe, have not done this. They are content to fight their own battle. But a strike on a great scale can seldom escape involving large public interests. The temporary paralysis of any great industry necessarily inconveniences, or more than inconveniences, a large number of people. We do not mean, of course, that this fact, standing by itself, ought to lead to interference on the part of the authorities. The law rightly recognises the liberty of workmen to combine against their employers, and they are the proper, if not the best, judges of the goodness of the case they make out.
Unfortunately, the Belfast workmen have gone beyond the point up to which their action can be regarded with indifference. The prosperity of a district in which a strike is goinc, on must always be affected, but there is no need that the public tranquillity should be disturbed at the same time. When the Trade Disputes Act was passing through the House of Commons we were assured at every turn that the increased liberty accorded to picketing would have only moral results. The process from first to last was to be one of pure reason. The blackleg was to be regarded as the victim of a mental hallucination. He was unable to see that his duty was to cast in his lot with his brethren on strike. They were fighting for him as well as for themselves, and his refusal to admit this could only be explained on the theory that he was ignorant of his own real interest. To dispel this ignorance was the sole object of picketing. The state of the case must be put before men in season and out of season. The maxim of the picketers was to be, here a little and there a little,—at this corner a moving exhortation addressed to the erring blackleg by five of the men on strike, at the next a similar appeal by the same or a larger number. To some of us it appeared that even this pro- cess, peaceful as it might technically be, might easily become as formidable as a display of physical force. To be scolded and called opprobrious names every few steps along a man's homeward walk might in the end be just as effective as if the words were supplemented by blows. Par- liament, however, did not allow this view to prevail. So long as the appeal to the blackleg is enforced only by the lips, the law will not interfere. Men whose worst offence is that they take a different view of the merits of a trade quarrel from that taken by their fellows are left exposed to all the annoyance that harsh language can inflict. Those who doubted whether Parliament was well advised in giving men on strike this large liberty of interference with their fellows saw their arguments put aside as un- worthy of consideration, and had to console themselves with the hope that the strikers would be content with establishing this particular legal liberty and would not call to their assistance any more violent kind of persuasion.
The example of Belfast is not encouraging from this point of view. The memorial of the Harbour Board to the Lord-Lieutenant does not indeed charge the worst cases of interference with lawful business on the strikers. The present congestion at the docks, it says, is "not so much the direct result of the strike as of the state of terrorism prevailing throughout the city, caused by organised bands of the worst classes of the community who are taking advan- tage of the strike conditions and the apparent paralysis of all authority." The sheds, it seems, are filled, and overfilled, with goods in many cases of a perishable nature. The strike would not of itself prevent the removal of some at least of these goods. Indeed, the owners have again and again tried to remove their property in their own waggons. But owing to " serious assaults on the part of crowds of law- less mon, generally armed with weapons," they have been compelled to give up the attempt. The Harbour Com- missioners maintain a police force of their own, which is amply sufficient to protect the traffic in the ordinary condition of the city, and, they have considerably increased this force to meet the present state of affairs. But their own constables can do but little in presence of the general disorder. The traders of a city like Belfast have a right to expect protection from the law and the officers of the law when the ordinary precautions they take on their own account are rendered insufficient by a general reign of violence. Goods cannot be conveyed to and from the docks, not because there is no one to convey them, but because those who are able and willing to convey them are prevented from doing so. When we read of a number of lorries being stopped at midnight by some fifty men who refused to allow the drivers to pass, talk about peaceful picketing becomes worse than idle. If such things are permitted law and order are no better than fine names.
It must be admitted, however, that the situation in Belfast has been complicated by the discontent among the police. The authorities have not been able to employ the constabulary with their customary confidence in their loyalty. Some of the force have proclaimed their sympathy with the strikers, others have refused to obey the orders of their superiors. How far the grievances they put forward in justification of their attitude are real is uncertain, nor at this moment is it a question of much importance. No grievance, however genuine, can justify open insubordina- tion in a force which is almost military in its character. But the record of the Irish Constabulary is so good that as soon as the strike is over, Mr. Birrell will, no doubt, institute a thorough inquiry into the police complaint. It is not for the benefit of those who have mutinied that this should be undertaken. They have forfeited any improve- ment in the terms of their service by the methods they have resorted to in order to obtain it. It is the men who have suffered from the same cause, but have not sought redress by the same lawless methods, that are the proper objects of Mr. Birrell's consideration. The Irish Constabulary have to discharge very special duties, and circumstances of race, of religion, of class make their task specially difficult. But experience seems to have shown that it is possible to overcome all these obstacles, and any changes which promise to restore the old state of things, should be introduced as quickly as possible. For the moment, how- ever, the question of most importance is not what to do for the police, but how to supplement, if not dispense with, them. The military are on the spot in large numbers, but for some days their presence seems to have been purely formal. They came to Belfast in response to the summons of the Lord Mayor ; but except for such terror as may have been excited by the sight of their arms and uniforms they might, for the first part of their stay, have been almost as well away. On Wednesday, however, this curious inaction came to an end, and they were ordered to assist the police in patrolling the streets. The Government will no doubt be told that they are interfering in a quarrel which does not concern them, and taking sides in a controversy of the merit of which they are ignorant. The answer to this is that soldiers and police alike are simply doing a duty which belong in different degrees to all citizens, and most to those who are best qualified to discharge it. We may regret that a great city should be so given over to what is hardly dis- tinguishable from anarchy as to be beyond civil control, but that regret does not for a moment excuse us from using all the military we can command to bring about that restoration of public order which is the end alike of the policeman and the soldier. Ministers have now an oppor- tunity of proving the groundlessness of the fears enter- tained by some of us last year that peaceful picketing would be made a cover for picketing that is not peaceful. It has been so used in Belfast, since it can hardly be sup- posed that the city could have got into its present con- dition had there been no strike to give an apparent occasion for the assembling of large crowds of idle workmen. All uncertainty on this head has now been removed. The existence of organised violence in the neigh- bourhood of the docks has been proved to demonstration, and we do not doubt that the Government will make a speedy end of it.
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