STRIKES AND SOFT SAWDER.
SIR GEORGE ASKWITH has achieved a remarkable- public reputation throughout the kingdom as an industrial pacifier, but that reputation will hardly be enhanced by the report which he has drawn up in con- nexion with the Dublin strikes. In saying this we are not referring to the fact that his report was rejected, but to the contents of the report itself. The report reads as if Sir George Askwith imagined that a great industrial dispute could be settled with a string of pleasant phrases. Of course, he imagined nothing of the sort. He found himself face to face with a situation which could only be solved by the withdrawal of Mr. Larkin and his friends from the impossible position assumed by them, and he failed to have the courage to say so. Doubt- less he was influenced by his experience in dealing with English industrial disputes. One of the main features of the English temperament is a desire for com- promise, and Sir George Askwith in England has always been able to play upon this characteristic, and by giving a little bit to each side to secure a settlement. In Dublin there is no habitual love of compromise. On the contrary, the very word itself is anathema to the majority of Irish- men. But apart altogether from this temperamental difference the facts of the case make compromise almost impossible. This is shown clearly enough even in the body of Sir George Askwith's amiably intentioned report. Not only does the report open with an emphatic condemnation of sympathetic strikes, but it goes on to show how theSe strikes render impossible the very system of conciliation which Sir George Askwith advocates as a method of pre- venting them. He first defines the sympathetic strike as a refusal on the part of men who may have no complaint against their own conditions of employment to continue- work because they come in contact with goods in some way connected with firms where a trade dispute is in progress. As an illustration of the sympathetic strike he mentions that porters at Kingstown refused to handle parcels of publications consigned from England to a firm of Dublin newsagents because this firm had declined the request of the union that they should refuse to distribute newspapers printed by a firm of printers in Dublin who had a dispute with some of their employees.
As Sir George Askwith points out, there is no end to the ramifications of this method of industrial warfare, but the particular point in his report on which we wish to lay stress is the following :— " Even collective agreements signed on behalf of employers' and men's organisations, a provision of which was that no stoppage of work should take place without discussion and due notice, were entirely disregarded under the influence of this ever-widening method of conducting disputes."
And again a little later on he says :— "It cannot be expected that employers, many of whom have no grievances whatever with their employees, can continue their business if they are to be subjected, no matter what conciliatory steps they may themselves take to prevent it, to constant interrup- tions through the effects of the sympathetic and sudden strike."
Yet the only practical proposal contained in Sir George Askwith's report is an elaborate scheme for Conciliation Committees based on the proposition that there is to be no strike or lock-out pending the reference of the matter in dispute to the Conciliation Committee. In other words, Sir George Askwith proposes as a means of terminating the present series of disputes in Dublin a method of conciliation which he admits is rendered impossible by the policy of the union responsible for the present disputes. As long as the Transport Workers' Union uses as its method of industrial warfare the sympathetic strike, which by the nature of the case sweeps away all agreements for concilia- tion, it is quite useless to propose further schemes for establishing Conciliation Committees. Indeed, Sir George Ask with himself, in the body of his report, seems to see this clearly enough, for he says :- " No community could exist if resort to the sympathetic strike became the general policy of trade unionism as, owing to the inter- dependence of different branches of industry, disputes affecting even a single individual would spread indefinitely."
Having made this very clear and definite statement, Sir George Ask with appears to have had a sudden fear that he had gone a little too far on the employers' side, and must veer round again to the side of the workpeople. He therefore goes on to add :- " If this should be the policy of trade unionism it is easy to understand that it does not commend itself to the employers, but in our experience of the better-organized employers and workmen the sympathetic strike or the sympathetic lock-out is not a method which is recognized as a reasonable way of dealing with disputes."
With all respect to Sir George Askwith, this is nothing but soft sawder, and he knows it. He knows perfectly well that the essence of the Dublin series of disputes is the adoption by the Transport Workers' Union of the principle of the sympathetic strike. He knows also that this Union is being supported by English trade unionists with sympathy and with cash, and therefore he is merely throwing dust in the eyes of the public when he indites a report intended to convey the impression that there is no general sympathy among trade unionists with the sympathetic strike. It was, however, from his point of view necessary to sprinkle his report with this soft sawder because he was anxious to justify his condemnation of the employers for attacking Mr. Larkin and his Union. This he does in language sufficiently emphatic to please the Larkinites. He declares that the attempt of the employers to make their employees sign an understanding not to join the Transport Workers' Union was contrary to individual liberty, and involved conditions " which no workman or body of workmen could reasonably be expected to accept." This, in plain language, is nothing but an evasion of the issue. When a suffragette is sent to prison for burning down houses her individual liberty is violated. When she is let out on ticket-of-leave, subject to an under- taking that she will not advocate further crimes of arson, she might very well describe that as a condition which she could not be expected to accept. The whole point is whether the Irish Transport Workers' Union is or is not engaged in work so mischievous as to justify S collective attempt on the part of the Dublin employers to prevent it doing further mischief. Sir George Askwith, in one half of his report, makes it clear that in his opinion the methods of the Transport Workers' Union would render impossible the remedy he proposes for the settlement of industrial disputes, and would destroy the life of the community. Yet in the other half of his report he condemns the Dublin employers because they use the only means open to them for getting rid of this institution. It is worth while adding that the method adopted by Dublin employers for destroying Larkinism is exactly parallel with the method employed by trade unionists for destroying non- unionism. The Dublin employer says, " We will not employ a man who joins a union whose method is the sympathetic strike." The English trade unionist says, " We will not permit work to be carried on in a firm where non-unionists are employed." The one proceeding is as much an interference with individual liberty as the other. Yet, so far as we are aware, Sir George Askwith has never yet publicly condemned English trade unionists for thus interfering with the liberty of their fellow workmen.
The net effect of this unfortunate report is to confuse the issues. Admittedly a large number of the workpeople in Dublin have for a long time been underpaid, and there is grave reason to suspect that many of the Dublin employers have unwarrantably continued to treat their workpeople badly when economic conditions would have permitted a more generous treatment. To organize them- selves against such conditions is not only the right of the workpeople, it is their duty. But obviously that duty must be discharged with a certain amount of intelligence. If a particular employer is treating his workpeople badly, that is an excellent reason why everyone should refuse to work for him. It is no reason whatever for refusing to work for a man who is treating his people well. The scientific method of dealing with a bad employer is to organize an effective strike against him individually, and other workpeople who sympathise with the strikers can show their sympathy in the most practical of all ways by subscribing to a maintenance fund. Instead of adopting this time- honoured method of dealing with bad employers, who deserve no mercy, Mr. Larkin has organized the disastrous and morally unjustifiable system of the sympathetic strike. Owing to his personality he has succeeded in securing a great hold over the working classes in Dublin, and he has also secured financial support from English trade unionists. It is therefore necessary to adopt exceptional methods of dealing with the danger which he has established. The Dublin employers have adopted the only method possible. In the war in which they are now engaged they deserve public support, whatever their original industrial offences may have been, for until Larkinism is put an end to it is quite impossible to secure industrial progress.
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