"It will have been noticed, perhaps, that [certain newspapers] are
almost rapturous about the peace and quiet in the dockyards to-day. It is quite true that they are quiet. It reminds one of that famous war dispatch: 'All is quiet on the Potomac.' The men who would break that peace if they showed their faces are either in hospital, or are staying at home, or have left — al- together to seek work elsewhere. . . There are men who have been driven out of Messrs. —'s yard not because they are bad workmen, but because they are — . . . I have seen some of the fellows who were hammered, and they are not pretty to look at. It is plain that the maniacal brutality of the rowdies when they are roused is shocking and primitive—that is, not ordinary assault, but something quite outrageous, bestial, and cowardly. . . . I know these things sound like fables . . but they are true, and a deputation leaves — to-day to put the matter before members of Parliament. It is clear nothing will ever be done in
about it."
These words, with their just and white-hot indignation, are, our readers will guess, taken from a Unionist newspaper de- scribing the intimidation of free labourers at the London docka.
But our readers would be quite wrong. They are taken from a vivid narrative in the Radical Daily News and Leader of Wednesday describing the intimidation of Liberals and Socialists by Orangemen at the Belfast docks. We have done nothing to the text except to leave out names, and we have indicated where this is done. Why the Daily News and Leader, and people who think with it, should hold that while the intimidation of a sincere Liberal is horrible the intimida- tion of a sincere free labourer is not so very horrible is one of those mental and ethical problems which we cannot solve, and we do not suppose that anybody ever will.
Previous page
