The interest of the week is in its retrospect and
we need not apologize for reviewing all that has happened. The organizers of the general strike tried to do what has never been done before—to force the Govern- ment and the nation into submission by making life unnearable—and naturally they failed. There is no instance of a general strike, though the category of these things is happily not a large one, having succeeded. In the end a nation, unless it does not deserve to survive, must successfully assert its right to exist. It was in vain for the Trades Union Congress to declare that it had no political or constitutional thought in its mind but v, as using the general strike purely as an industrial weapon. A weapon which tries to force a particular policy in any industry upon a resisting majority is obviously political. It cannot help being so. It was simply a case of Direct Action, though the Labour Party had not made much use lately of that unpopular phrase. It was a challenge to democracy, and as such it was repelled.
