A Call from the Shop Stewards
There could be no more remarkable evidence of the changed attitude of the workers to this, as compared with any other, war than the resolution passed at a conference of about 1,400 shop stewards from engineering, shipbuilding and other work- shops. The shop stewards, though loyal trade-unionists, are not trade-union officials ; each is elected by fellow-workers in his own union to represent them in day-to-day dealings with the management. There is no body of men more directly in touch with average workmen, yet none who are habitually more jealous for the preservation of rights won by collective bargain- ing. Yet this conference, consisting of precisely that body of men from whom one might have expected resistance to such expedients as dilution of labour and the transference of specialists from one kind of work to another, now takes the lead in declaring that all these rules must be brushed aside in so far as they hamper war-production, and that nothing must be left undone to enable this country to help Russia and emulate her efforts in the factories. It asserts'that every able- bodied man and woman must be organised for war and service in the Forces, in industry, or in civil defence, and that if necessary hundreds of thousands of men must be released from industry for the armed Forces. The shop stewards, convinced as perhaps never before that this is no capitalistic stTuggle, are proclaiming a holy war against the enemies of Britain who are also the enemies of Labour. Individuals of the conference in their zeal made some demands upon the Government for action which may not be in the sphere of practical politics, but at least it was zeal which, in its calls-upon the workers for more sacrifice, can only help the common cause.
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