NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE sudden development on Thursday night of the strike among the transport workers at the London docks threatens to produce a serious interruption in the food supply of London. The dispute assumed an acute stage early in the week owing to a deadlock between the lightermen and employers on the question of non-union labour. On Tuesday 6,000 lightermen left work, and a manifesto of the London Committee of the National Transport Workers' Federation threatened to call out 100,000 land workers if any attempt were made to forward by land goods usually carried by water. The lightermen maintain that the masters have broken their agreement by employing a non-union man, and the masters reply by denying that they ever at any time entered into agreement to employ only members of the Federation, nor are they prepared to agree to any such limitation. They further state that the man over whom the trouble has arisen " has been at work under identically similar conditions for two years, and, for purposes best known to the Anialgamated Society of Watermen, it is only now that this question has been raised."
