TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE THREATENED STRIKE.
IF Mr. Smillie and his friends should persist in forcing a strike—and when we write on Thursday we have no substantial reasons for optimism—it will be the most wicked and the most unjustified strike from which this country has ever suffered. When we say the "most unjustified" we do not forget that there have been strikes sprung upon various trades with cynical, malicious or insubordinate suddenness which did not bear looking into. But strikes of this kind have been comparatively email and local in their effects. A strike must be judged by all the circumstances in which it is declared, and never has a blow been levelled at the industrial heart of the nation when the nation was so little able to bear it as now. The after-the-war trade boom has declined heavily ; unemployed men are walking the streets of Northern towns ; the Daily Herald has drawn a frightful picture of the growth of unemployment and of the miserable prospects of the coming winter. And yet on a mere punctilio, apparently in order to save is face and not in the least to gain material advantages— for these are being thrust further away every moment by Mr. Smillie's action—Mr. Smillie, up to the moment when we write, is still willing to make the present ills worse, to turn the gloomy probabilities of the winter into certainties, and to set back indefinitely the recovery of the country. It is tragic to compare what Mr. Smillie might have done if he had behaved as a sensible being, as a man, and above all as an Englishman, with what he is actually doing. If he would accept the extremely fair proposal of the Government to submit his case, which he says is overwhemingly strong, to an impartial tribunal, there is no doubt whatever that it would be examined with unswerving justice. But apart from that there is the collateral proposal that the miners should be paid more wages for more output. Now Mr. Smillie has admitted over and over again that more output is not only possible but necessary, so that a considerable rise in wages on conditions which Mr. Smillie himself accepts as sound is seen to be a certainty. And yet Mr. Smillie still threatens a strike. He prefers the certainty of less wages to the certainty of more wages. Why ? One is driven, against one's own inclinations to believe the worst, to the conclusion that Mr. Smillie must have some ulterior motive. It cannot be that the wages question is the only question in his mind. What else is there 3 Revo- lution? Revolution by forcing on Nati.malization without reference to Parliament ? It seems so. For Mr. Smillie
cannot be quite so childish or so mad as not to see that a general cessation of work which will be the result of a coal strike will so impoverish the nation that there will be no possibility of paying more wages even if Mr. Smillie- which is inconceivable—should beat the Government to their knees. What a splendid position Mr. Smillie would be in, on the other hand, if he said : " Although I .believe that the miners have been basely and cruelly used, I refuse to inflict upon the country the frightful sufferings of a strike. I state my case for the miners once more, and in the common interest which I honestly declared that I had at heart when I proposed that the cost of coal should be reduced by 14s. 2d. per ton, I submit the miners' case to an impartial tribunal." Englishmen are a grateful race, but they are not a race which can easily be frightened or bullied. If Mr. Smillie spoke in such a manner as we have imagined, his words would have an enthusiastic reception, and the only danger from the point of view of the community would be that an appreciative people would be inclined to treat him more handsomely than it could afford to do. As it is, Mr. Smillie leads his dupes deeper into the slough, and one only wonders how long it will be before their eyes are opened.
On Wednesday, though Mr. Lloyd George himself played
the principal part, he said not a syllable which could weaken Sir Robert Horne's case. Rather he confirmed and strengthened it. If he made one mistake, aswe think he did, it was quickly retrieved. It will be remembered that Sir Robert Hornerearlier in the negotiations had proposed that the miners should be granted first an inquiry before a tribunal on the subject of the almost immediate increase of wages by
two shillings a shift ; and, secondly, a collateral negotiation between the miners and the coal-owners for revising the whole wage system and making further rises depend upon output. At the meeting on Wednesday Mr. Lloyd George spoke of these two proposals, not as collateral but as alternatives. Mr. Bonar Law corrected him, and Mr. Lloyd George accepted the correction. As it turned out, it did not matter, and we have nothing but praise for the general way in which Mr. Lloyd George stood as trustee for the interests and safety of the nation.
Since we wrote last week the issue has fined itself down to the single question of wages. The claim of Mr. Smillie to be allowed to dictate a financial policy to the nation under threat of a strike, and thus to supersede Parliament, has discreetly been dropped. The indivisible twofold demand of the miners has, after all, been divided. But Mr. Smillie is still insisting, when we write on Thursday, that arbitration on his demand for an immediate increase of two shillings ,per shift is impossible. The ordinary man will say : But surely the stronger the miners case is—and Mr. Smillie and his more able colleague, Mr. Hodges, are always declaring their case to be unanswer- able—the better will be its chance of being accepted in full by an impartial court." To that obvious criticism neither Mr. Sunnis nor Mr. Hodes can make any coherent rejoinder. They say that arbitration is unsuited to a matter in which the justice of the case is clear. The ordinary man returns to the attack by pointing out that all other trades have accepted arbitration. Why, then, should the miners refuse ? Mr. Thomas the other day permitted himself to say that miners' wages had never been settled by an " outside authority." Yet Mr. Thomas happened to be wrong when he thought he had drawn attention to an illuminating exception. The miners submitted the question of their wages to the " outside authority " of the Sankey Commission. That Commission recommended a 3(1 per cent. increase and shorter hours, and both recommendations were adopted by the Government. But when Mr. Smillie fails to think of any satisfactory excuse, Mr. Hodges butts in and says that when the Government is the employer you cannot have arbitration. What a disastrous argument for a Nationaliser 1 The truth is that the miners, though we shall not, of course, prejudge the question by saying that they do not deserve more wages, are being paid at a higher rate than any other trade. Moreover, Mr. Smillie has altogether overlooked the startling fact that in all the trades where wages have been greatly raised output has decreased. He therefore proposes something that would probably decrease output still more at a moment when on his own admission increased output is the crying need. And in this matter of output the extremists who lead the miners seem to forget continually that they are internationalists. Let us remind them of their faith. The Italians are now paying about £24 for a ton of coal. The Italians are very decent people, and have been our good allies. They are also to inter- • nationalists, quite apart from their virtues and their services, " comrades and " brothers." Why is Mr. Smillie indifferent to the " comrades " in France and Italy 1 Is it because no voice touches a chord of emotion in his heart except the voice which rings from Moscow If a strike comes, unemployment, bad already, will become terrible. It may be that there are sufficient economic explanations of the growing unemployment which have nothing to do with Mr. Smillie's manoeuvres. But if there should be a strike, the public, including the majority of the manual workers, in their resentful mood will attribute the unemployment to Mr. Smillie. He would do well to think of this. His position is very unsafe. Finally, Mr. Smillie might meditate all over again upon the desira- bility of nationalization. Has he not seen and experienced enough to convince him that his strike policy implies the greatest of all arguments against nationalization When the Government is the owner, the Government is no longer neutral. It has become a principal, and can no longer intervene as the helpful friend. When the wronged woman in the clutches of Valentinian in Beaumont and Fletcher's play screamed out that she would cry for justice, Valentinian answered : " Justice will never hear you. I am justice."
Previous page
