More Dirty Work at the Docks
Every day the evidence accumulates that new disturbances at the London Docks are being deliberately prepared. Not one of the excuses being given for an interruption of work will bear close inspection. The ban on overtime which is already being sporadically applied is an attempt to influence in advance the decision of the Transport and General Workers' Union on the appeals of three dockers expelled from the union for their part in the infamous strike of last July, The threatened strike of stevedores arises from a proposal of the Shaw Savill and Albion Line to employ up to 250 men on a permanent basis instead of taking them on from day to day through the agency of the Dock Labour Board. This arrangement naturally commends itself to many of the men but is opposed by the general secretary of the National Amalgamated Stevedores' and Dockers' Unions, Mr. R. Barrett, who has played a prominent part in previous troubles at the London Docks. Another familiar force, the Communist-inspired Port Workers' Committee, has also reappeared. It is backing the overtime ban, and at the same time bringing forward its own " docker's charter " whose ostensible purpose is to provide the dockers with a daily minimum of 25s., a 40-hour week, two weeks' holiday with pay, and pensions, but whose obvious real purpose is to make whatever trouble can be made. The crucial phase will come in mid-April, when the T.G.W.U. is considering the appeals of the expelled members and the Shaw Savill Line is due to put its new scheme into operation. The Government thus has ample warning. It cannot have any doubt about the rights and wrongs of the matter. And it must know the sources of mischief. There is no excuse for a recurrence of the confusion and weakness of last July.
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