Government at Low Pressure
There are several ways of mishandling a strike, and it would perhaps be optimistic to suggest that Mr. Isaacs had now tried them all. He has various resources on which he can call ; bodies to arbitrate, bodies to mediate, the B.B.C. as a pulpit for exhortation, the use of troops in an emergency, and the use of the law as a threat. Mr. Isaacs has, tried all these weapons in his armoury at one time or another, and always at the wrong time. The London gas strike has been subjected to a different, but no less inept, treatment from that which helped to prolong the dock strikes of last summer. This again is an unofficial strike ; it takes place against the advice of the unions concerned, whose leaders seem powerless to affect its course to the slightest degree. Like the railway, bus anti dock strikes it affects an industry which is now under public ownership and whose workers are therefore enjoying the theoretical blessings of practical socialism. But gas is an essential public service, and long before there was any ques- tion of nationalisation the law was strengthened to ensure that public services should not be wilfully interrupted. This law of 1875, which has never been repealed and has in sub- stance been on more than one occasion embodied in subsequent legislation, is the law to which the Government has now had recourse. It is not clear why they have preferred to make use of this Act instead of the more contemporary National Arbitration Order of 1940, which would suit their book equally well ; but then nothing about the Government's action or inaction is clear. Why wait nearly three weeks before making the first move ? Why not move a little earlier and less ham- fistedly ? It is possible that the Labour Government and the T.U.C. feel that they have become too closely identified with each other and that the Government's earlier indifference to the strike is part of an ostentatious process of drawing apart. But few Londoners will have had much time for researching into the subtleties of Socialist thought in the course of their daily search for food, light, heat and hot water.
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