The Press THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 1947. What Are They Fighting For?

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25084, 16 January 1947, Page 6

The Press THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 1947. What Are They Fighting For?

Although the watersiders’ pamphlet has plenty to say about the watersiders’ claims and their merits, all of this is less significant, perhaps, than the single sentence in which they describe themselves as fighting “ those officials of our Labour Gov- “ ernment and the Federation of “ Labour who line themselves up “ with employers ”. They have been “ forced ” into this fight, they say. What they mean, or what Mr Barnes and Mr Hill mean, by this is interesting. The plainest of the facts about this dispute is that the watersiders took their decision to restrict hours under no compulsion attributable'to the nature and working of the control system; they had not exhausted the possibilities of obtaining a satisfactory settlement of their claims through its processes; they decided not to use them further. They did not like the terms of the commission’s pronouncement, though the chairman, Mr Justice Ongley, issued it as a set of proposals to be discussed, not as an operable order; and they laid down their own terms and chose their own way to try to make them stick. This is not being “ forced ” into a fight; it is rushing into one with a whoop, unprovoked. The Government said they were wrong; the Federation of Labour said they were wrong. But the Government certainly did not “ force ” this fight on the watersiders by telling them they had been wrong to start it, or force them to continue it by telling them they were in the wrong. They were, indeed, as the Government told them, free to stop it, without loss of right or advantage under commission control—no small assurance—and the federation advised them to accept the offer, which is still open. Nowhere does compulsion appear in the facts and the history of the dispute. Where it does appear is in the confused, anarchic thinking of the watersiders. The Government does not want industrial disorder, nor does the federation. Both want differences between worker and employer to be resolved by negotiation. Both want the machinery of settlement by negotiation to be faithfully and fully used. But the watersiders think this is “lining up with the “ employers ”, who are always wrong, because they are employers, and should always be squeezed and fought and beaten, because they are employers. The Government and the federation “ forced ” this fight on the watersiders, in other words, by upholding a policy which the watersiders dislike and distrust and want to defeat. So the watersiders see the real issue as lying, not between themselves and the commission, not as an issue of rates and conditions of employment, but between themselves and the Labour Party in office and the Federation of Labour. They knew, before they resorted to direct action, that the Government and the federation would condemn them. That is precisely why they resorted to direct action—to buck the Government and the federation. The fight for their claims is a sham fight. The real fight is political The watersiders are fighting the class war, and fighting the Government and the federation because they don’t want the class war but co-opera-tion, order, and production. This is really what the watersiders, all the watersiders or most of the watersiders, believe and intend? It sounds very like Mr Barnes and Mr Hill, two noisy, mischievous men, with a great many watersiders at their tail, unconvinced but too sheepish to break away and be • sensible.