Irate Charwomen Denounce Cripps' Farthing Offer

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22818, 13 December 1948, Page 5

Irate Charwomen Denounce Cripps' Farthing Offer

LONDON, Dec. 10

With an ominous glint in their eyes, two charwomen marched on to the platform of the central hall in Westminster tonight and urged over 1000 Government cleaners to strike if the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Cripps, did not recognise their wages claim for 3Jd more per hour.

Amid thunderous applause Mrs. R. Wasmer, of Lambeth, who is a char in the Ministry of Works, urged charwomen to dismiss the Treasury’s offer of an increase of Jd per hour.

Mrs. Wasmer shouted: ‘‘lf this modern Scrooge, Sir Stafford Cripps, will call any afternoon down Lambeth way, we will tell him what to do with his farthing.” Mrs. Mary Donague, who is a cleaner in the Colonial Office, recalling ‘‘the great strikes of 1912 and 1926,” said: "I saw bloodshed then— I don’t want to see the same again, but I warn Sir Stafford Cripps that we are not going to box with kid gloves on. We mean to box hard in this fight!” The general secretary of the Civil Service Union, Mr. Victor Carvell, speaking on behalf of the charwomen and their fellow workers (messengers and paper keepers of the Government Offices), stated:— "This Treasury offer might well be called the Cripps’ monument to austerity. His offer is disgusting and must be thrown back at him.”