INDUSTRIAL ANARCHY.

Northern Advocate, 31 October 1910, Page 3

INDUSTRIAL ANARCHY.

WORKING MEN IN REVOLT

LONDON, Sept. 9

The spirit of unrest is abroad in the industrial world in this country. Thirty thousand men have been thrown out of work by the lock-out ordered by the Shipbuilding ■ Employers Federation, and if this state of affairs lasts much longer other trades will be depressed or brought to a standstill. This lockout has been forced on the employers by the continual recurrence of sectional strikes and other deliberate breaches of agreements entered into by the employers and the trades union leaders.

The tendency on the part of workmen to rebel against their own leaders is undoubtedly growing. As in the case of the boilermakers now locked out by exasperated employers, the unrest among the miners is showing itself in constant sectional strikes. Last year there was an epidemic of these strikes in Durham and Northumberland, and the scandal grew so great that the executive committee of the Durham Miners Association issued just such a circular of warning to its members as did the Boilermakers Society in June. In Northumberland, Mr Thos. Burt, M.P., issued a similar circular, stating that the action of the strikers was "utterly indefensible," and showed on the part of the strikers not only a deplorable want of discipline but a certain disloyalty to the principle of combination and a lamentable indifference to the interests and well-being of their fellow-members.

This year began with the great strikes in connection with the Mines (Eight Hours) Act. In many cases, both in Northumberland and Durham, some of the pits were kept idle after the men's leaders had concluded a working agreement with the mineowners. The miners defied their own associations. In Durham the Murton, Shotton, and Horden miners held out for months. Their lodges received no official help from the country organisation, the strike being unauthorised, and there was appalling misery and starvation in the pit villages throughout a large area. One incident of the Strike was the rioting at Horden, where the men raided the manager's house and burned down the £10,000 club-house built for them by the colliery owners. In the eastern part of Durham county alone there have been nearly twenty sectional strikes since the beginning of February. Most, of these lasted a day or two. some of them a week or more.

Time was when employers were the enemies of the trades unions, but now they desire nothing better than to see the authority of the union leaders strengthened and upheld. Whatever may be their dislike of trades unionism, it is as nothing to the menace of a succession of lawless strikes on the part of workmen who defy their own leaders and repudiate agreements effected by the latter. The boilermakers, who are responsible for the present lock-out in the shipbuilding industry, have ever, been "the bad boys" of the trade union family. Time and again their indiscipline has provoked strikes on all sorts of frivolous grounds, and at the present time they are only acting up to their reputation. But the spirit of unrest is spreading into other unions as well. The fact that the existence of the Labor Party in Parliament is threatened by the Osborne judgment may have something to do with it, and the feeling that the employers have had the best of the conciliation agreements effected in various industries is probably a factor. It is very improbable that Socialist influence has anything to do with it, for these sectional strikes and "mutinies" against the trades union executives are sheer anarchy, and were common enough among the boilermakers and the coal "putters" long before Socialism became a force in politics. Whatever the cause, the outlook in the industrial world is distinctly threatening.—"New Zealand Times' " correspondent.