London Dockers Induced To Strike By Deliberate Lies?

Northern Advocate, 15 July 1949, Page 5

London Dockers Induced To Strike By Deliberate Lies?

LONDON, Thu. (10.30 a.m.) —The leaders of the London dock unions are investigating a report that Canadian seamen, by deliberate lies, induced the London dockers to strike. The assistant secretary of the Lightermen’s Union said: "We are going to try and find a way to get the men back to work: It looks as if we were misled,” he said.

He said this after 20 officials of stevedores and lightermen’s unions saw the High Commissioner for Canada (Mr L. D. Wilgress), who left a meeting of the Commonwealth Finance Ministers to meet them. They asked Mr Wilgress for his version of recent developments in the strike by members of the Canadian Seamen’s Union. He told them that the claims by the Seamen’s Union that the Canadian shipowners had repudiated an agreement to settle the seamen’s strike were untrue. This claim by the Seamen’s Union was the direct cause* of the dockers deciding to strike in support of the Canadian seamen. Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr R. Mellish, Labour member for the dock area of Rotherhithe, said: “If the dockers are convinced that they have been taken in by the Communists, they will turn on them and destroy them utterly and ruthlessly.” Over 14,000 dockers are on strike today, 132 ships are idle, and eight others are under-manned. REGULATIONS APPROVED The House of Lords today approved unanimously the Government’s state-of-emergency regulations, which have already been endorsed by the House of Commons. The biennial conference of the Transport and General Workers’ Union at Scarborough today passed a resolution deploring continuation of the unofficial dock strike. The resolution added: “We call upon the men involved to resume normal working. “It is their bounden duty to honour the obligations entered into by the union on their behalf.” The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said today that production may be affected by the strike.