Whether he succeeded in tricking the men with the appearance of having got more than they had actually got, I will not here discuss. But the 'definitive' offer of terms which it was known the men would not accept; the attempt to force a breach in that standard of living, which, poor as it is, is the sole defence of the whole working-class movement against the onrush of utter destitution; the brusque declaration of 'we can't do that'; the refusal to give a plain answer to a plain question in the detailed negotiation over wages; the parade of troops; the organised abuse of the men on strike-all these things pointed, in the view of the workers in general and the railwaymen in particular, to an intention to make trouble, and then suppress it. Accordingly, if the strike was ended, as it was, by compromise, it was naturally supposed that those who had intended to make trouble had subsequently, for some reason no more exalted than their original intention, thought better of it.

The Government here appears, in the eyes of a vast proportion of those whom it governs, as the champion of the capitalist desire to have a tame working-class, with none of this nonsense about progress, freedom, and fraternity. We are apparently back at the old mood which resisted the repeal of the Combination Acts—which resisted the Factory Acts— which resisted the Dockers' claim for sixpence an hour in 1889-which resisted the agricultural labourers' claim to a thirty-shilling minimum, even after the cost of living had been prodigiously inflated by the European War.

I say we are apparently back at this mood; but indeed, so far, there has not, in the industrial history of this country, been any sustained or extended departure from it.

VIII

THE MINERS' FIGHT

WHAT the railway crisis was, in magnitude and urgency, to the general situation in the early autumn. of 1919, the coal crisis was to the general situation. in the early autumn of 1920.1 The latter was simultaneous with other industrial complications of extreme interest—notably the lock-out in the engineering industry, which, starting from a local dispute about the activities of a non-union foreman, threatened to throw hundreds of thousands of men out of work; and this latter dispute was remarkable mainly for two things -the employers' refusal to call off their lock-out pending the decision of an 'impartial' authority legally appointed by the Minister of Labour under the Industrial Courts Act,2 and their attempt, by forcing a crisis at a time of trade 'slump' and throwing the blame on the Electrical Trade Union, to embroil that

1 Since these pages went to press, the coal situation has changed: but not in a way to invalidate the arguments in this chapter. The estimated £66,000,000 surplus has been contradicted in some figures published by the Government; and the refusal of the public to back up the miners' demand for a reduction in the price of coal has resulted in a strike on the wage-issue alone. But the suggestion, and refusal, of a 'datum line,' though causing delay, has not changed the main issue.

2I am not putting this forward as a hostile criticism of the employers. I mention it only because, whenever the workers take a similar line, the Press is full of denunciation. The workers' frequent refusal to submit to the arbitrament of 'impartial' bodies is, of course, based on their refusal to believe that those bodies are impartial. The workers object to the convention by which the 'impartial president' is almost always a member of the 'master

class.'

union with other unions in the engineering and also in the 'unskilled' trades. But such disputes, large and ominous as they were, and calculated to illustrate the importance of a ‘General Staff for Labour,' were overshadowed by the threat of a miners' strike.

The miners' demand was partly for an increase in their own wages, and partly for a decrease in the general cost of living. It is important to summarise briefly the history of the demands and contests which had, ever since the war, been leading up to this crisis. The miners, like other bodies of Trade Unionists, held their hand during the war. They were, indeed, so spontaneously patriotic-the mines were so much depleted by the rush to enlist-that the Government had to intervene and shut the enlistment down. As soon as the war was over, however, the struggle for a higher standard of life was resumed.

The Southport Conference of the Miners' Federation (January 14th, 1919) reaffirmed a previous demand for a 30 per cent. increase in all wages and a six-hour day, and adopted the programme of 'nationalisation of all mines and minerals, with control by the workers.' After unsatisfactory negotiation with the Government a strike ballot was decided upon on February 13th. The result gave a majority, for a strike, of 510,082. The Government offered a Royal Commission: the miners accepted this, decided to participate in it, and postponed the strike. The Commission's interim reports (dealing with hours and wages) were issued on March 20th. On March 25th Mr Bonar Law promised a further modification, dealing with piece-rates: the miners balloted and (April 12th) decided to accept.

The Commission's report on nationalisation was made on June 20th. It contained four reports :(1) The Chairman's (Sir John Sankey);

(2) That of Messrs Smillie, Hodges, Smith, Tawney, and Webb, and Sir Leo Chiozza Money;

(3) That of the coalowners;

(4) Sir Arthur Duckham's.

1

All agreed on abolition of royalties and on the desirability of distribution being in the hands of public bodies. Eight of the thirteen commissioners propounded schemes in place of the present system, and of the eight, seven (including the chairman, and constituting a majority of the whole Commission) recommended nationalisation. The miners, who had postponed their strike on the distinct understanding that the Government would carry out nationalisation if the Commission recommended it, found themselves, in spite of the recommendation, faced by a flat refusal, on the part of the Government, to nationalise the mines. The Miners' Federation (September 3rd) asked the Trades Union Congress to declare for effective action to secure the adoption of the Majority Report. The Parliamentary Committee and the Miners' Executive interviewed the Prime Minister on October 9th, and found him intractable. The Trades Union Congress passed first (in September, 1919), a resolution to 'compel' the Government to nationalise the mines, and subsequently (in March, 1920), a resolution in which 'compulsion' had been whittled down to political propaganda. There is no doubt that the word 'compel' in the earlier resolution had been generally taken to imply a threat of direct action; and the miners, among whom a majority voted for compulsion by the strike weapon on the second occasion (so that the whole block-vote of the Federation was cast in that sense at the Trades Union Congress) Congress) were naturally

1 The feeling of the miners that they had been cheated has incalculably embittered all subsequent disputes.

disappointed. But it is only fair to add that there was considerable division of opinion among the miners themselves, and the majority of the 'direct actionists' among them was not large.1

On July 9th, 1919, Sir Auckland Geddes, apparently as a political move against the miners-and in disaccord with the figures not merely as calculated by the Miners' Federation, but also as previously and subsequently calculated on the official side2-announced a 6s. a ton rise in the price of coal. On November 24th he announced a 10s. a ton decrease in the price of household coal. In May, 1920, 4s. 2d. was added to the price of industrial and 14s. 2d. to the price of household coal.

On December 11, 1919, the Government introduced a chaotic Bill, in which their long-eluded promise (based on the Royal Commission's Report) to limit the coalowner's profits to Is. 2d. a ton was so complicated by clauses displeasing to both the miners and the mineowners, and so ridiculously limited in the period of its application, that the proposals were universally condemned and subsequently held over.

This question of the owners' Is. 2d. guaranteed profit may be quoted as one instance of the extraordinary atmosphere of confusion, and (in the opinion of the miners' representatives) prevarication, with which the Government has surrounded the whole question.

At the time of the six-shilling rise in price, it was distinctly stated that the calculation on which the argument for the increase was based involved a guaranteed profit to the owners of Is. 2d. a ton and

1 The figures were 524,000 to 346,000. It will be observed that this does not give the clear two-thirds majority required by the Miners' Federation for a strike-decision of their own members.

Cf. Hansard, June 4, 1919; and White Paper Cmd. 555.