THE STRIKE AND THE LOCK-OUT

strike and the lock-out are of frequent occur-

century. What is their meaning? What their sig- nificance ?

The strike is the refusal of the workman-be he labourer or skilled mechanic, miner or railway man, docker or engineer-to perform his task under condi- tions that to him and his fellows are intolerable. In every normal case of a strike of any large body of men the ground of the refusal is always stated plainly ; either the wages paid are insufficient, that is, are less than a living wage, or the hours of labour are too long. The strike, to put it briefly, is the effort of the labourer to get a larger share of the wealth which he has created ; for all material wealth-food and fuel, cloth- ing and dwelling houses, and the thousand and one comforts and adornments of social life, all the con- veniences (the ‘ damnable conveniences,’ as Father Vincent McNabb has styled them) of civilisation-are created by the application of human labour to the earth and its waters. By no other means can material wealth be created.

The lock-out is the refusal of the employer to allow work to be performed unless it is performed on the conditions he lays down. And, again, in most cases the employer-master-builder or farmer, colliery pro- prietor or factory owner (in our own times the employer is usually a limited liability company), locks out the workman because the latter will not agree to work on a reduced wage or for a longer number of hours. As the workman, whom we call ‘labour,’ strikes for a larger share of the product of human industry, so the employer, whom we call ‘ capital,’ seeks by the lock- out to reduce this share, and to win for people who

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THE rence in the industrial history of the nineteenth

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have invested money a bigger dividend. This struggle between labour and capital, .for a living wage on the one side, for dividends on'the other, is known as the class struggle or class war. Capital is ever striving to bring down wages to the barest level of subsistence, labour is ever striving for a wage that will satisfy fresh requirements.

(And here the dilemma of the capitalist is to be noted. Capital is always devising new schemes for the investor. I t cannot afford to be idle. The in- vestor is always on the watch for new issues, for new inventions that will pay, or promise to pay, a good dividend. Thousands of pounds are spent in adver- tising every novelty put on the market, until people, influenced by suggestion, feel they must have it. We can recall a few items in our own time, which the skill of the advertiser has persuaded people to buy: the gramophone, the wireless set, the motor-cycle, a seat in the nearest cinema and chocolates to eat while the pictures are shown, newspapers and story magazines, innumerable racing sheets and the circulars of tipsters. The capitalist depends on purchasers, he persuades by the art of the advertiser that his novelties are neces- sities. Very well, then, but the purchaser must have a rise in wages if he is to buy these additions he is asked to buy. On the one hand the capitalist is ever busy with temptations that can only be gratified by an increase of wages, with the other hand he is ever busy trying to keep wages down and to reduce the working expenses. The living wage must rise with every addi- tional rise in the standard of living, and the capitalist who is responsible for the rise in the standard, since he must have customers or go bankrupt, finds that the wages bill inflated to buy novelties is apt to reduce dividends to vanishing point.)

The end or aim, then, of the strike or lock-out is easily to be recognised, and as readily to be under-

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The Strike and the Lock-out

I t is a recurring incident in the struggle be- meen capital and labour. I t is frequently accompanied by breaches of contract, and by local disorder.

But in these times, and with the growing organisa- tion of labour into national federations of trade unions, and the massing of capital into vast amalgamations (on the principle that if you wish for peace prepare for war), the strike or lock-out is apt to spread from a comparatively small area over the whole country. Employers banded together will decide on a national lock-out-for instance, should the workmen at one

articular shop refuse to work at a given wage. Trade bnionists will come out on strike with sympathy for their fellows. As in the general strike in May, 1926, when the miners, being locked out throughout Great Britain by the mine owners for refusing to accept a reduction of wages, the rest of the Trade Unions, through their executive committees and the General Council of the Trade Unions, decided to call out all and stop work. The ground of this action was that unless the workmen in every occupation presented a common front, the miners would be compelled to accept a reduced wage ; and the blow thus inflicted on the miners would be followed by a lowering of wages for railway men and transport workers. T o meet the impending general reduction in wages the trade unions called a general strike.

The issue at the beginning was a matter of wages, of the relative proportions of wealth created by labour to be allotted to the workman and the capitalist; the normal issue in every trade dispute. Sympathetic action enlarged the boundaries and brought in addi- tional forces on both sides. The Government decided that it must stand by the employers otherwise the wel- fare of the whole people would be diminished, and the security of the State be endangered. The Labour Party decided to stand by the trade unionists.

3’57,

The general strike for other than industrial or economic ends has never been contemplated by any considerable number of British trade unionists, whose traditional policy is political measures for political ends. I t is the anarchist, the syndicalist and the non- parliamentary socialists, with their vision of the break up of the existing social order by a general stoppage of work to whom the strike appeals. I t was thus that William Morris in his News from Nowhere (a popular book among socialists some thirty years and more ago) ushered in the new era of universal good will. Morris was always more of an anarchist-communist than a social-democrat ; for social-democrats never counten- anced public disorder as a step towards socialism, while Morris had but little patience for committees or par- liaments ; his attitude indeed to all officials and elected persons was very much the attitude of Charles Dickens.

The right of the workman to strike-that is, to re- fuse to sell his labour at what he considers an unjust price-and to refuse to go to work if by striking he can prevent his fellow from being compelled to work for less than a just price, is the right of every person who is not in bondage and is not held as a slave. It is not peculiar to the workman-miner, railwayman, printer, docker, farm labourer-it is the right enjoyed by all classes and practised in all trades and profes- sions. The shopkeeper will put up his shutters if the profit (that is the wages for shopkeeping) are insuffi- cient for his needs. The barrister will decline briefs marked at a fee that he considers too low. T h e sur- geon, the portrait painter, the journalist, the profes- sional musician, the schoolmaster-all demand a return for their services, and will not erform these

less than a living wage. Even the priest must live, and needs an alms for the Mass he offers. A living wage, a stipend, salary or fee that will ensure a liveli-

services unless they are assured of a P ee that is not

The Strike and the l+ouf

hood is the common demand, and men and women will decline to work unless they are promised this live- lihood in return. (Yet for love of the brethren they may-and do-give their services for nothing on occasion; but this can hardly be aone save by men and women with incomes sufficient for their needs.)

As the workman, then, has the right to strike, so the employer has a right to lock out Qr refuse employment when he can no lon er afford to pay a living wage.

out or dismiss butlers, cooks, housemaids and coach- men from sheer lack of means to pay the accustomed wages. Many a business firm has locked out a certain proportion of its staff, finding it impossible to employ them any longer. In the name of economy it is held necessary to cut down the wages or salary list, and this is best effected by getting rid of as many persons as possible whose names figure on the pay sheet. At all times of trade depression the lock-out or dismissal of the employed-and every discharge of servants is but a lock-out-takes place. That the employer has a right to discharge-that is, to lock out all persons whom he employs when circumstances do not allow him to employ them without ruining his business-is plain. His exercise of the right will be conditioned by economic considerations.

Similarly with the workman ; his exercise of the right to strike will be conditioned by economic considera- tions. When trade is booming, when factories and workshops are noisy with the hum of work, crowded with men and women working full time and overtime, when profits and wages are high and dividends make handsome return to the shareholder, then the strike or lock-out rarely happens. I t is in the lean years of bad trade, the lean years which invariably follow the season of good trade and bounding prosperity, that the workman and the capitalist, hard put to get a living,

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Many an old county B amily has been compelled to lock

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fall to strife over the meagre product to be divided. Then it is that the interests of capital and labour are seen as mutually hostile, the claims of dividends and wages irreconcilable, and-the strike and lock-out occur.

The strike and lock-out, in especial when practised on a large scale, are manifestations, then, of the struggle that is perpetually taking place between the investor and the wage-earner, between capital and labour.

In this struggle, whenever strike or lock-out is pro- claimed, the blow falls immediately more heavily on the poor than on the rich, inflicts directly more hurt on the wage-earner and his family than on the share- holder. For the rich, with their greater store of this world’s goods, suffer no sudden personal loss, while the resources of the poor are rapidly exhausted. Every big strike or lock-out means for the poor the cutting down of daily rations, the dismantlement of the home, the dreary journey to the pawnbroker.

Yet in spite of the odds against him, the labourer will neither be prevented from going on strike, nor be persuaded not to endure a lock-out when the alterna- tive appears a shameful surrender to conditions that deny a living wage. As he took up arms in 1914 for that love of a land which, for all that it gave him but a hard and scanty living, was the land that bred him, so that not to fight for it seemed at the time a shameful surrender to the enemy, so will he face strike and lock- out with all the privations that belong to these unhap y things, rather than submit without a struggle to t R e surrender demanded by the capitalist in the name of economic conditions.

It may well be that in the years to come when man- kind has devised a better system of industrial life, when the division of society into hostile camps of share-holders and wage-earners has been healed by a

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The Strike and the Lock-out

co-operative order of production and distribution, that b e strike and the lock-out will pass. At present the peace that is promised to men of good will will not Save us from the strife of tongues, neither will it cure our economic disorders. For the strike and the lock- out are not the causes of class struggle; they are but incidents of the struggle, evidences of conflicting in- terests. The roots of class war are in capitalism itself, which from time to time declares the living wage im- possible.

The issue is between capitalism, with its repeated fluctuations of wages, its periodical strikes, and a co-operative order of society that will ensure the living wage for all.

JOSEPH CLAYTON.

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