Midnight Crisis

During the past week perhaps the most serious industrial crisis in the history of the British Isles grew breathtakingly acute. Though Britons continued their daily round of work, and even recreation, their minds were set uneasily upon a certain midnight hour. Nervous, they wondered if it would become historic as the zero hour of a national industrial war between British capital and British labor.

"Lockout-Strike." The long standing causa belli was, of course, the long standing demand of the British Coal Miners' Federation for continuance of the seven-hour day and a national minimum wage scale 33 1/3% above the pre-War wage.

In 1924 the miners obtained these hours and this wage, but last year the Coal Owners' Mining Association declared itself unable to maintain the arrangement, and a strike was only averted (TIME, Aug. 10) when the present Baldwin Conservative Government granted a -L-20,000,000 coal subsidy, which sustained the 1924 wage level artificially until last week, when the subsidy expired. During the week Premier Baldwin persuaded the Owners' Association to offer a national minimum wage 20%* higher than the pre-War scale, if the Miners' Federation would accept an increase in the hours of labor from seven to eight. The miners stood by the slogan of their fiery Secretary, A. J. ("Emperor") Cook: "Not a penny off wages, not a minute off working hours." Despite Premier Baldwin's efforts at mediation, which he continued literally day and night, the Owners' Association "locked out" the miners when the subsidy expired last week, and simultaneously the Miners' Federation "struck."

Next day this "lockout-strike" was rendered infinitely more serious by the decision of the British Trades Union Congress to call a sympathetic "general strike" at midnight on the first day of the following week.

The extreme gravity of the crisis was made apparent when the King transferred his Court from Windsor to Buckingham Palace, conferred hourly with Premier Baldwin over a private telephone, and finally issued a proclamation, under the Emergency Power Act of 1920, by which he invested the Premier with virtually the authority of a Dictator.

Within a few hours soldiers, sailors and marines were on their way to points of expected unrest. Soon afterward civilian volunteer organizations, long ago prepared against just such an emergency by prominent Conservatives,** began to function for the maintenance of indispensable industries. The Government announced that, in these circumstances, famine conditions were not imminent. Ominously the hours drew nearer midnight.

Strength in Numbers. Since the organized workers of Britain have never before attempted united coercion, it was not generally realized last week how numerous and well coordinated are their ranks. Nowhere else, except in Soviet Russia, is trade unionism so firmly grounded. Last week it was estimated that as many able bodied workers are controlled, as to strikes, by the Trades Union Congress as there are men, women and children in New York City. The unionists operate, in normal times, virtually all the land and sea transport services, the mines, most heavy manufacturing and the building trades. Last week these men, together with "the army of unemployed workers" (rarely fewer than a million strong in the British Isles since 1920), thought chiefly in terms of hours, shillings, bread and shelter, as that midnight approached.

Political Issue. The workers nominal Parliamentary representatives, the leaders of the British Labor Party, regarded the situation of last week from a broader but politically fundamental angle. They are not likely to starve in any case. They are by no means all former workers. Their sympathies are not always completely with the laboring class. But the British Labor Party is pledged to secure the nationalization of the British mining industry. Former Laborite Premier Ramsay Macdonald, leader of the Labor Party, has moreover begun to attract the support of Mr. Lloyd George's remaining "corporal's guard" of Liberals. The present government is definitely Conservative, definitely "Capitalistic." In a word, the economic crisis of last week, was inextricably bound up with the political struggle between Laborites and Conservatives--the two predominant factions in the House of Commons.

Budget Threatened. With the issue between Laborites and Conservatives so sharply drawn, it was only natural that Chancellor Churchchill's new budget (TIME, May 3) should be mercilessly attacked in the Commons last week. Since Mr. Churchill himself admitted that his budget would continue to balance only if "industrial warfare" could be avoided, the whole Conservative structure of British state finance, which restored and has kept the pound at par for exactly a year, teetered ever so slightly as the minutes ticked on.

Press. The editor of the London Daily Mail, alarmed by all these developments, prepared a flaming anti-labor editorial, only to have his printers, machine managers, stereotypers and pressmen walk out on strike rather than send the editorial on its way. Thus the Daily Mail, "largest newspaper in the British Empire," failed to appear. The Times declared: "Unless counsels of reason prevail we are within a few hours of the most grave domestic menace which has hung over this nation since the fall of the Stuarts."

Nonchalance. The comparative nonchalance of other Britons durin the eleventh hour was well shown when the former Labor Premier Macdonald visited the opening of the Royal Academy's summer exhibition, and chatted there amiably with the wife of Conservative Premier Baldwin.

Last Conference. Peace hovered in Parliament. Premier Baldwin and Labor Leader J. H. Thomas abruptly walked out to an anteroom, cheered to the echo. Shortly the Cabinet and leading Labor men joined them. Hopeful rumors spread. "Emperor" Cook was summoned. Surely it meant peace .... But Cook came out in a moment. "The strike is on," he said. And Thomas, gray-faced, stopping, tears streaming, followed him saying: "We failed. ... I am broken." Premier Baldwin, grave and drawn, came out and his voice was low. He said England was "close to civil war." High in his belfry, Big Ben tolled twelve.

Paralysis. The first stages of the greatest strike in British history were swift. Radical workers thronged the midnight streets in friendly carnival mood. Soldiers moved unobtrusively. But at Hyde Park and thousands of other depots, motor transports assembled to carry the next day's food and milk. The railroads were being paralyzed. Newsboys had nothing to sell save radio and birth-control literature. All but one newspaper, the Evening Star, had been shut down. New British flags greeted the dawn from countless housetops, but no British flags moved out of the country's harbors. Shipping was the third industry to be stricken. Recruiting offices were opened, with queues forming reminiscent of 1914. Business men took cots and canned goods to their offices as for a siege. Labor posters appeared affixed to locked doors on stations, factories, etc.: "Stand all as one." Grouse-shooting parties and the women's international golf matches were cancelled. Nonchalance had vanished at the grim touch of actuality.

Plans. The posters summarized Labor's plans. The International Federation of Trades Unions, with headquarters in Holland and 23 member-countries, announced that its "war chest" was wide open to the Britons, who have funds sufficient to hold out five weeks unaided. Out of drowsy Eccleston Square came the proclamation: "The trades unions did not enter the fight without counting the cost. . . . Stand firm and we win." The Government planned to counter-propagandize by broadcasting news and subsidizing an amalgamated newspaper, fully guarded. Between the contending leaders complete understanding existed that the way to further parleys was clear at any hour.

Foreign Effects. With British funds scurrying home to shelter, the New York stock market broke sharply. Washington buzzed.

Wheat fell 3 cents, the French franc to another record low. Tourists abroad filled the travel offices, asking questions mostly, some buying homebound passages.

The world waited for England to muddle through.

*This would mean that certain workers with families to support would receive as little as a pound a week: roughly $5. Most unionized U.S. miners receive $7.50 for working one eight-hour day. But many work only two days a week.

**Such as Sir William ("Jix") Joynson Hicks, the ultra-reactionary Home Secretary, et al.