Strike Ends

The great strike ended. Britons at first cared little why or how. It was over. But its effects lingered, long to be felt. The "strike wounds" of industry were healing slowly. If they were to heal completely, the cure must be wrought by the aid of lessons learned.

A great figure had emerged, Stanley Baldwin. But his ultimatum to the strikers -- that negotiations with them could not be resumed until the strike was called off -- made it necessary that before he could become the -- at least temporary -- national hero, an unofficial mediator should be found.

Sir Herbert Samuel. The logical person to whisper about conciliatorily among the stern-faced, set-lipped combatants was, of course, the man who chairmaned the Royal Coal Commission (TIME, Oct. 19), the impartial investigator who presumably knew more than any other man in England about the friction in the coal industry which ultimately generated first the "coal strike" and the "general strike." Fortunately this man, Sir Herbert Samuel, is of such outstanding ability as to have become one of the four Jews who have held British Cabinet posts. Adroit but upright, he won fame as a conciliator while High Commissioner to the vexed land of Palestine (1920-25).

Since the inception of the general strike, Sir Herbert had made it his business to know what secret thoughts of conciliation were in the minds of Premier Baldwin and Arthur Pugh, chairman of the Trade Union Council. Then "a memorandum by Sir Herbert Samuel" was made public. It purported to represent merely his own personal idea of a workable compromise. Even to blockheads it was evident that this document was a shrewd synthesis of the views held by Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Pugh.

The Memorandum recommended: 1) Temporary renewal of the coal subsidy (TIME, Aug. 10 et seq.);

2) Creation of a National (coal) Wage (revision) Board, representing miners and owners equally and having a neutral chairman with a casting vote; 3) Revision of wages to proceed on the explicit understanding that the Royal Coal Commission's recommendations for increasing the efficiency of the coal industry are to be given effect; 4) Legislative measures for reconstructing the coal industry to be prepared by a Government-named committee partly representative of the miners.

Capitulation. Both sides having pondered well this "memorandum," certain further assurances were conveyed in deadly secret. Soon Mr. Pugh led the Trade Union Council to No. 10 Downing St., the Premier's official residence. Within were the Premier and six* of his Ministers, fire-eaters "Winnie" Churchill and "Jix" Joynson-Hicks being conspicuously absent.

The Premier stuck to the letter of his ultimatum, said not a word until Mr. Pugh said quietly that the Trade Union Council had decided to terminate the general strike. Victorious, Mr. Baldwin level-headedly exclaimed: "I thank God for your decision!"

An instant later the Government radio broadcast a few sentences which sent tingles of emotion coursing up British spines. Britannia had muddled through.

Aftermath. Since the Government was only impliedly bound to carry out the Samuel memorandum, Labor officials were on the prickliest of tenter-hooks until Premier Baldwin demonstrated that he is a man of his word -- and something more.

During the 24 hours in which he cautiously sounded out the situation, there were ugly rumors that "the Iron Baron* and the Jew" had "sold" (betrayed) the strikers. During this interval many great industrial firms, vindictive, refused to re-employ strikers except upon "humiliating terms." Excited correspondents cabled: "The strike is over, the lockout has begun!" All this was premature. Stanley Baldwin, having winnowed the issue of inflammable chaff, announced to the Commons: 1) That the London subway, tramway and omnibus companies had amicably concluded agreements for re-employing strikers -- the implication being that the Government was doing its best to stamp out punitive lockouts./- 2) That he had submitted a conciliatory proposal to the coal miners and operators, giving them three days in which to consider it before he would expect a reply. It was considered highly reassuring that this plan, when examined, proved to embody the Samuel memorandum virtually in toto. The Premier straightforwardly added that, while the Government would help to tide the coal industry financially over its reconstruction period, the miners must help by at least temporarily accepting lower wages.

Politics. Labor's wearied titan, Ramsay Macdonald and Liberal tycoon Lloyd George -- generalissimos of the parliamentary Opposition to Conservative Baldwin --were moved by the pressure of public opinion to laud Baldwin in the Commons for having kept his unuttered word to the strikers. Unquestionably these laudations were sour grapes in Laborite and Liberal mouths. Conservative stock bounded up -- especially that of "young Conservatives" like Mr. Baldwin, who represents the Liberal wing of his party.

Recovery. Cables soon indicated that urban transportation was almost normal and the railways were rapidly recovering but industry --especially in Scotland -- was coming back very slowly. Experts placed the cost of the strike to Britain at -L-250,000,000, opined that the Government's strike expenditures totaled at least -L-10,000,000.

Victory was jubilantly trumpeted by the now arch-Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer, "Winnie" Churchill, who cried to the Commons: "I see no reason at present to propose additional taxation to pay the Government's expenses during the strike. . . . All of the season's principal [social] events will take place."

*Sir A. Ramsay-Steel-Maitland (Labor), Lord Birkenhead (India), W.C. Bridgeman (Admiralty), Neville Chamberlain (Health), Viscount Peel (Public Works), Sir L. Worthington-Evans (War).

*Mr. Baldwin was master of the great iron foundry. Baldwin's Ltd., before he entered the Ministry in 1917.

/-The railway companies and their striking employes signed agreements a hours later, in which the unions guaranteed not to strike again without warning and negotiations, and the striker leaders admitted the calling of the strike to have been "wrongful." J.H. Thomas, M.P., famed "balance wheel of British labor," signed this agreement as Secretary of the Railwaymen's Union, pronounced it "eminently satisfactory."