Solidarity Does It

Said Ted Hudson of Stepney: "My wife says we are all the same, a lot of sheep. I wouldn't say she were wrong, mind, but we've got to stick together." Ted was trying to explain why he and 15,000 other London dockworkers were on strike. They had refused to work two Canadian ships, the Beaverbrae and the Argomont, involved in a Communist-led Seamen's Union dispute in Canada. British Communists said the ships were "black" ("hot" in U.S. labor jargon), and urged the men to boycott them.

Three weeks ago the National Dock Labor Board (representing management and labor) refused to let the dockers go to work on any ship at all unless they unloaded the two Canadian ships. When troops were called in to take the place of the wildcat strikers, they stayed away from the two Canadian ships. Using troops to unload them would have settled the dispute, but the government knew what it was doing.

Explanation. Last week Prime Minister Attlee, aware of the Communist part in the strike, explained things to the House of Commons. Unloading the ships with troops would mean giving over to the wildcat strike leaders the power to decide what ships would be worked. Said Attlee: "It means that a group of irresponsibles can call a ship 'black' if it comes from a particular country with which a particular clique happens to be on bad terms. It may be France one day; it may be Yugoslavia another day . . ."

Willie Gallacher, one of the two Communist members of the House, called this "evil, lying, propaganda" and quoted the New Testament in support of his case. He blamed the stoning of Stephen and the crucifixion of Christ on what he called "the attorney generals" of that day. David Gilbert Logan of Liverpool interrupted to assert that the persecutors of Christ and Stephen were "proper Communist gangs." Outraged members wanted to shut off Willie's blasphemy, but the speaker ruled regretfully: "I do not think there is any rule which makes it out of order, but I must say it fills me with disgust." After almost seven hours of debate the House voted, 412 to 4, to extend the government's emergency powers for a month.

The dockers, ignoring Attlee's speech and the vote, continued the strike. On Tower Hill, midday crowds gathered in the sun to hear soapbox speakers supporting labor solidarity and the strike. One of them popped out his National Health Service Acts false teeth, held them aloft triumphantly, cried gummily: "I'd never have had a tooth in me head if your fathers and my fathers hadn't stuck tergeth-er in the past for their rights. Solidarity, that's wot did it, and it'll do it again now."

But for all the dockers' stubbornness, there was little bitterness, no violence. Along winding narrow streets sunk deep between black warehouses, strikers with Sunday-slick hair ambled peacefully in a Sabbath-like quiet. Few trucks moved. Pickets applauded a truckload of soldiers who passed singing "Life gets teejus, don't it?" On the quayside where the soldiers were unloading ships, a striking foreman saw a cargo net threatening a young guardsman, cried out: "Mind there, son." He turned to a friend, said: "I wish those boys wouldn't take chances. They treat it like a big game."

Hesitation. The government hesitated to use its emergency powers (such as billeting troops in private homes, making arrests without warrants), did little but hold conferences. It hoped to find a face-saving formula that would get the men back to work without starving them out. But it was determined, too, not to let Britain go hungry for food or dollars. Since the first trouble over "black" Canadian ships began in May, enough time had been lost on British docks, up to last week, to send 50 ships across the Atlantic and back. In London alone, over 100,000 tons of export cargo were held up.

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