Eh, Brothers?

In London last week, from Blackfriars to Tilbury, the normally bustling Thames-side was a brackish backwater. Its forest of cranes was all but motionless. At its wharves 154 ships, Plimsolls awash, groaned to be delivered of cargoes. This week many a Briton would eat more corned beef and dislike it, while fresh beef, Irish eggs and succulent tomatoes waited or rotted beneath battened hatches and in warehouses. Equally worrisome to Britain was the fact that a flood of goods intended for the export trade was piling up at dockside. And at week's end, this state of things had been going on for 13 days. The reason: a wildcat strike of 19,000 dockers who still scorned the come-back-to-work talk of Transport and General Workers' Union General Secretary Arthur Deakin and his union straw bosses.

Zinc & Freedom. When Deakin's men tried to rally the strikers, addressing them with the traditional dockers' salute of "Eh, brother?" they retorted: "Down with Deakin," or "We're not fighting the government but we want our rights. Where's our freedom now?" In 1941, they had bartered a little freedom for a little more "security": in return for a guaranteed minimum weekly wage, they had accepted a penalty clause. Now the clause chafed. It had required only a small flash to set off a rebellion.

The spark had been the matter of eleven dockers and a cargo of zinc oxide. The eleven had refused to finish loading the cargo last month without more pay. They said, with more anger than truth, that the zinc oxide turned them blue. Penalties for the stoppage (including loss of seven days' pay) were clapped on them. The eleven--and many another docker--thought the penalties grossly unfair. Communists eagerly sniffed their opportunity.

A hastily formed shop stewards' committee with a number of Communists among its 48 members called a strike.

"I See Red." Deakin sat tight, hoping the strike would peter out. So, for days, did Prime Minister Clement Attlee's Labor government. But British tempers frayed. Cried a Tory M.P.: "It's the most effective way the Communists have yet found of sabotaging simultaneously the Labor government and Marshall aid." Said a truck driver (and Transport Union member): "When I get down to the docks in the morning and see these silly buggers striking at the gates, I see red."

The Labor government began last week to meet the challenge, ordered soldiers & sailors to assist some 5,000 non-strikers to unload the ships. But the strikers were not giving up just yet. The shutdown spread to Liverpool and Birkenhead. This week, at the request of Attlee's government, King George VI declared a state of national emergency.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.