The Press. MONDAY, November 8, 1920. The Miners' Strike.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 16986, 8 November 1920, Page 6

The Press. MONDAY, November 8, 1920. The Miners' Strike.

The settlement of tho . British coal dis- , pute. after a strike of miners lasting a littio more than a fortnight, may bo regarded as a triumph for both parties. The miners securo for the next few weeks the extra 2s per day which they demanded from tho first, their future pay depending, in a measure,, upon their output. Tho Governmont have brought nhout tho cessation of a disastrous struggle, and have done so by' the persistence with which thov explored every avenue that .might lead to a settlement by negotiation. They were. undoubted-'j ly assisted in their determination toleave nothing undone which could possibly bring this about by the attitude of the miners' leaders. It would bs •flattery to describe this as very conciliatory, but it was at least not truculently hostile to the Government's efforts in tho direction of peaco, and instead of banging tho door in the faces of Lloyd George and Sir Robert Home, Mr Smillie and his associates sometimes gave ono tho impression that they took some care to keep it ajar. There can be littio doubt that this attitude was duo in some measure to the knowledge that tho strike "was not popular among other classes of workers, and that even among the miners themselves there was a strong minority opposed to it. The ballot taken "in August on the question of striking showed 490,708 in'favour of such action, and 197,268 against it. The majority was ample, but there was good reason to believe that it included practically all -the lads under eighteen or twenty working in the mines,' who numbered something between 150,000 and 200,000, and who responded with all the irresponsibility of youth to what they regarded as an opportunity to vote themselves a holiday. Many miners did not vote at all—in tho Derbyshire field nearly 25 per cent, refrained from taking part in the ballot, in Leicester the proportion was Tather larger, while in Yorkshire the non-foters were reckoned by thousands. Thero was thus among the miners themselves a not inconsiderable body opposed to striking, . whoso opposition might eyen, in tho event of [he strike continuing for weeks, tako the form of going back to work. The ballot taken rather more than two weeks ago on the Government's datum proposals showed a much greater number Q voting than in August—Bl6,s26, as compared with 657,976, and the majority for . tho rcjectiofi of tho proposals, was much bigger than that of six weeks previously in favour of striking— largely, we imagine, because rejection of the datum proposals did not inevitably mean a strike. Mr W. Brace, M.P., tho President of tho South Wales Miners' Federation, even declared publicly that when tho adult miner voted for a strike it. did not moan that he really wanted to down tools —it was "only a demonstration of his belief in "his Federation's programme." If that is so, it supplies another reason ■for, believing that tho minors' leaders were really anxious for peace, because belief in a particular programme is little . likely to withstand tho strain of the hard times that must havo inevitably followed a long-continued strike. Then thero was tho undoubted hostility of numbers of other bodies of Labour to a strike, on tho part of tho most highlypaid workers, which would bring suffering cud hardship into the homes of many thousands who could ill afford a £pell of unemployment on tho verge of a winter in which work threatens to be much scarcer than for years past. Official estimates of the unemployment that v.'O'-itd follow.a coal strike showed that ■within a week 1,750,000 men and women •would be out of work, within two weeks 'J,5d"2.00Q,, and at tho end of threo or four weeks 3,236,000. It is only eight years since there was a coal strike in

England. lasting five weeks, and though t!i<- country was then bettor provisioned than it is row, coal stocks bigger, and trade unions armed with huge reserve funds, the experiences of very many thousands in that period were cuch that another coa] strike was dreaded. "Wc know that during the past two weeks, during which the mines have been idle, a great deal of unemployment has been caused, and a continuance of the struggle might not improbably have strained The allegiance of many workers to their leaders, and have caused divi- | sions in the ranks of Labour which ' would have been long in healing.