DOCK STRIKE ENDS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1504, 29 July 1912, Page 5

DOCK STRIKE ENDS.

DECLARED OFFCOMMITTEE URGES MEN TO RESUME. A"TRA6IC STRUGGLE." By Tclenrapli—Press Association-Coruris'ht (Kec. July 28, 0.20 a.m.) London, July 28. Tlie Strike Committee has unanimously declared the dock strike at an end, and has recommended the immediate resump-tion-of work. .„ The committee has issued a hiamiesto declaring that it strenuously endeavoured tor ten weeks to promote a settlement by conciliatory action. The men. resented the employers' harsh impositions. The capitalists' most powerful weapon, was starvation, and it had been used remorselessly. But. despite this and other sinister methods used by the employers, the committee- recognised tho men's courage and devotion to trade unionism and workingclass solidarity. Every reasonable means of conciliation had been exhausted, and the committee had determined on its present course rather than accept abject humiliation. The manifesto adds that all agreements made prior to the dispute must be maintained in their entirety. Tho employers' persistent refusal to settle the dispute, or act with reason, indicated designs upon the Transport Workers' Federation, and the various unions, but the loyalty the men had shown during the tragic struggle must be maintained at all costs. BRITISH NATIONAL STEIKE " THREAT. (Eec. July 28, 5.5 p.m.) London, July 27. The Glasgow .Seamen and Firemen's Union oppose the proposed national strike to aid tho Londoii.trnnsport workers, and protest against the violent and ridiculous speeches of tho London. Dockers' leaders. The transport workers at Hull have promised tho London strikers a sum of money. They are in favour of a national strike, if all ports are consulted and the conference, approves. Mr. Havelock "Wilson is,disappointed, but is visiting other ports. A strike picketer has been -sentenced to a. year's imprisonment for assaulting a non-unionist. VICTORIAN MINING TROUBLE. Melbourne, July 2". A seriou9 strike of miners is threatened at Daylesford. It is hinted that the matter may extend beyond Victoria. A meeting is to bo held on Sunday to decide whether there will bo a strike. ZEALANDIA'S FIREMEN ON STRIKE. (Eec. July 23, 10.25 a.m.) Suva, July 28. Tho Vancouver liner Zcalandia, inward bound for Auckland, was held up for two and a half hours by a strike of firemen and trimmers, owing to one of their number boing sentenced' to twenty-one days' imprisonment here for insubordination. At a conference between the local manager and tho men a settlement was effected, tho manager undertaking to care for.the imprisoned man. A ONE-MAN STRIKE. ORIGIN OtTtHE TROUBLE. The strike, which began on May 23, and has since been paralysing tho shipping trade of London, originated over_ tho refusal of a member of a foreman s union to leave that organisation and join the Amalgamated Society of Watermen, Lightermen, and Watchmen. A man named Thomas, who had been a foreman, was employed by tho Mercantile Lighterage Compnnv as a watchman. Tho'lightermen declared he was a nonunionist, because they did not recognise tho foremen's union as a labour organisation. They declined to work with a nonunionist, and withdrew their labour from tho Mercantile Lighterage Company without any notice. This precipitated a general strike in the Port of London. It is a singular fact, tho "Daily Telegraph" recently remarked, that several bi" labour disputes in the last two or three years, liave had similar small beginnings. Tho one-day strike on tho North-Eastern Railway was over a miestion whether a man should work at one end of a goods shed in Newcastle or the Tho vear before last most of the cotton mills in Lancashire- were rendered idle for a week because one man declined to do certain work in cleaning his "card?," and at the end of last year there was begun another and/much more serious deadlock in the cotton trade because two or three non-unionists were employed at certain mills. Sir Edward Clarke, in his official inquiry, found that the men, thinking that a supposed agreement to employ only unionists had been violated, stopped work; whilst in other cases employers (generally of tho smaller sort) had never given the wages agreed upon after the last strike,, and wcr'o not now giving them; and, when other employers tried to force them,, simply loft the association which made the agreement.