The Dominion. THURSDAY, JANUARY 29, 1911. SYNDICALISM AT LEEDS.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1970, 29 January 1914, Page 4

The Dominion. THURSDAY, JANUARY 29, 1911. SYNDICALISM AT LEEDS.

The strike of municipal employees at Leeds last month had an educative value which in some measure counterbalanced the loss and temporary inconvenience to which itsubjected the people of a great city. Probably no single conflict of the kind has ever clone .so much to expose the crude absurdities of Syndicalism, and to bring them into merited contempt. Intent on gaining an increase of wages, the strikers set themselves to paralyse the whole of the municipal services; they proposed to plunge the city into darkness, and to stop everything which makes life in a civilised community possible—water, heating, cfeansing, and even the disposal of the dead. The thought that they had it in their power to make the life of thn community intolerable until tlwir demands were satisfied. If they had really possessed this _ power they might have accomplished almost anything, but the people of Leeds resolutely declined to be victimised in order" to serve the purposes of four or five thousand malcontent workmen, and the striko had hardly begun before it was broken. All sorts of men—dorks, undergraduates, and aldermen—turned out to drive the trams, man the powerhouses, and elearl the city streets, and within a few days the Leeds Corporation was able to issue au ultimatum which offered its revolting employees the alternative of going back to work as -beaten twin or accepting permanent dismissal, deferring to the collapse of the strike in South Africa au Australian writer remarked the other (lay that Syndicalism is obviously unfit to cope with a Government composed of old soldWs. At Leeds it was demonstrated that Syndicalism is equally unfit to cope with an aroused public opinion.

Tho Leeds -Syndicalists miscalculated badly. They " expected to* institute a' reign of terror and 'to easily bend a- perplexed municipality, to their. wilL. Instead, they found themselves confronted by win angry and united community which bni.died them aside like so many straws, and set to work energetically to fill the places they had left vacant and oarry on (lit services they had hoped to suspend. '■' ; "" ■ ■■ The great value of the Leeds strike as an object-lesson - to \ organised labour, and to the general public, rests upui the fact that it was a compact conflict in which the issues were clearly defined. It was made plain at the outset that the strikers wre uttorly indifferent to the rights of the general public In order to. secure redress of their alleged grievances, these four or five thousand man were prepared to inflict distress upon the whole population of a big city. The wrecking policy of _ the Syndicalists was here made manifest in all its naked ugliness. Their blind indifference to the welfare cf the puo'ic would have been unjustifiable in uiiy case, but in the actnil circumstances it was absolutely indefensible, for the wages paid by the Leeds Corporation to its employees compare favourably with those paid by' Other public and private employers Great Britain. Ostensibly the strike was for a rise in wages of two shillings per week all round. Tiiis demand had been the subject of negotiations extending over several months, and the Corporation was willing to allow increases to two-thirds of the applicants, ranging between one and two shillings each. This was the position of affairs whan the men suddenly discontinued negotiations and ceased work. It is perfectly clear that they hoped to extort by farce from the community what tliey knew they could not gain by peaceful and reasonable, means. Their anti-social enterprise met with tho fate which it deserved; the fate which similar attempts are bound to meet anywhere except in a community of lunatics.

Unionists and Liberals on the Leeds Corporation united in presenting a firm front, and even the Labour representatives were by no means whole-hearted in their support of the strikers. The working men of the town -were altogether out of sympathy with the strike, and many showed themselves, eager and willing to come to the aid of the municipality. The trades unionists of Leeds, who munbsr some 38,000, refrained from expressing any sympathy with the strikers, and an attempt to organise a sympathetic strike failed dismally. Practically the whole population supported the vigorous action taken by the. Corporation. Ths strikers might have dealt with a few "black-legs" by methods which have become familiar, but it npssl their calculations to find themselves faced by a whole population turned "black-leg,'.' and all the nonsense which they and -their kind have talked about "workingclass solidarity" went up in smoke. The result of the' Leeds strike is all the mora gratifying on acjount of the fact that it is suspacted, though not definitely known, that Leeds was made a sort of laboratory or experimental station'in','which to-test the Syndicalist plan of action, and that success at feeds would have, been followed by similar stiikes in other cities.. However ~that,..may..b?, the crushing defeat'> experienced by the Syndicalists at Leeds indicates that their revolutionary doctrines , are certain ' to: meet with short:-shrift wherever . they are clearly understood. In Great Britain, as well as in'other countries, it is coming eyevy day to be more clearly rrcognisedthat the great body of trades unionists have nothing to hope from what Mr. Larkix calls the "greater unionism." By attempting to carry their policy of destructive strikes to an impossible extreme, the Syndicalists arc rapidly, educating public opinion and helping along the forces making for the umvermil adoption of sane methods and the peaceful settlement of industrial, disputes.