THE GRIMSBY FISHING STRIKE.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 2 October 1901, Page 3

THE GRIMSBY FISHING STRIKE.

[per press association—copyright.]

London, Oct 1,

The Earl of Scarborough has induced Grimsby strikers to resume work pending the Board of Trade arbitration.

The dispute above referred to began by a manifesto from the owners. They asserted that if the working expenses were not reduced the fishing industry, upon which Grimsby largely lives, would cease to exist. They therefore proposed to reduce the engineers’ wages, but to give each of them an interest in the working of the vessels in the shape of a bonus, which would increase with the profits, so that it would bo to the interest of every man to prevent the waste of stores and fuel that was going on. They stated they had no desire to break up the men’s organisation, referring to the engineers of the trawlers, the fishermen themselves having no organisation. The engineers, however, refused to accede to the proposed scheme, and as the boats came into harbour they at once signed off, the Engi neers’ Union giving them strike pay, and using measures to prevent men coming from other parts to take the places of the strikers. The result was that within a week or two there were 400 trawlers lying idle in the port, representing a capital of at least two millions sterling, and some 10,000 men out of work. At a very early stage of the dispute the owners, in conference with the men, offered to go to arbitration, but the offer was refused. The engineers themselves who held the keys of the situation, were, as we have said, in receipt of strike pay, and were therefore not so badly off, but the unfortunate fishermen, the unwilling victims of a quarr.l in which they had no active part, were soon reduced to poverty, and had it not been for private charity and the efforts of local benevolent organisations the distress must have been more terrible than has actually been the caseand it has been very severe. Early last month, when the strike had been going on for four or five weeks, a thousand children were getting their one meal in the day in the shape of breakfast at a refuge; sometimes one haddock was the day’s food of a family of ten ; and hundreds of homes were stripped of furniture to buy bread. The engineers, whose action was the cause of so much suffering, had not the sympathy of the labour leaders, and Mr Havelock Wilson, president of the National Sailors’, Firemen’s and Fishermen’s Union, wrote to a Grimsby paper strongly condemning the action of the local Engineers’ Union, and asserting that the position they bad taken up in refusing to discuss the terms wit a the Owners’ Federation could not be defended. He advised a conference at once, and said the Grimsby owners had always met his Society on the wages’ question in a fair and reasonable manner. Subsequently the men agreed to ask the Owners’ Federation for an interview to discuss the situation. What happened after this is not yet known here, but apparently the owners must have withdrawn their former offer to go to arbitration, and the dispute has assumed a most regrettable character. The rest of the country suffers in some degree, for an immense quantity of fish is usually despatched! daily from Grimsby. In the meanwhile the North Sea, which the owners say is literally “fished out,” is getting a rest which may prove ultimately beneficial, though (hat is cold comfort for the fishermen and their families.