S2 8 TRANSPORT-WORKERS ' STRIKE 



and the Board of Trade, with a view to pressure being put on the employers; and the 

 declaration of a strike on May 2oth for the reason given was prompted by the hope that 

 the hands of the Government would be forced. In taking this step the lightermen 

 relied on their privileged position in the Port of London. Their Society held an old 

 licence from the Watermen's Company, whose functions were transferred in 1908 to the 

 new Port of London Authority, and the law was that unlicensed men should not be 

 employed so long as licensed men were available, so that, apart from the difficulty of 

 obtaining substitutes in an emergency, the employers, as they knew, would have to 

 reinstate them when the strike was over. (One result of the strike was that the Port of 

 London Authority took steps to get this law altered.) 



The Federation of Transport Workers now took up the Lightermen's cause, and in 

 doing so put forward a further grievance on behalf of the Carters' Union, by whom an 

 agreement had been made with the Master Carters' Association when the strike of the 

 previous August was settled. The complaint was that one firm which had joined the 

 Association had dismissed their union men, contrary to the terms accepted, and had 

 resigned from the Association when it called them to account, so that the agreement was 

 useless. The Union demanded accordingly that all employers in the Port should be 

 obliged to belong to a Masters' Federation, which would have power to guarantee the 

 carrying out of agreements. As no concession on this point was forthcoming, notice of 

 a general strike of all members of the Transport Workers' Federation was given. 



The Government at once took action by appointing Sir Edward Clarke, K.C., to hold 

 an enquiry on May 24th, in order that the issues, which at the moment were decidedly 

 confused, might be somewhat better defined, and in the hope of checking the develop- 

 ment of the conflict. He sat to hear evidence from both sides at Fishmongers' Hall, and 

 made his report on May 28th to the effect that, while the lightermen were wrong in sup- 

 posing that the award of the previous August meant that none but members of their 

 Federation should be employed, and they themselves had broken their agreement by 

 striking without recourse to arbitration, still there were several points on which the 

 Transport Workers had legitimate grievances, owing to the employers not having carried 

 out certain terms of their agreements also. The Government on May 2gth suggested a 

 conference between the two sides, which was however declined by the shipowners, who 

 insisted that the only point really at issue was the lightermen's breach of agreement in 

 suspending work and thus dislocating the whole business of the Port. Meanwhile a 

 general strike of transport-workers was in progress at the docks, some 80,000 men being 

 affected, and the whole food supply of London was threatened; but the shipowners 

 actively engaged " free " labourers in spite of trade union picketing and intimidation, 

 and day by day managed more efficiently to get their ships unloaded. Public dis- 

 cussion, influenced by Sir Edward Clarke's report, and its criticism of both sides, centred 

 round the apparent necessity of providing, alike for masters and men, some guarantee 

 against breaches of agreements; and Mr. Lloyd George, who in Mr. Asquith's temporary 

 absence in the Mediterranean dominated the Government policy, made proposals, which 

 he explained in the House of Commons on June 5th, for a Joint Conciliation Board, 

 combined with pecuniary guarantees on both sides. Mr. Gosling, on behalf of the 

 Transport Workers, gave a general assent to this suggestion, but the employers and the 

 Port of London Authority (with Lord Devonport, formerly Mr. Hudson Kearley, a 

 well-known Liberal M.P., as chairman), after careful consideration, rejected it on 

 June loth. It was pointed out by them that there was no proper basis, under the con- 

 ditions prevailing at the docks, for such a Board, the trades concerned being very 

 different and the employers (some of whom were foreign firms) themselves being com- 

 petitors; the Port of London Authority moreover was a statutory body, with distinct 

 obligations and responsibilities, and could not well enter into such an arrangement, any 

 more than a Government Department could the Post Office, for instance with the 

 men in its employment. This was not a case of a strike against some individual firm 

 which had given legitimate cause of offence, but a general strike against the whole Port, 

 on the part of a heterogeneous body of workmen, most of whom had no actual quarrel 



