GROWTH UNDER STORMY SKIES. 227 



Wilmslow and Alderley Edge districts in June and resulted 

 in an increase of \d. an hour. 



In the market garden district of Wallasey, Cheshire, a 

 strike had begun on April 12. The labourers, numbering 

 about 150 or 160, demanded 27s. a week, 7d. an hour 

 overtime and a Saturday half-holiday. The strike lasted 

 nine days, the masters agreeing to the Saturday half-holiday 

 but declining to go further than 24$. n week for drivers 

 and experienced men, with 2s. extra for drivers on market 

 mornings and 6d. an hour for overtime. Before the dis- 

 pute the average wage had been 22s. The Union in this dis- 

 trict was still young and lacking in funds, and the organiser 

 there, Mr. J. Phipps, considered the result satisfactory. 



In June many of the branches of the N.A.L.U. in Cheshire 

 and South-West Lancashire broke away from the parent 

 Union and formed a new one called the Farm and Dairy 

 Workers' Union, with Mr. Phipps as secretary, and this 

 later, during the war, became merged in the Workers' 

 Union. 



A farm strike occurred at Swanley in Kent when a de- 

 mand was made for a minimum wage of 24*. by branches 

 of the National Agricultural Labourers' Union, and in 

 June a strike was proclaimed involving some 500 men. 



In June farmers were discharging men at Whittlesford 

 and Duxford near Cambridge for joining the N.A.L.U. 

 " We don't want our men to be led away by agitators," 

 they said compassionately ; " if they want to come back 

 they must ask us and they will have to come back as non- 

 union men." 1 



In this summer of impending strikes, when farmers in 

 every count}' without exception refused officially to recog- 

 nise the existence of an agricultural labourer's union, 

 declining to confer with the men's leaders, when Hereford- 

 shire and Wiltshire were smouldering with revolt, it was 

 around a tiny village in the county of Northampton that 

 public interest centred, in the fight for recognition. 



Just a handful of farm labourers pitted their united 

 strength against a great landowner, a Peer of the Realm, 

 1 Daily Chronicle, June 13, 1914. 



