Strike Cracking

Britain's "million miner coal strike" (TIME, May 10 et seq.) seemed on the verge of collapse last week as the number of miners who have repudiated their leaders and returned to work swelled to 200,000. Significant developments: Parliament convened for a short special session to extend the Emergency Power Act which has been kept in force during the entire 23 weeks of the strike. Premier Baldwin declared before the Commons that his Government had come virtually to the end of its powers of mediation in the strike. He indicated that if the miners would return to work on a regional agreement basis the Government would undertake to set up a national wage arbitration board. Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill appeared still piqued at the mine owners' refusal to accept the plan for settling the coal strike "on principles nationally laid down," which he evolved while Premier Baldwin was on his vacation (TIME, Sept. 20). Said the Chancellor testily, almost petulantly last week: "In my opinion the prolongation of the strike is due entirely to the obstinacy of the mine owners." Onetime (Jan.-Nov. 1924) Laborite Premier Ramsay Macdonald vigorously attacked the Government: "You have not played a straight game! You have sided with the mine owners!" Lloyd George, speaking for his corporal's guard of impotent Liberals cried: "How can we hope for peace while the Government skids on the road? Had the Government held to a single policy-- almost any policy--the miners would be back at work today. The Chancellor of the Exchequer should have been given a free rein to enforce his peace proposals upon the owners." Premier Baldwin replied: "We cannot force an agreement by legislation." Significantly the Premier went on to load the Miners' Federation with the blame for continuing the coal strike. Thus, he repudiated by implication Mr. Churchill's stand. Statistics released last week indicated that British coal production is now at one-tenth of normal, and iron and steel production at one-fourteenth of normal.