This article almost certainly couldn’t be printed in Britain; something which should concern men everywhere who believe in free speech.
After a strike lasting nearly seven weeks, the members of ten printing unions have gone back to work. Their strike cost some £28,000,000; closed down 1,000 local papers, 87 provincial morning and evening papers and 4,300 printing companies; reduced the national dailies, which alone were not directly involved in the strike, to mere 8-page skeletons. The unions’ demand was for a 10 per cent wage increase and a reduction in the basic working week from 431/4 hours to 40 hours. This year instead of demanding higher wages because the cost of living had risen, they demanded a bigger share of the profits because times were good; in other words, they are always going to ask for more money and will simply suit their argument to the circumstances. The employers at first said they couldn’t afford to give any wage rise at all but offered to submit the dispute to arbitration. The unions refused because they said that, until the employers made an offer, there was “nothing to arbitrate about.”
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