Against the Odds - A Few Good Men and the Fight Against Fascism
On Tyneside at the beginning of 1943 workers at the Neptune ship repair yard came out for six weeks over the refusal of five men at their firm to join the Amalgamated Engineering Union. They received massive support from workers in other firms and trades, and forced their employers to concede a 'closed shop' agreement, setting a precedent which would be followed up and down the country.
This was also the year of the famous Barrow engineering strike at the enormous Vickers Armstrong yard there. When the workers downed tools it sent shock waves throughout the country. Engineers, apprentices and other allied trades at the yard stopped work because Vickers refused to pay them a decent increase. The basic rate at Barrow had not risen for 29 years! Yet Vickers' profits had rocketed when the government began rearmament. Every morning, between 1,500 and 2,000 workers formed a mass picket outside the gates of the yard. Scabbing was kept to an absolute minimum. As the strike wore on, the National Arbitration Tribunal was called in to decide what a fair pay settlement should be. To a public outcry, it sided with the employer. But even this did not deter the Barrow strikers, and they voted unanimously to stay out.
While the Barrow strike was unofficial, it did have the backing of the local AEU district committee....
For the bosses and government though, the worst was yet to come. In 1944 the government was faced with a coal crisis. Coal was absolutely fundamental to the production demands of the war economy, and on top of this, plans were well under way for the opening of the Second Front in Europe, which also required vast amounts of home produced coal. Yet these extra demands were not received warmly by the miners when their demand for a minimum wage was met with a compromise deal falling far short of what they had expected. The 'Porter pay award' as it was known aroused massive anger in the pits. Within 24 hours of its announcement almost every single pit in South Wales and Lancashire was idle. These were soon joined by pits in Kent, Yorkshire, Durham and Scotland. Just when it needed coal most, the government had provoked the biggest single mining dispute since the 1926 General Strike with more than 180,000 miners stopping work.....
I didn't notice that bit in the video...