Foreign News: Badly Strained

Whatever else the British working classes grumble or dispute or strike about, their perpetual grievance is against Britain's flat legal prohibition of all sympathy strikes. Last week the British Trades Union Congress, representing nearly 6,000,000 workers, unveiled the old grievance again.

First seed of the grievance was sown following Britain's only general (nationwide) strike in 1926, when Baldwin's flustered Parliament passed the Trades Disputes Act. The Act outlawed all general strikes. Because its terms were so vague, it allowed the courts scope for declaring almost any strike illegal. The trade unions found it an elastic defense against their plans and programs.

At Blackpool,...

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