Norwich bulletin., 1919-08-01
BRITISH COMMERCE MENAcED
 BY INDUSTRIAL UNREST

London, July 01.-(By The A.. sP.)- The general industrial unrest in Great Britain, which has been seething ever since the armiStice, seems at the present hour to have reached a point which menaces the commerce of the country with at least temporary dis aster It is considered possible that it may mean the downfall of the Lloyd George government.
 The strikes of the past month have been serious enough, but they are merely swmptomatic of an epidemic of dissatisfaction which appears to prevail throughouttthe ranks of organ ized labor Half a million Lancashire cotton opera tves were. idle for more than three weeks. Two hundred thOuS- and Yorkshire miners have been on strike since July 20. The Liverpool dockers have paralyzed shipping there for two weeks, holding up hundreds of ships of all sizes The bakers have decided to strike on Saturday, and now the London police are about to go out on their second strike.
 The worst movement of all from the government standpoint is the threat of direct action" by the triple alli- port workers. These powerful unions are taking a secret ballot to decide whether they shall use the weapon of a general strike to try to enforce their political programme of the na- tionalization of mines and railways, and to end conscription. and with drawal from all participation in Rus sian affairs.
 In these circumstances words of revolution and BOlSheviSm crop up in the newspapers and are used by con- servative men to describe the present movement. Some of the newspapers are asking where the money comes from to finance all the propaganda be- ing put forth.
 The government regards the police strike as the most dangerous feature of the prevailing unrest It may prove a critical test of the labor campaign.
 The home secretary, E. Shortt, has declared that the government is firm and will consider no compromise or yielding to the policemens demands to have the status of an ordinary labor union.
 Lord Askwith-formerly Sir George Ranken Askwith-who has had more experience than any man in England in settling labor disputes = has de- nounced the premier bitterly as re- sponsible for the present conditions by his policy of political interference in industrial business
 Lord Askwith. who has been chief industrial commissioner since 1911, says: .'The premier has impressed every trade, sometimes the employers, more often the employed. with the be- lief that they only had to push hard enough to receive their demands from the bottomless purse of the ation."
 
 -feet~bilisa from the miners strike, all the workers thrown out of employment through the coal shortage getting the unemployed dole. which, in the case of men with families. amounts to more than two pounds a week, and the num- Der of these in the industrial towns of the Midlands is steadily increas- ing.
 Direct action by the workers is de- nounced by many public men as an attempt ment and govern the country by a dic-. tatorship of labor unions. Labor's answera is that the present parliament does not represent the country and has gone back on it's pledges to labor. parliament tonight:
 It looks as II we are approaching a general election
 Premier Lloyd Georges famous poli- cy Of compromise. so long successful, appears to have reached the break ing point, and certainly is undergoing it's severest test No soner is one eruption cleared up than a new one breaks out. The old leaders of Ia bor, men of the type of J. H. Thomas, who has just returned from America; Will jam Adamson, spokesman of the labor party in the house of commons; John Hodge and Win Thorne. are preaching restraint and patience while recon Struction from the war is being ar ranged, and are warning the working men that Great Britain'S future is inn peri1led unless she can regain her for eign trade. MT. Thomas has held up the picture of American competition and American enterprise.
 But the old leaders seem to have lost their influence. A new and young CT set, a majority of them outspoken| socialists, some of them not even workingmen, but ,socialistic theorists are in the saddle.