The Role of the Church in Strikes

During strikes, as during wars, many significant details are obscured by more dramatic happenings. When considering the situation at a later date certain features are thrown into sharp relief, or a passing reference to some action may awaken interest and reconsideration of that fiction.

A radio programme of Thursday, February 7th, had this effect Speaking in a weekly programme, “What are the Churches Doing,” the clergyman speaker related, with evident pride, the intervention of two Liverpool clergymen in the recent dock strike. Whether his claims for them were true or exaggerated, his attitude certainly showed a new aspect of the church’s activities.

In the Times of November 2nd, 1945, the following account of the affair was given:—

“The Dock strike may be suspended tomorrow to give negotiating parties a period in which to make satisfactory progress. Mass meetings at affected ports will be asked for their decision tomorrow morning.
At a meeting here today the Rector of Liverpool, Canon R. Ambrose Reeves, who, with Father John Fitszsimons, has been mediating, told the dockers that last week he received a letter from Mr. Ernest Bevin which encouraged him, in spite of many rebuffs in other quarters, to persevere and to help in the impasse. Since then, with Father Fitzsimons, he had met the Merseyside Strike Committee, the National Strike Committee, and Labour Members of Parliament for the Liverpool divisions. He had put before them as a basis for discussion a document in which he summarised the position as he saw it.”

Then followed a summary of what the strike revealed, and an appeal to the workers to suspend the strike for 30 days in order that negotiations might take place. The interesting points to note are that the clergyman did not for one moment imagine that the masters should give way to the dockers’ grievances. To one inured in the tradition “the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate,” the exploitation of the worker and the real nature of wages are a closed book. Instead of the usual efforts of the church to “reconcile man to God,” the efforts are now to reconcile man to his employer’s interests. Another point worthy of notice is the joining forces of the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, normally at daggers drawn, but willing in this dirty work to sink their differences. Lastly the approbation of Mr. Ernest Bevin was sweet to Canon Reeves and an encouragement to persist with the new form of blunting the edge of the workers’ strike weapon.

W. S.