Sir Stafford Cripps may now address the workers on Joint Production Committees as "comrades" but this will soon be forgotten when the struggle resumes its normal intensity in the scramble for markets and profits after the war. In spite of all the hopes of industrial peace, backed up by the powers of the Government under the various orders imposing industrial conscription and banning strikes, the number of trade disputes increased from 875 in 1938 to 940 in 1939, 922 in 1940. 1,251 in 1941, and 1,281 in 1942. The number of disputes is actually larger than in the last war. though the number of workers involved, and the number of days lost, are smaller—due to the fact that "the great majority of stoppages affected only individual establishments and were of short duration" (Ministry of Labour Gazette, January 1943). In spite of the elaborate arrangements to secure the reference of disputes to arbitration, there is ample evidence that trade unionists have not accepted the defeatist view that they can afford to renounce what is in the last resort their main if not their sole weapon, the strike.
(From the editorial in the Socialist Standard, July 1943.)
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