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The Newsletter, vol. 2 no. 71, 4 October 1958 · scan page 4

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THE appalling news that, in protest against ‘petty discipline’, policemen in London’s West End have been taking unauthorized tea-breaks and failing to bring street-walkers to the court to pay their monthly tax has undoubtedly recalled to official memory the great London police. strike of 1918.

On that historic occasion, while the first world war was still in progress, practically the entire Metropolitan Police Force, then about 12,000 men, left their beats.

Several thousands marched from New Scotland Yard to Tower Hill in columns of four, half a mile long, headed by a piper. Even the police at Buckingham Palace took part. . : The Prime Minister hastily intervened to grant wage increases and a pension for widows. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner resigned. The men went back to their beats.

But the authorities were determined not to recognize anything like a police trade union, and after a while began dismissing. alleged ringleaders for- ‘breaches of discipline’, combining this procedure with further concessions on pay; until they had so weakened and: isolated the militants that they were able to get away with a Bill prohibiting policemen from belonging to a union.

None of the successive Labour Governments interested itself ‘in ensuring trade union rights for policemen.

Pay increases, yes—even when other. workers were being rebuffed;. but strictly on the initiative and by the grace of the authorities, A well-documented account of. the police. strikes -of 1918 . and 1919 and the breaking of the Police. Union appears in the current (August 1958) issue of the Economic History Review, from the pen of V. L. Allen, who wrote ‘Power in Trade Unions’ and ‘Trade Union - Leadership’.

He notes the role played by ‘many Labour politicians and trade union leaders’ who ‘believed it was inimical to the interests of internal security .to give policemen the same freedom of association as was claimed as a right by industrial ; a : i there is no autonomous régime for the part of Macedonia which is included in Bulgaria, and one of Tito’s major offences seems to be that there is a Macedonian autonomous republic in Yugoslavia.

IT may interest your readers to know how the plebiscite