STRIKES AND LOCK-OUTS. A "strike" may be de fined as a voluntary stoppage of work on the part of a body of workpeople, by common agreement or by order of their society or union, for the purpose of obtaining or resisting a change in the conditions of employment. The term "lock-out" came later into use to denote a stoppage of work in which, instead of the workpeople voluntarily withdrawing their labour, the employers lock their doors, as an act of industrial policy, against workpeople willing to work. In its most strict usage the term "lock-out" applies solely to cases in which employers lock-out their work people in order to bring to issue and settlement a state of friction which they regard as intolerable or in order to bring pressure to bear on a section who are on strike or otherwise recalcitrant— pressure calculated to constrain these latter to proceed with their work on the employers' terms.
Clear cases of "lock-out" coming within this narrow definition are not frequent in the history of industrial strife in Great Brit ain. Of the disputes which have occurred since the World War, those in the engineering industry in 1922, in the boilermaking trade in 1923, in the shipyards in 1924 and in the Rossendale slipper factories in 1927 could perhaps be described as "lock outs" without any widespread objection being raised, but if the designation "lock-out" be confined to these and kindred cases, and all other disputes be called "strikes," then the number of "lock outs" must appear as almost negligible beside the number of strikes.
The following table, based on the official returns collected by the Board of Trade and by the Ministry of Labour, shows the number and importance of the trade disputes in Great Britain (including Northern Ireland) that have come to the knowledge of those departments in each of the years from 1893 to 1928:— Fluctuations in Frequency of Disputes.—The most notice able feature of the table is the immense variation in the figures as between one year and another.
These variations, however, are due mainly—as regards numbers involved and aggregate duration, almost entirely—to the occur rence in some years of quite a small number of great disputes.
The year 1926 was an extreme instance of this. The great coal mining dispute of May–December in that year accounted, at the start, for about 1,050,000 workpeople, and for an aggregate dura tion of over 145 million days; while the general strike early in May accounted for 1,58o,000 workpeople (the largest number ever involved in any one stoppage in Great Britain), and for 15 million working days. Apart from these two disputes, the year 1926 was exceptionally free from industrial disturbance, the re maining disputes numbering only 321, with 121,000 workpeople involved, and an aggregate duration of 2,030,000 days—numbers comparable with those for such exceptionally quiet years as 1903-5 and 1927.
It often happens that disputes involving large numbers are also protracted. Thus, 82% of the total loss of time through disputes in the same period of years arose from the disputes—less than 2% of the total number—involving 5,000 workpeople and upwards. This is no doubt partly because a dispute can rarely or never be carried on for a long time unless, on the workpeople's side, it is supported by a powerful union. Conversely, a powerful union rarely or never engages in a dispute unless (i.) the subject matter of dispute is a substantial one, and (ii.) all ordinary measures of settlement have already been exhausted without success, which commonly implies that both parties are at once strong and deter mined.