Joe had been working for Rolls-Royce for twelve years. The firm is considered a good employer. But its managers were men of conviction. They objected to the union picking on Joe and said so. Three months later the union expelled McLernon.
Enter the Communists with many an agonizing cry about the solidarity of labor. They demanded that Rolls-Royce fire McLernon on the grounds that he no longer belonged to the union. The employers refused, and immediately all the other polishers stopped work. Joe kept right on. By the end of the day the entire factory labor force of 600 men was out on strike.
The Amalgamated Engineering Union's local branch then entered the picture. After a few days another 7,500 workers at the Hillington and East Kilbride factories had struck.
Was it a strike? Certainly, said the General Iron Fitter's Association. The Electrical Trades Union, dominated by Communists, recognized the strike as official in accordance with its rule of recognizing all strikes involving electricians as official until they are declared otherwise. The Amalgamated Engineering Union, after much soul-searching, decided to back the strike and approved strike pay for its members. Negotiations between the Employers' Federation and a committee representing the various unions got nowhere.
The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow then issued a pastoral letter warning the workers against Communism. McLernon is a Catholic. But so were many of the workers who wanted him fired.
The strike dragged on for seven weeks. The strikers lost over £700,000 ($1,960,000) in wages. By the time the strike was over, no one on the strikers' side could disentangle the objectives of the various groups that had called it. Rolls-Royce export contracts were delayed. The Royal Air Force failed to get delivery on time of some important machines. Other industries also involved in the export trade and in national defense were slowed down. The unions had maintained solidarity at a tremendous cost. But when the strike collapsed, Joe McLernon was still at his job, polishing away. He alone could be termed a winner. Rolls-Royce, the unions, industry, and the nations were losers.
The Communist intervention in the Rolls-Royce strike symbolized its current role in Britain. This is to win control of key positions in the British unions so that the Communist Party will be able to paralyze British industry in the event of an international crisis or a war. To achieve this ultimate objective, the Communists obviously intend to establish a stranglehold on the communications and defense industries.
This is the real Communist danger in Britain. Active political campaigning by the Communist Party has been fumbling, misdirected, and notably unsuccessful. Neither the old colonel from Cheltenham who classes the sprightly dons of the Labor Party with "those damned Bolshies" nor the Bible Belt Congressman who confuses British Socialist politicians with Russian Communists is on the right track. The danger of Communism in Britain lies in the unions. So does the defense against the danger.
The pattern of Communist success is uneven. Communists lead the Electrical Trades Union, ninth-largest in the country, with a membership of about 215,000. Because electricity is everywhere in modern industry the union's members are everywhere. And although probably not more than one in every sixty members of the ETU is a member of the Communist Party, the party completely runs the union.