Christy and his friends declared that the ultimatum issued to the miners was the first challenge of Capital in a conflict which they intended to wage with Labour, until the spirit of the workers was broken and they were reduced again to the cheap standards of pre-war wages upon which the prosperity of British industry had been developed—for the employers.
While the Government was squandering millions of money on maintaining overstaffed departments filled with “limpets” pouring more millions into Imperialistic adventures in Mesopotamia, and the East, giving immense financial support to any Russian ruffian of the old régime who gathered together bands of bandits to invade the Republic, and generally ignoring the realities of financial ruin in Europe, following the War, they were engineering a systematic assault on Labour, in order to weaken its political power and reduce it to economic subjection.
The heroes of the War, “our brave boys in the trenches,” were already being branded as “Bolshevists” by Government spokesmen. The men who had fought at Ypres, on the Somme, and across the Hindenburg line, and whose patient courage in years of mud and misery and devouring death had won the War, in spite of the stupidity of generals, and the personal intrigues of politicians, were now to be denounced as revolutionary rascals, unpatriotic “blighters,” who must be “taught a lesson,” and forced back to a low standard of wages, and of life.
That was Christy’s way of thought about the ultimatum to the miners. It was supported with facts and figures by Nat Verney, the Labour member. He took the trouble to analyse the proposed scale of wages at a little conference of writing men in Christy’s rooms, brought there by Bernard Hall, of The New World. He seemed to prove that they were less than a living wage, so grotesquely out of scale with the prevailing cost of life that if the men accepted the ultimatum—hurled at them suddenly without previous warning or discussion—they would surrender their very birthright—the right to exist.
Verney spoke quietly, with a smouldering but masked passion.
“We shall fight them to the last ditch. The Government, in league with the mine-owners—that’s certain—have forced an issue which we’re ready to accept. We’re not afraid, for the judgment of the people will be on our side.”
Bernard Hall admitted that, personally, he was afraid. There was a sense of bitterness among millions of men who had fought in the war and now were disillusioned with the promises made and betrayed by politicians. With so many men idle—lack of coal would shut down every industry—there might be a violent conflict. The Government was prepared to use force. He understood they were calling out the Army reserves. Some act of hooliganism, some shot fired accidentally, or otherwise, by any fool, and frightful things might happen.
“Supposing the soldiers refuse to fire on their own crowd?” asked Verney, and something in his eyes showed his hope for that.
There was silence in Christy’s room, until Christy himself broke it.
“That means Revolution—and the end of England as a world power.”