Note 722 — Chapter XI

It was, for instance, only the determined private resistance of the Trade Unionist leaders of the Labour Party that compelled the Government to abandon its project of introducing several hundred thousand Chinese labourers into Great Britain; a project which, if carried out, not only might have been calamitous in its effect upon the Standard of Life of the British workman—not to mention other evil consequences—but would almost certainly have also led to a Labour revolt against the continuance of the war. In this connection may be noted the valuable work done throughout the war, not in the interests of Trade Unionism only, but in those of the wage-earning class, and of the community as a whole, by the War Emergency Workers’ National Committee (J. S. Middleton, Honorary Secretary), a body which included representatives not only of the Parliamentary Committee, Labour Party, and General Federation, but also of the Co-operative Union, the National Union of Teachers, and other organisations. The valuable though often unwelcome assistance which this Committee gave to the Government by insisting on the redress of grievances that officialdom would have ignored, and by its working out of policy and persistence in agitation on such matters as pensions, limitation of prices, food-rationing, rent restriction, and other subjects, on which its publications had marked results, deserve the attention of the historian.