The Henson Journals

[39]

Monday, July 12th, 1926.

I began the sermon for Hereford, but soon laid it aside. My mind is as empty of ideas, as my life of interests! After lunch, I motored with the ladies to Gainford, returning through Staindrop. On my return, the Bishop of Jarrow came to talk over diocesan business. He thinks it important that something should be said in the Bishoprick about this continuing "stoppage"; and I promised to write a paragraph. Though what it would be judicious to say I cannot imagine. It would, perhaps, be well to note the factors which differentiate this conflict from all others of the kind e.g. the situation had been examined and adjudicated upon by an independent authority, the Coal Commission: the General Strike was undertaken and decisively defeated: great sums of money were accepted from the avowed enemies of the country: the expenditure of the rates in assisting the miners was on an unprecedented scale: the behaviour of the leaders was uniformly unhelpful. All this will hardly make agreeable reading for "Labour", but it can't be helped.

Sir G. B. Hunter, the well–known Newcastle employer, sends me a copy of the letter which he has addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury on the Strike. In the course of it he writes what is both painful and true: – "Boards of Guardians are in some districts supporting miners & their families. In addition to the money from Russia and America, well–meaning people are prolonging the distress by giving money to the men on strike, some of whom are saying Why should we work when we can live without working?" Certainly all that I hear from clergy, doctors, & school–teachers bears out this statement.

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