Page:Engines and men- the history of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. A survey of organisation of railways and railway locomotive men (IA enginesmenhistor00rayniala).pdf/239

 occupations, and the masses of verbiage produced by the N.U.R. in regard to those three grades amount only to excuses and to no sound reason. The A.S.R.S. was not more ridiculous in 1890 than was the N.U.R. in 1921, when it sought to run the cause of skilled engineers at Doncaster, some of whom were pleased to resort to fourpence halfpenny trade unionism, while their colleagues in the same shop were paying two and three shillings weekly to the A.E.U. There ought to be no talk of fusion or federation of forces of any kind until the N.U.R. has re-modelled itself on sounder lines, and has handed over the strictly craft members to the craft organisation. Then a very sound and most effective Federation would be constructed, and years of mutual sniping would be ended. I notice that at Rugby and Nuneaton, in March of 1917, Mr. Bromley went a long way towards a permanent basis, and although his suggestions were generous beyond the limit, there was no response from Mr. Thomas, and the silly pretence goes on that they speak for locomotivemen. A study of railway history has convinced me that the N.U.R. is on right lines except for the three grades mentioned, and those three it must surrender if it professes the interests of railwaymen and hopes for industrial control.

By 1917 there were 32 unions in the Railway Shops Organisation Committee, which had been formed in 1915, but a number of these unions are now in the A.E.U. It was at this period that Mr. Thomas saw fit to enter an action for libel against Mr. Bromley, and another against Mr. Moore, and to bring great unions into legal warfare in a period of war complexity. The action was heard before and a special jury on April 17th, and subsequent dates of 1917. Counsel engaged were Mr. J. F. P. Rawlinson, K.C., M.P., Sir Hugh Fraser, Mr. Edmund Browne, and Mr. J. Rowland Thomas, for the plaintiffs, and Mr. J. A. Compston, K.C., and Mr. R. A. Shepherd for the defendants. The action turned upon speeches by Mr. Bromley at Newport and Liverpool, for which Mr. Thomas demanded an apology and withdrawal. This Mr. Bromley declined to give, holding that the statements were true in substance and in fact. Reading over the mass of evidence and pleading now,