The road I followed came down between banks of wretched-looking
working-men's houses, in close-packed rows on either side, and took
upon itself the role of Swathinglea High Street, where, at a lamp
and a pillar-box, the steam-trams began. So far that dirty hot way
had been unusually quiet and empty, but beyond the corner, where
the first group of beershops clustered, it became populous. It was
very quiet still, even the children were a little inactive, but
there were a lot of people standing dispersedly in little groups,
and with a general direction towards the gates of the Bantock Burden
coalpit.

The place was being picketed, although at that time the miners
were still nominally at work, and the conferences between masters
and men still in session at Clayton Town Hall. But one of the men
employed at the Bantock Burden pit, Jack Briscoe, was a socialist,
and he had distinguished himself by a violent letter upon the crisis
to the leading socialistic paper in England, The Clarion, in which
he had adventured among the motives of Lord Redcar. The publication
of this had been followed by instant dismissal. As Lord Redcar wrote
a day or so later to the Times--I have that Times, I have all the
London papers of the last month before the Change--

"The man was paid off and kicked out. Any self-respecting employer
would do the same." The thing had happened overnight, and the men
did not at once take a clear line upon what was, after all, a very
intricate and debatable occasion. But they came out in a sort of
semiofficial strike from all Lord Redcar's collieries beyond the
canal that besets Swathinglea. They did so without formal notice,
committing a breach of contract by this sudden cessation. But in
the long labor struggles of the old days the workers were constantly