Employers Urge Government To Drag Britain Faster Into 19th Century

Strike? How dare you? Be off with you, and damn your impudence

Captains of industry at the Chartered Institute of Hirelings and Firings have lately taken time out from being fitted for top hats and frock coats, to issue a sternly-worded demand that the government ought to prevaricate no longer, but discharge forthwith its ordained duty of ridding the empire once and for all of the stalking spectre of ‘workers’ rights’.

“We of property and means have - as the popular saying would have it - ‘placed our ears to the ground’; and by such means have we been able to discern incontestable evidence that, as I yet speak, godless trade union agitators are conspiring secretly to compel every honest labourer in this great country to down tools and cease their toils in the month of September; this leading to the swift collapse of corpses; unburied rubbish; and law and order piled high in the streets – ‘pon my soul, I knew I ought not to have partaken of that one last sherry for luck before I rose to speak,” a Mr. Horace Winterbottom, gentleman, told representatives of the third estate. “Mark my words, sirs - and mark them well; their base treachery will lay our fair shores wide open to the rapacious French.”

“Heed this warning, O Albion!” he cried, “Unless Her Britannic Majesty’s loyal statesmen in the Palace of Westminster act decisively, and with all speed, to outlaw strikes; to round up the ringleaders forthwith; and, without further ado, to transport the villainous miscreants to the Antipodes in fetters; why, then I fear we must, with heavy hearts, be forced to close up and dismantle our manufactories and mills, upon which the nation’s acknowledged superiority is founded; and ship our magnificent machinery to a new home in the distant lands of Cathay. God save the Queen!”

The Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon.Mr. Cameron, solemnly agreed that the anarchist threat posed by sinister agitators mingling with patriotic, industrious workers was indeed a most disagreeable vexation; not only to himself and his ministers of state, but also to his honourable Whig counterpart, Mr. Clegg.

The tiny, disreputable cabal of elected Fabianists sat scowling all the while; but words came there none.