Anticlimax at the Old Bailey
The only consolation that can be found in the strange ending of the trial of seven dockers for conspiring to induce their fellow-workers to absent themselves from work lies in the fact that the fairness of the law has been publicly demonstrated. The jury found the men guilty on one count but then failed, quite inexplicably, to agree on another and fundamentally similar count. The jury, in effect, contradicted itself, but, since it had done so the Attorney General, with scrupulous fairness to the accused, decided to stop the case. The trouble is that this kind of fairness makes no impression whatever on Communists and their friends. They simply regard it as !Inexplicable but con- venient that the legal and ethical code of non-Communist countries gives to trouble-makers such full opportunities to make trouble. The comment of one of the released men " The age of miracles has not passed " perfectly expresses a characteristic cynical surprise, completely unmixed with gratitude or any other kind of decency. Yet week after week thousands of dockers had struck on the days that the court hearings were held, in an obvious attempt to influence the jury. It remains only just possible—and not very likely—that this trial has done some good somewhere.
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