Take for instance the strikes of March to April 1916, in the engine shops of Clydeside, which the writer had to handle. The Government had made with the Trade Unions the “Treasury” Agreements of March 1915, providing for the suspension of Trade Union customs in order to accelerate and increase output. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers Executive Council had formally submitted the agreements by ballot to its members, who by a large majority had accepted them. Acting under the agreements the Government proceeded to introduce women into engineering shops throughout the country with the co-operation of the A.S.E. Executive. But on Clydeside members of the A.S.E. refused to allow women to enter the shops on the agreed conditions, or at all. Many of the shop stewards[5] in the engineering shops on Clydeside were members of the Socialist Labour Party. The principles of the S.L.P., copied from those of the I.W.W., involve (see p. 54) class-warfare, the destruction of the official Trade Unions and of all industrial organizations except those of a similar type and creed to the I.W.W. itself, the overthrow of all existing forms of constitutional government and their replacement by a government of manual workers. The method to be employed is direct action. Mr. Beer, in his _History of British Socialism_ (Vol. II, p. 393), says: “The S.L.P. theories came nearest to those of Lenin and Trotsky.” On Clydeside in March 1916, the S.L.P. shop stewards saw their revolutionary opportunity. The writer held innumerable conferences with them trying to introduce harmoniously the agreed scheme of dilution of labour, but as fast as he made progress with the assistance of the Executive Council of the A.S.E. and their local Glasgow officials, it was countered by preparations for obstructive direct action. Finally, the direct actionists matured their plans. It is a principle of theirs always to use the sharpest weapons. There was one immediately to hand. The army in France was in dire need of heavy howitzers to smash the system of trenches which the Germans had commenced to consolidate; Mesopotamia urgently required flat-bottomed barges. These two classes of munitions were being manufactured in engineering shops and shipyards on the Clyde. The direct actionists therefore brought out, or tried to bring out, on strike, all employees in every shop and yard where the howitzers or any part of the howitzers or the flat-bottomed barges were in course of construction, with almost complete success, and with disastrous national results. But the Government met direct action by action more direct, and deported from the Clyde the ringleaders, and the strike collapsed. In this direct action strike the purpose was to nullify the agreement between the Government and the Trade Unions as to the introduction of women into the engineering trade, and to destroy the old craft organizations of the A.S.E. and set up a new industrial organization for that trade.