Dickens is here responding, as he makes clear, to a report in The Times of 27 December (p. 5, cols 5–6) of a meeting of the engine-drivers and firemen of the southern division of the London and North Western Railway, held at the Railway Tavern, Hampstead Road, on 26 December. The meeting was to hear delegates from the northern division and to decide whether to support them in threatening to strike. Delegates from the Great Western and other lines also attended. The northern men's grievances seem to have centred around the Company's decision to require three months' notice from employees wishing to leave its service. Simpson, a GWR driver, counselled caution and compromise: 'The more strikes there are the worse for ourselves, for we always find a certain set of men who have no character while things are straight, but who are taken on to supply the places of honest men if a strike occurs.'
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