ABSTRACT
When the peerage was announced the papers were very complimentary, referring to Askwith as ‘the strikebreaker’ and ‘great ameliorator’ and claiming that ‘Next to the Prime Minister, he is probably the most successful mediator in labour troubles the country has ever known’, 1 though Askwith would have preferred not to be mentioned alongside Lloyd George. The Morning Post, whose editor, H. A. Gwynne, was a great friend of the Askwiths, paid him a discerning tribute:
That he was a good listener was certainly the secret of Askwith’s success in labour disputes. On the occasion of a grave shipyard strike, where the men flouted their leaders’ agreement, he sent for the real authors of the trouble from the districts, not to talk to them, but to let them talk to him, and for three solid hours he said nothing but, ‘Are you quite sure you have said all you would like to say …’ The dispute was soon settled after that. There is nothing a labour orator likes so much as to go back to his men and say, ‘I told the Government straight, I did’. 2
