Strife: A Drama in Three Acts

About

Galsworthy's 1909 play dramatizes a labor dispute at a Welsh tin works, staged as a collision between two intransigent men — the company chairman Roberts and the union leader Anthony — whose shared quality of absolute principle destroys both of them when the strike is settled by the compromise neither would accept. The play's formal evenhandedness — Galsworthy refuses to assign sympathy entirely to either side — was politically unusual for its era and made it a touchstone for discussions of labor relations in the Edwardian period. It remains one of the more honest theatrical treatments of industrial conflict in British drama.