"By the use of newspaper and governmental records, this attempts to show that the clash that occurred in 1928 was the inevitable result of the co-existence of the stubbornness of the Bruce-Page Government and the ferocity of the rank-and-file wharfies. The strike went no further that a regional dispute, and dragged on so long and so painfully, because the central executive of the WWF was weak and chronically indecisive. The Federal Government was determined, conservative and in a majority, and used the strike as a heaven-sent opportunity to crush unionism once and for all. The results of the strike are indeterminate for the same reasons that the results of a war are indeterminate - there is no real winner. The Government lost the next election, but the WWF suffered a crippling blow and was slow to recover. The 1928 strike took on many aspects of a civil war, and thus was bloody, bitter, inconclusive and divisive."--title page verso.