A TURBULENT MEETING.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14840, 4 December 1913, Page 7

A TURBULENT MEETING.

MR HUGHES HECKLED. EXTREMISTS WANT GENERAL STRIKE. (By Cable.—Prees Association—Copyiipht.) SYDNEY, December 3. Two thousand wharf labourers were present at yesterday's stop-work meeting. All the wharves were idle daring its progress. The proceedings at times were turbulent and discordant. A large section resented the confining of the war to New | Zealand, desiring a general strike, and threatening further trouble at tho ordinary meeting of the Wharf Labourers' Union to-night. Mr Hughes was besieged and importuned by angry unionists after the meeting. They condemned the decision as contrary to the principles of unionism. The hecklers of Mr Hughes demanded to know whether, if two Union Steam Ship Company's boats were alongside a wharf, one going to New Zealand and the other to Tasmania, they had to work the latter, which meant working with ' 'scabs'' ? They wanted to know if they were not fighting the Union Company?

Mr Hughes replied: "You must work everything excepting vessels to and from New Zealand. You are not dealing with the companies, but with places. Tbe meeting had decided not to work New Zealand boats, and that was all."

Amid hoots, the turbulent section declared that it was not unionism; one man crying: "If we have to work with 'scabs, 1 there will not bo enough bandages in Sydney to tie them up."