NON-STRIKERS 'TRIED'

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31007, 12 March 1966, Page 15

NON-STRIKERS ' TRIED '

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter—Copyright)

LONDON, March 11

A motor car factory shop steward, who criticised an unofficial “workers’ court” trial of seven non-strikers at Oxford said yesterday that the safety of his family had been threatened.

One of the seven men “tried” by bis fellow workers under a hangman’s noose in the factory, 61-year-old Mr Walter George Tolbot, was found lying exhausted in a ditch 12 miles from the factory yesterday. “They have been worrying the life out of me,” he told the police after he was found by an ambulance driver, distressed, with his face and hands scratched and bleeding. The seven men were "tried"

and fined for refusing to join an unofficial strike in the service department of the British Motor Corporation plant at Cowley, near Oxford. Only one man paid the £3 fine. One of the “accused” went to the management, his lawyer and later a newspaper. Since the story of the trial was published the Government has called for a report, the police have interviewed workers, and the union has opened an inquiry.