French Coal Strike Enters Seventeenth Day

Chronicle (Levin), 21 October 1948, Page 7

French Coal Strike Enters Seventeenth Day

(N.ZJ?.A.-

— Reuter ,

, Copyright)

Received Thursday, 10.15 a.m. PARIS, Oct. 20. Fifty per cent of the miners are now back at work in Lorraine, the only region where a major break 111 the rf-day-old coal strike is so far reported, said the Minister of the Interior, M. Jules Moch. Earlier Cabinet decided to take "all measures necessary" to save the French coal mines threatened with destruction by the strikes of vital maintenance crews. Reuter's correspondent says that the back-to-work movement in the mming region of Moselle, in Eastern France, inereased today to 11,538 miners returned to work as against 9168 yesterday. The situation in the north is described as cairn. A total strike, however, is reported in the coal basins of the Auvergne and Haute Loire. Six large army lorries crammed with soldiers and police armed with rifles and tommyguns tore out of St. Etienne, preceded by radioequipped jeeps and ambulances, to occupy the Roche la Moliere pithead near St. Etienne. A police plane circled low overhead, taking photographs of the movements of the crowds and keeping contact with headquarters. Strikers' pickets touched off sirens at Roche ia Moliere to bring reinforcements, | but the new arrivals showed more curiosity than fight, and the strikers were cleared from the pit within an hour. Reuter's correspondent reports that St. Etienne virtually is in a stage of siege. It is estimated that nearly 10,000 troops and police in the area are making continuous patrols. Pubiic meetings have been prohibited.