KIDNAPPED IN BELFAST

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 190, 7 May 1919, Page 7

KIDNAPPED IN BELFAST

ENGLISH lABOUR LEADER'S ■ ADVENTURE. . -9- — One of the strangest incidents in the recent strike in Belfast was the kidnapping in the streets of the city' of a Labour leader from England, Mr. P. J. Tevenan, secretary of the Municipal Employees' Association'(now part of the National Amalgamated 'Workers' Union), who" went to Belfast to inquire into the circumstances under which members of association were corapulsorily idle through a strike In which they were not directly conoerned.^ In describing his adventures to a "Daily News" representative, .lie said:— "Soon' after I landed I went to the offices of the National Amalgamated Union of Labour—with which our association is now amalgamated—to get to know something of the position 111 Belfast as it affected the municipal employees. '■>. The rooms of the; Strike Committee were right opposite. Ju6t' after six o'clock on Tuesday-1 left our offices, and as I was groping my way through the dark streets a number ;of . men—twenty or thirty, I should think—rushed across the road from the direction of the Strike Committee's offices, and pounced on me. They" took hold of mo and surrounded me, and roughly hustled me across the street to tlieir own building, up the stairs, and into the committee rooms on tho first floor. On the way some of them struck me. . They" twisted my .arms, hurt my left ear, and they tore my clothing. They let me stale my case, and I was then (old that they had decided bv resolution io put me on the boat for England that evening, and send me home again. After hearing my statement, however, they rescinded the resolution to send me home. Moreover, they expressed regret that I had been hustlod,' and they went so far, as to say that they would pay for new clothes fov, me. I refused the offer. They ondell up by apologising profusely, and by passing a resolution expressing their sympathy with me for Iwviug had such a rougli handling—after all the mischief had been dono by their friends!"