AUSTRALIA’S TROUBLES IN INDUSTRY STILL SERIOUS

Grey River Argus, 31 March 1948, Page 5

AUSTRALIA’S TROUBLES IN INDUSTRY STILL SERIOUS

Communist Plans To Keep up

Queensland Strike

SYDNEY, March 29. Police in Queensland intensified their search for Edward Joseph Rowe, fugitive Communist strike leader. Prominent Communists continue boasting about their plans to prevent his arrest. “The Communist Party has an organisation efficient enough to ensure that Rowe does not fall into police hands- until we are ready,” said Mr. R. Dixon, assist-ant-secretary of the Party. “Queensland’s strike will be led by leaders outside prison walls,” said Mr. S. Morgan, from a Communist platform in the Sydney Domain. ‘We will not make the mistake made by the International Workers of the World, who had all their leaders gaoled. I would be ashamed of the Communist Party df it could not hide one man from the police. Some of these police could not trace an elephant in the snow even if he wore gumboots. To-day they are the hunters—to-morrow it wdi be our turn.” Communist strike leaders are making feverish efforts to prevent an early collapse of the Queensland rail and port strike. Rumours that it. will end this week are widely current. They are based on knowledge that back-to-work proposals are to be submitted by members of the several striking unions at meetings throughout the State to-day, and the whole strike position will be reviewed by the Central Disputes Committee tomorrow.

Thirty Brisbane members of the Electrical Trades Union have signed a petition for a general meeting of members to decide whether they will go back to work. A spokesman for the moderate section in the Carpenters’ Union said a registered letter had been sent co the Communist secretary of the union containing a notice of motion of noconfidence in the executive.

The State secretary of the Waterside Workers’ Federation, Mr E. C. Englart, stated that whatever the railwaymen did the watersiders and the seamen would stay out until the Hanlon Government repealed the strike-breaking legislation. In an appeal to trade union leaders and members to give the new Arbitration Act a chance to function, the Federal President of the. Labour Party (Mr. A. S. McAlpine), told the conference that unionists would ruin the Australian economy if they used strikes instead of abritration. “Full employment, does not occur only when there are no unemployed, but when all available jobs are. filled ” said the Minister of Immigration (Mr. A. A. Calwell). “In Australia to-day there are 300,000 jobs we have not got a man or woman to fill. Because of this, labour is being bought and sold on the clack market just like any other commodity.” In a series of clashes which extended throughout, the Caster conference of the Victorian branch of the Australian Labour Parly, Communist supporters were decisively defeated. The conference canned a resolution alleging that Communists, directed by the Russian Communist Parly, were committed to the destruction of the Australian Labour Party as a prelude to social disorder and the seizure of political power by revolution. It also endorsed the formation of Labour Party industrial groups for the light against Communism in the unions.

Australia could solve her own problems without importing foreign political philosophies, said .he Prime Minister (Mr. Chifley) in an address to the conference of the Victorian branch of the Austraban Labour Party. “There are people who try to import into Australia and into the Labour Movement ‘isms’ which they would impose upon us all, ’ added Mr. Chifley.

“There is no democracy in the use of the bludgeon and machine-gun, and the Labour Movement won’t tolerate them. We don’t want Labour associated with any of the ‘isms’ that overwhelm Europe, first Fascism and now Communism,” he added. The Deputy Leader of the Federal Opposition (Mr. E. J. Harrison) said that Mr. Dixon’s statement “took some beating for sheer effrontery.”

“Incidents like this throw into sharp relief the absurdity of 'the Prime Minister’s stated belief that. Communism is just another political philosophy,” he added. “Rowe and the Communist Party consider they are above tne law of democracy, and believe they ar° responsible only to the dictates of the Marx Bouse. Rowe or any other agent of a foreign Power who flouts democratic law should be given a sharp demonstration of the determination of Australia to retain democracy.”