French Railway Strike Shows Sign of Collapsing

Grey River Argus, 14 October 1948, Page 5

French Railway Strike Shows Sign of Collapsing

LONDON, October 12. The French railway strikes, organised by the Communist Party, seem to be collapsing, says the British United Press Paris correspondent. The Railwaymen on strike in Alsace and parts of Lorraine voted to return to work unconditionally. They have already gone back in Colmar and Mulhouse, and the strike at Strasbourg is due to end at midnight. The interruption to tralfic to-day is generally much less serious than yesterday. Reports from Lorraine, where the General Confederation of Labour called a 48-hour general'strike of the iron workers and coke and metal workers, indicated that it was only partly successful. Nearly seven in every 10 workers at the coke plants and blast burnaces in the Thionville region “clocked in.” ORDER FROM ZDHANOV The French Minister of the Interior (M. Moch) told French Socialists that orders to the leaders of the Com-munist-led General Confederation of Labour (the French T.U.C.) to start the French miners’ strike, now in its second week, were given in a note from General Andrei Zdhanov, M. Stalin’s right-hand man, just before he died suddenly last August. M. Moch said that a few days later the French Communist Party and the Confederation of Labour replied that everything was set for the end of September. The Minister added that the Government had moved enough troops and Mobile Guards into the northern coalfields to avoid provocations and incidents.