TEN MONTHS IN SOVIET GAOL.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 April 1927, Page 4

TEN MONTHS IN SOVIET GAOL.

LONDON. .Fob. 10. J h as.' BriLis.li t •;!<!•■ unionists who pre-loss on admiration tor Soviet Bussin anil liavo influence will) the Bolsheviks are In lie invited to interest themselves in the case of a British sailor who on no charge whatever, was thrust into a Bolshevik prison lor ten months. The mail, David Scott, aged ;M. a Londoner, in October D 23 .shipped as a fireman in the steamship Syorono which sailed from Newport tor Italy and the Bussian port of Novnrossisk in the Black Sea. At Novorossisk Soviet oflicials invited the crew to visit tin; Sailors’ International Cluh. Scott was so impressed hy the tales of the beautiful conditions of life under the Soviet that he determined to desert his ship and live there. Scott, said yesterday to a reporter: "They told me that there was plenty of work, and when they heard that I had been in a boiler-making shop they said 1 could easily earn ill a day. When I asked for a. job f was sent to a. grain elevator, where I was paid 40 roubles (about £4) a month. Alter three months .1 transferred to an iron foundry where boiler making was in progress. Instead ’of getting £1 a day, 1 was paid 30 roubles (about £3 a month. I Iliad to join the Metal Workers’ Union and had t\w> kopecks stopped out ot overv rouble earned.” ODD JOBS AI Til F. DOCKS. "After about IS months the part of the work in which I was closed down and T had to take odd jobs at the docks.” One day lie was arrested and dragged off to the police headquarters. All that he could gather was that lie had "been talking to foreign sailors,” and for this he was thing into a cell. Proceeding with his story, Scott said: "It was a room of about 1 2 feet by 20 and was already occupied by 17 or 18 men of all classes and nationalities. All we ( had to cat was lib of black bread in the morning, thin soup, it was really vegetable water, for dinner and hot water at tea time. 1 was in that cell 32 days when I was taken to the prison outside the town and put into a cell smaller than the one at the police station and overcrowded with political prisoners.” AIF.X DO MAI). "The food was the same as iij the police station, and as 1 could not cat the soup I had to live on the black j bread and water. Prisoners in other i parts of the prison were going mad , i under the strain. Finally, after I had gone on hunger strike. I was | told that Moscow lmd decided my case and that 1 was to he deported. “Sonic days later T was marched under armed guard to the port and pul on board the steamship Koursk. 1 was signed on as a fireman and reached Rotterdam last Tuesday. On my return to London 1 put my case before the National Sailors’ and firemens Union.” Air Havelock Wilson, of the National Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union said yesterday : "I am ,writing to Air George I.ansburv. Mr A. J. Cook. Mr Ben Tillett and Air George Hicks, who claim to have such a great interest in Soviet Russia, inviting them to take up the ease of Scott.”