NOISY SCENES

Hokitika Guardian, 22 January 1931, Page 3

NOISY SCENES

WELLINGTON UNEMPLOYED ! vHy Telegraph—Per Press Association.) i | WELLINGTON, January 21. ! Noisy scenes were witnessed m the Trades Hall this afternoon, when the most disorderly meeting of unemployed yet held at Wellington struggled ; through two hours of uproar, boos, catcalls and personal abuse. the first open cleavage between the extreme and the saner elements or trie Labour .Movement occurred when about two hunderd men out of the six hundred present left the Hall in a body, as a protest against the ejection hy the police of one of their number. After creating noise outside, they returned to the Hall through another door. j The meeting eventually broke up , noisily, after the Chairman had de- I dared carried a motion to the effect tliate the meeting heartily agreed to . co-operate with the Unemployed Com- ! mittee of the Trades and Labour ; Council to arrange for a deputation to the Prime Minister to deal with the unemployment situation. Air P. Fraser, ALP., was in the chair, and he warned the interjectors that those causing trouble would be | removed. In the course of his address, Air R. Semple ALP., said that the Labour Party had done its best to solve the unemployment problem. Before the Labour Party had agreed to vote out the Reform Party from office, it had accepted a pledge from the Leader of the United Party that the relief rare should be raised to the Trade Union standard. Air Coates the Leader of the Reform Party, had persistently stated on the floor of the House that the rate of wages would be reduced under a Reform regime to 9s and 12s per day. Labour had had to choose between the parties. Air Semple instanced the efforts that have been made by Labour men to relieve the distress, and he said that the Unemployment Board was doing all that it could. Interjections and noise here followed, this culminating in the ejection of one of the malcontents, and the walkout of the others.