SEAMEN’S STRIKE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4880, 21 September 1925, Page 2

SEAMEN’S STRIKE.

AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY’S MOVE. AGITATORS NOT WELCOME. The following circular, dated September 14, received from the Royal Agricultural Society of New Zealand, Wellington, was read at Saturday night’s meeting of the Hauraki A. and P. Association :— "The present shipping strike here and in Australia is evidently being engineered by the local representatives of the ‘Minority Movement’ against the orders of the Seamen’s Union officials at Home. A year ago Tom Mann. Pollitt, and others, started a ‘Minority Movement’ in England inspired by Russian revolutionaries. The openly declared objectives of this movement are : (1) The capitalistic system and private ownership must go ; (2) clas peace and collaboration between employer and worker must stop j (3) trade unions must become fighting battalions; (4) an unremitting war on the British Empire. “This strike is only one move in a very sinister campaign against the British Empire and our existing state of society. It is not a strike based on questions of wages and conditions, but wages and conditions are being used as an excuse by the ‘Reds’ to hang up the most vital of all our industries, namely, our primary industries, so as to damage our general prosperity. “The present overseas snipping hold-up has fortunately occurred during a slack period, and therefore does not seem to have aroused much apprehension in country districts, but when it is realised that these delays will affect the running time of Home steamers during the next twelve months it is alomst certain that the producers will feel the effects when the busy export season arrives. “It has been reported that many of the strikers have gone into the country to get work, and your executive committees should take immediate steps to warn all its members not to employ these men, whose actions are greatly hindering our ability to ship produce next season.” On the motion of Mr G. Buchanan : it was resolved to give the society the association’s full support and to thank it for bringing the matter forward.