BRITISH COAL STRIKE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 456, 13 April 1912, Page 5

BRITISH COAL STRIKE.

MEN AFRAID TO RETURN. REVOLT AGAINST FEDERATION. By Telegraph.—l'ress Association.—Copyrlgllt London, Thursday. Owing to intimadatiun in Lancashire, 650 Fusiliers have arrived at Leigh and 500 of the Suffolk Regiment. Three hundred of the Sixteenth Lancers are at Wigan. The executive of Cardiff, Penarth, and Barry coal trimmers have denounced Mr Hartshorne's extravagant language regarding a coming general strike of two million men in May or June as detrimental to the best interests of the community. Half-a-million coal miners have now returned to work. The chief hitch has been in South Wales, where the Miners' Federation conferred with the enginemen, who were on strike, and urged them to resume work. The enginemen refused, and the Federation then issued a manifesto to its members, in which, while not directing the colliers to fill the etiginemen's places,' it does not place any difficulties in the way of the managers securing efficient men from the miners' ranks. The revolt against the Miners' Federation is spreading in South Lancashire. Crowds, chiefly youths and unmarried men. are visiting the pits compelling the miners, who have gone back to work., to cease. Several serious collisions with the police have tjaken place, and the police have made several baton charges. Twenty thousand miners at Wigan, who are anxious to work, have been forced to stop owing to a fear that the hooligans will shut them up in the pits.

The colliery owners at Tyldesley (Lancashire) have reclosed thoir pits, believing it to be unsafe to work them whilst miners are in their present destructive mood.

Tom Mann, in speaking at Wedne&bury (Staffordshire), said: "Parliament must be destroyed. lam going to rebel against society." A motion, demanding the public control of the coal mines and'the establishment. of a commission to take charge of them, was moved by Mr Chiozza Money in the House of Commons last evening. The motion did not reach a division, the House being counted out.