A STRIKE AND ITS SEQUEL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1942, 20 February 1919, Page 4

A STRIKE AND ITS SEQUEL.

BOYCOTTING AT BROKEN HILL

Sydney, Jan. 23,

Broken Hill is already notorious throughout the southern seas as the. home of the boycott. There the Australian Miners’ Association is all-powerful. It is as jealous ol: its rights and privileges as a now J.P., more sentilive than a debutante. Woe betide the thoughtless worker nr struggling tradesman who offends it. ,I| is no exaggeration to say that the boycott lias been employed agaiust hundreds of men and women who resented the tyranny of the A.M.A., and defied it, and that tho majority ot them were driven from the town. The most trivial thing will arouse the displeasure of the organisation, and nothing except the breaking of the offender will appease it.

The latest incident is typical. Away hack in 1915 there was in Broken Hill a strike of hotel employees. The guests at the Grand Hoi el, left without attendants, organised their forces, and a certain number (in rotation) waited on the others. Those who thus dared to do the work of the hold servants wove held hy the Unions to have commitled a moral sin, and their names were noted. One of the offenders was the wife of a Broken Hill solicitor, who was also the solicitor for Ihe city. At the last municipal election Labour.got a majority of the scats on the City Council, and recently the Political Labour League, after browsing among ancient history, ordered that the city solicitor be “sacked” because his. wife had “done something detrimental to Un- ' ionism.”

Labour members can swallow a good deal, but this was too much for

four of the Labour aldermen, and they refused to obey instructions. The Political Labour League threatened the four rebels with dreadful things, but, Hie four —to their honour he it said —stood firm, and replied by sending in their resignations. An election is now pending. Feeling in Broken Hill is miming high, and it is just possible that at the ballot-box the citizens of Hie long-suffering place will show resentment of this unbearable tyranny hy Ihe Australian Minors' Association.