NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2584, 24 May 1923, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

According to Mr Evan Parry, the electrical work so far as the Olira tunnel is concerned, will he completed in a month’s time, and Iho electrical equipment of the big yard at Otira in a fortnight. A month lienee, therefore, it would he possible for electric- locomotives to operate over the whole portion of the line on which they were to haul traffic, and the tunnel, so far as its electrical side was concerned, would he ready to commence the long-deferred function of uniting the two stretches of line between Christchurch and Greymonth. After the completion in a month's time of the electrical work, it would depend upon the arrangement that the Railway Depai’tmcnt could make how soon the tunnel would he opened to traffic.

It will be interesting tn watch the fate of a resolution about .-trikes that, after adoption by a Labour conference in Sydney, i- to go forward to the annual conference of the Labour Party next month. This reads, That it be made a criminal offence for outsiders to take the place of strikers during- a strike, punishable by imprisonment up to -ix months. We may lirsl note (says the Auckland Star) that the extremists who support I hi- kind of anti-social policy also object to penalties being- impo-cd bv the community on worker- who -trike, and the right to prevent others working. Although striking is, generally speaking, a stupid and waste-, ful method of trying- to settle disputes, tlie right to strike is not one that should he lightly interfered with by the Legislature. Freedom to take work that offer- i- one of the fundamental rights of man, and to withdraw it by making such acceptance a criminal offence would he an outrageous act of tyranny. The right and wrongs of strikes, and the fac-t that strike-breaking sometimes has ugly features, do not concern the point at issue. If one set of men will not work, they have no right to prevent hv force any other set of men from doing that work, and of all forms of coercion, legal prohibition would be the most evil.