LONDON DISORDERS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 405, 14 December 1932, Page 7

LONDON DISORDERS

DEMON STRATION PROVES A DISAPPOINTMENT TO EXCITED CROWD LITTLE DAMAGE DONE. London, November 22. Thirty thousand sightseers jammed themselves into the streets leading* to tlie Houses of Parliament last night. They came to "see the fun," lured from their firesides by the much-ad-vertised stories of riots and pussible bloodshed to accompany the efforts of the hunger marchers to present a petition to Parliament. 'They must have been disappointed. Riot and revolution take a lot of pv • moting in this metropolis. Mingling among the vast crowds in Whiteh-U and Trafalgar Square, it was obvious that 95 per eent. of them were middleclass Englishmen and women in steady jubs, drawn here out of curiosity to see how the police would handle a delicate situation. The most remarkable thing in the demonstration was that despite natural outbursts here and there among the surging crowds the damage done to property was negligible and nobody was ser-iously injured. In Berlin, Paris or Vienna such a demonstration must have resulted in bullets and bloodshed. The stolid Englishman smiles when he- reads exoerpts from foreign press giving wildly exagg-gerated tales of food riots and mob demonstration al-leg-ed to be- taking place in London. Many of them are on a par with a stox-y printed in ;E1 Sol of Madrid, which stated recently that "two aixd a half million unenxployed wex'e march on London." The next day the newspaper apologised and reduced the figux'e to a quarter of a million; again next day to 20,500, and finally, with a foui'th apology, to 2500 — which was eorrect. Unrest in Industrial Areas. Competent ohservers of all parties agree, however, that the present demonstx'ations in London are syrntolxxatic of grave unrest throughout the industrial areas. Undoubtedly they are a warning to the Government that the masses of people are sick of waiting for hohl construetive action on unemployment to mitigate the lot of hundreds of thousands who are suffexnng from malnutrition. On the other hand stories to the effect that that these demonstx'ations are "oi*ganisad in Moscow,"' or implications that they are evidence of any signicant x-evolutionary spirit in England, are regarded as wild iixventions. The memhership of the Communist Paxffy iix England amounts to roughly 5000 (and except in isolated cases th'e British workingman does not yet "take orders from Moscow." ■ •