STOLEN GELIGNITE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 487, 17 October 1928, Page 11

STOLEN GELIGNITE

WATERSIDE METHODS “TO PUT WIND UP SCABS” THIEF CONVICTED (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) Received 10.49 a.m. SYDNEY, To-day. ERNEST RYAN was convicted and fined at Brisbane for stealing gelignite from the City Council store. The police stated that Ryan had been approached by two men on behalf of Andy Brown, secretary of the Brisbane waterside workers, to obtain explosives so they could “put the wind up the scabs.”

It is regarded as possible that the strike, so far as Melbourne is concerned, may be declared off to-day. A mass meeting of the Port Phillip Association and the Melbourne Wharf Labourers’ Union has been called at which, it is said, the men will be recommended by their own officials to register under the Transport Workers Act. A secret ballot of waterside workers is also to be taken. The Victorian seamen have declined to become embroiled in the strike. They have supplied men for the Union Company’s steamer Waiotapu and the Tasmanian steamer Nairanx. Union officials are hopeful that preference of employment will ultimately be given to the original members of the Waterside Workers’ Federation, but the shipowners have made it plain that the volunteers who have taken stevedores* places will continue to act in that capacity. Another procession of about 800 and unemployed marched through the city to-day to the Yarra, headed by a Russian banner, bearing the words: “No surrender.” NEWCASTLE CLASH POLICE FIGHT RIOTERS BOLD BATON CHARGE SYDNEY, Tuesday. The storm centre of the waterside trouble appeared to be at Newcastle to-dav. A clash occurred there between the strikers and volunteer workers on the wharves. A large crowd of strikers found a party of volunteers greatly inferior in number to a themselves working the steamer Port Campbell. They attacked them with road metal and stones. The free labourers were forced to take the defensive until the police arrived and dispersed the rioters. One man had his face injured with a boathook. Additional details of the affray show that 150 volunteers were driven into a cargo shed. They were locked

inside by the p'olice for their own protection. The strikers drifted away, but later attacked volunteer workers on the steamer Golden Kauri. The police charged with their batons drawn. They felled about 20 of the strikers and their sympathisers, all of whom were treated at a hospital. The police are now determined to prevent a repetition of rioting. Larger numbers of them will be placed along the wharves. The Federal Attorney-General, Mr. J. G. Latham, has telegraphed to the secretary of the Geelong branch of the Stevedores’ Association asking whether the members of that organisation intend to carry on the strike instituted yesterday by two of their number. If so, the Government would take appropriate action to meet the position.