Wild Strike Talk

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 661, 13 May 1929, Page 9

Wild Strike Talk

STATE OF SIEGE PREDICTED Great Melbourne Parade (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) Received 11 a.m.. MELBOURNE, Today. THE secretary of the Victorian Branch of the Seamen’s Union, Mr. O’Neill, told a mass meeting organised by the timber workers that Melbourne was soon to experience a state of siege. He hoped 20,000 men would participate in the march on Friday night. Nothing would be done that was not lawful; “but we will effectually prevent the transaction of business, and the police will have no alternative but to declare a State of siege.”

At Sydney, Mr. Cooke, secretary of the Timber Merchants’ Association, said that at the completion of the fourteenth week of the strike there are 1,547 men employed in Sydney and suburban yards and mills, working under the new award. Some yards are fully manned. More men are being employed daily, and if the strike continues much longer a new union will be built up. The strike allowances of £2 a week

are inadequate, and many cases of acute distress are reported. Summonses have been issued against four Labour leaders, J. Garden, secretary of the Trades and Labour Council, and Kavanagh, Reeve, and Ryan, of the Deputies Committee, for taking part iu a demonstration at the Darlinghurst Court when a number of timber workers on strike were ordered to return to work.