HUGE STRIKE IMPENDING

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 47, 17 August 1911, Page 5

HUGE STRIKE IMPENDING

360,000 RAILWAY MEN MAY GO OUT. ACUTE DISTRESS. Received 16, 11. p.m. London, August 16. The joint congress of the railway servants, locomotive engineers, firemen, signalmen, pointsmen and general workers' unions met at Liverpool to consider the position. It was unanimously decided to give the railway companies twenty-four hours' notice in which to negotiate a settlement; otherwise a general strike will take place on Thursday morning. The conference also passed resolutions condemning the company's method of working the conciliation scheme and the action of the police and the employment of military at Liverpool. The general strike will involve 360,000. The passenger services are becoming dislocated, whilst the goods traffic is at a standstill.

A mob a$ Sheffield was turbulent to actual rioting. A provision cart was upset and some stone-throwing indulged in. Twenty-five thousand are idle at Manchester.

The police are escorting cotton from the docks to the mills unmolested.

The distress at Bermondsev, owing to the strike, is acute. Relief rations are being distributed.

SERIOUS BREAD FAMINE THREATENED. SITUATION IN LONDON IMPROVED. PRISON VAN ATTACKED. London, August 15. Work has been resumed at Paddington railway station. The Port of London Authority offers to reinstate the strikers on probation. Train services at Crewe, Leicester, and other centres have been curtailed.

Many transport workers in Birmingham have struck. Others who have struck include porters in goods departments at Chester, Sheffield, Rotherham, Warrington and Bristol; shunters and dockers at Avonmouth; carmen at Bath and Bristol; a majority of the enginedrivers at Stockport, and 1200 North British Railway platelayers and surfacemen in the West of Scotland.

Five hundred railwaymen at the docks at Manchester, with the Great Northern goodsmen and Great Northern and Midland vanmen, have struck. A local merchant declares that Manchester is within three days of starvation. The Millers' Association at Liverpool declares that a serious bread famine is threatened in Liverpool and Birkenhead.

Mr. Churchill, in the House of Commons, stated that the situation in London had improved, and all sections of dockers were returning. He believed that the transport workers realised the advantages already secured, and the folly of jeopardising them. The soldiers simply fired individual shots at houses from which missiles were thrown. At Liverpool 3000 strikers attacked a prison van convoyed by 100 Hussars, who fired on the crowd and used their sabres. One man was killed and twenty wounded. The Amalgamated Railway Servants' Union has declared a general strike. FIZZLING OUT IN GLASGOW. London, August 15. There are signs that the Glasgow strike is fizzling out. Eighty men have been arrested for rioting. The Corporation Committee, after a lively meeting, resolved to leave the settlement in the hands of the tramway managers. A mass meeting of strikers received the decision with hostility, and will seek for arbitration by the Boird of Trade. The tramway strike at Glasgow has collapsed, and many of the strikers are not being reinstated. USE THE BAYONET. MANY CASU VLTTES. London, August 13. After midnight the mob looted the shops in the Christian street district. The infantry fired several volleys overhead, and then made bayonet charges up dark courts, whence they were as-

sailed 'by stones and bottles. There were many casualties, and two soldiers were grievously wounded. Fiftysix arrests were made. A REPRESENTATIVE CONFERENCE. London, August 15. The conference between Messrs. Asquith and Buxton, at Downing Street to-day, included Mr. Lloyd-George, the Attorney General, and Mr. Askwith, of the Board of Trade, large employers of the chief trades, with leading representatives of labor, including Messrs. Burt and Bowerman, M's.P.

'lt was afterwards announced that a conference for Thursday had been arranged by the Board of Trade, with representatives of men employed in various branches of railway work.