THE FIGHT.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 February 1921, Page 5

THE FIGHT.

PEACE v. BOLSHEVISM. AUSTRALIA’S BIGGEST STRUGGLE. STRIKE MANIA. SPREADING. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.— Copyright. Sydney, Feb. 12.. The Daily Telegraph, in a special article dealing with the industrial position, says the general public fails to realise that there is now in progress one of the bitterest industrial struggles in the history of Australia. On one side are the employers, who are determined, if industry is to live in this country, it shall be free from the unreasoning but deliberate obstruction which it has suffered from during recent years. On the other side are the dupes of the industrial extremist, whose sinister and calculated purpose is to wreck the existing economic system and put Bolshevism in its place. The legitimate trade unions and federations are placed in an unenviable position between these contending forces. The Telegraph adds that the present position of the shipping strike means that for the first time in Australia a body of employers is making a frontal attack on the industrial methods which the younger workers have learned from the Independent Workers of the World, Bolsheviks, and other fanatics, and are seeking to put into effect. A similar fight is rapidly developing between the coal miners and coal owners.

The newspaper publishes a list of fifty strikes in five 'weeks which have occurred on the northern coalfields, and the position is similar in the southern coalfields. The mine owners declare they will be compelled to take a line of action which they are unwilling to take unless there is soon some improvement in the position. Employers claim that th? fight is not being put up against unionism; the modern employer is willing to assist craft unions in every possible way if he can secure industrial peace. The whole tendency is to give the wojker as big an interest in his work as possible. The fight is against Bolshevism, and is ‘being made as much on behalf of the community generally as for the employers and they look to the public generally and the solid body of workers for assistance in the fight.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn. PROTEST AGAINST LOCK-OUT. Sydney, Feb. 12. Mr. Walsh replied to the secretary of the shipowners, stating that the seamen 'protest against the lock-out,. They were prepared to resume on conditions existing prior to the lock-out or to meet the owners in conference.