BRITISH RAILWAY TROUBLE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8557, 16 October 1907, Page 5

BRITISH RAILWAY TROUBLE.

Received October 15, 8.24 a.m. LONDON, October 14. The reply of the railway companies associations has been received by Mr Richard Bell. It confirms the refusal to confer with the delegates of the men's associations. Advices from Glasgow state that i the Scotch railways have resolved, in the event of a strike, to forthwith accept all employees' notices, and to intimate that all the places of the 12,000 members of the Arm'gamated Society of Railway Servants can be easily filled. Received October 15, 9.20 p.m. LONDON, October 15. Mr Fox, General Secretary of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, addressing a large meeting of railway men at Cambridge, denounced Mr Bell's tactics in indulging in unnecessary menace and "mud slinging." He predicted that the agitation would be a hopeless failure. Enginemen did I not want an ex-railway guard to represent them, but an engineman when negotiating about enginemen. Mr Bell, interviewed, declared that the olive branch had been held out -often enough. "We are now asking the men to strike," said Mr Bell. "The matter is in their hands." Received October 16, 12.7 a.m. LONDON, October 15. The Chronicle says that the nation looks to Mr Lloyd George, in the event of a strike, even if it is necessary to ask Parliament for fresh legislation. Mr Lloyd George states that it would be madness for him to say anything at the present juncture as the situation was an exceedingly delicate one. Mr Ramsay Macdonald says that if the Conciliation Act and other powers possessed by the Board of Trade is insufficient to prevent a strike, then the Government ought to summon Parliament in order to strengthen the hands of the Board of Trade to enable them to act effectively.