NEWCASTLE STRIKE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9706, 31 January 1910, Page 5

NEWCASTLE STRIKE.

1 PRESIDENCY OF THE MINERS' FEDERATION. SYMPATHY WITH IMPRISONED MEN. United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph Copyright. SYDNEY, January 29. A new president of the Miners' Federation, in place of Mr Bowling, who has been sentenced toja term of imprisonment for aiding a strike, has not yet been selected. The name of Mr M. Charlton, a member of the State Assembly, has been suggested. The Broken Hill Labour Federation carried a unanimous vote of sympathy with the imprisoned men, and decided to communicate with alfindustrial bodies with a view to concerted action to demand their immediate release.

BOYCOTT OF > HK WAGES BOA Kb. PROPRIETORS RECONSIDERING the matter. SYDNEY January 29. A meeting of the Northern colliery proprietors has been held, it/is supposed in connection with the Wages Board, now taking evidence The judge toli both parties in unmistakable terms that they must come right in or stay ri ght put. The fact that miners are now giving evidence which a smart legal expert might put a diffarant complexion on has evidently roused the owners to reconsider their position in regard to ignoring the board. MINERS ASKING FOR A SETTLEMENT. Received January 30, 5 p.m. NEWCASTLE, January 30. The Miners' Delegate Board has adopted the recommendation of the Advisory Committee urging the Board to ask the colliery owners to meet it* with a view of settlement of the strike. SUPREMACY OF THE LAW. ASSERTED BY ITS OFFICERS. COMMENT OF THE oYDNEY PRESS. SYDNEY, January 29. Both the leading morning journals comment on the sentences passed on Bowling and the other strike leaders for aiding the colliers' strike. The "Daily Telergaph" says—"The sentence on the leaders simply means that the law of the land is vindicated. Whether that law was wisely or unwisely enacted is a I question about whichj there may be differences of opinion. Bowling and his confreres took the position that they were above the law, and were responsible to the higher authority represented by the Trades unionists; and it is for a deliberate assault upon the supremacy of Parliament that theyJare now under sentence. What cared they about the people whose very lives might have been sacrificed by the simultaneous stoppage of public utilities like gasworks, waterworks, tram services, and ferry services? Nothing. Their immediate purpose was to prevent all such services being carried on until the people, in dire distress, agreed to nationalise the mines. Civil ' war could not go much further than this outburst of unionism gone mad."

The "Sydney Morning Herald" remarks:—"The conviction of Bowling and the others affords an apparently much-needed object-lesson in the power of the State xo enforce by penalty its enactments. Certain persons assumed that their defiance would make the law a dead letter. They ma3e this assumption at their own risk, and havejnow been convicted and sentenced. There is no room for sympathy with them in their present position. As a State, we are determined to suppress strikes, not out of hostility to labour, but in the interests of labour itself." BOWLING IN HIS DEFENCE. THE RIGH'I TO STRIKE. LEGISLATION RUSHED THROUGH PARLIAMENT. SYDNEY, January 29. Bowling contended that on various occasions the employers had admitted the right of the men to strike by paying.thqm all wages duejafter they had struck. His arrest at Newcastle would have led to serious results but for his command over the thousands of men who came to the railway station to welcome him. It must be remembered that the amended Act upon which the sharge was formed had Jbeen rushed through Parliament without any time for reflection on the part of the members concerned, and before the people had"a chance to be consulted. Even Conservative England recognised tne right of workers to strike. The Taff Vale decision had laid this down. Yet he had been arrested for conspiracy for presiding at a meeting at which the men had decided to claim their rights. Had he known that the law rendered him liable to imprisonment for three years or for life, continued Bowling, he could not have done anything else than he had done. The evidence did not support the charge that

he went to the South Coast to encourage the men to remain out. The difficulties o* the men could not be settled by a Wages Board. He went to the South Coast because he knew that the battle had been lost by treachery. No matter what the verdict was, he was 'satisfied that tee ZSsil .^J!i ven tne case every consideration. "~ "" "' "" THE:J REPLY. u I" Judge Roeers expressed the hope that the Court of Enquiry about to sit would discover the causes of the Newcastle strike, and whatever abuses there were, either on the side of the employers or employees, would at all events be brought to light and corrected. The Southern men had evidently struck outof sympathy, and a sense of loyalty, to unionism. ' The defendants were sent to Bulli practically at the behest of the No. z congress, and it was said now that their mission was a peaceful one: but they bad told the miners to leave affairs to be managed by the No. 2 congress, "you-are on holiday; keep it on until the congress decides."