BOYCOTT REPUDIATED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 May 1938, Page 9

BOYCOTT REPUDIATED

BRITISH SHOE OPERATIVES. NATIONAL UNION DECISION. (By Air Mail, Own Correspondent.) LONDON, April 29. Since the meeting of the High Commissioner (Mr W. J. Jordan) with British members of Parliament for boot and shoe constituencies on March 15 very little has been heard of the suggested boycott of New Zealand products in retaliation against the revised Dominion tariff on imported boots and shoes. This week, however, Mr H. Boyle, secretary of the Rossendale Valley Boot, Shoe and Slipper Manufacturers’ Association, which initiated the protest some weeks ago, has announced his disappointment with the result of the negotiations he has had with the New Zealand authorities and reiterates the threat that the operatives in the valley will put into immediate operation a boycott of New Zealand goods. Mr George Chester, General Secretary of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, in an interview published today, answers the question whether shoe trade operatives generally will support the boycott. “The Rossendale boot and shoe operatives,” he said, “are not within the control of the National Union. They have their separate organisation and are solely responsible for their own course of action.

“The question of a; boycott of New Zealand products was submitted to my executive last Thursday from the Rossendale Union, who asked up to support that line of action. We turned them down. We told the Rossendale operatives that we could not support them in a boycott of imports which were produced under the finest labour conditions of any country in the world. We felt that it was rather unfair that they should take that line of action, and that they were making an unfortunate mistake, and we communicated this decision to them.

“It may be taken for granted that the bulk of the operatives in the boot and shoe industry in this country dissociate themselves from the action of the Rossendale operatives. The 90,000 members of the National Union are having nothing to do with the boycott. The Rossendale Union comprises 10,000 operatives engaged in the manufacture of slippers and the commoner grades of footwear and, naturally, they are hit rather more heavily than are other branches of the industry by the New Zealand tariff.

“We do not support tariffs, but the fact remains that the British industry has had to go to the Government to seek tariff protection itself, and consequently it cannot logically object to the New Zealand tariff, particularly as the New Zealand authorities declare it to be an adjustment made necessary by the introduction of the forty-hour week in the Dominion.”