PRESS STRIKE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 95, 19 October 1944, Page 8

PRESS STRIKE

MAY END TODAY

ECHOES MAY LAST LONG

(Special P.A. Correspondent.)

SIDNEY, October 18. Though the terms of settlement reached in the newspaper dispute have not been made public, their acceptance by a mass meeting of the Printing Trade Union tomorrow is reported to be confidently expected. Sydney has now been without ordinary Press news facilities for 10 days, and will welcome the resumption of normal publication by the four papers concerned.

Echoes of the unprecedented dispute are likely to continue for some time. The "Sydney Morning Herald" has notified its intention of taking action in the Supreme Court against the New South Wales State Railways Commissioner because the railway employees refused to handle the composite paper on October 9 and subsequent days. It is claimed that a loss of 50,000 in the paper's daily circulation resulted. The composite paper did, however, achieve a record Sydney daily newspaper circulation of 400,000. In the State Legislative Assembly the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Weaver, moved a vote of no-confidence in the McKell Government based on "its declared support of the Press strike, its failure to uphold the law relating to the carriage of goods on the Government-owned railways, and its attempt to exclude the reporters of the composite newspaper from the Parliamentary Press Gallery." The Labour Government's substantial majority assured defeat of the motion, which was lost by 46 votes to 22, the voting being on party lines. A special correspondent of the Melbourne "Herald"* who came to Sydney to investigate the dispute wrote: "Sydney's newspaper stoppage is to be seen against a background as fantastic as any in Australia. "In a sense it is something that could have happened only in Sydney—as many things that happen in Sydney today could happen only here. More than ever in its outward manifestations this city is departing from what might be called the Australian norm."