BILL AGAINST SABOTEURS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 123, 9 March 1950, Page 5

BILL AGAINST SABOTEURS

FRENCH HOUSE APPROVES END OF RIOTOUS SESSION IN.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright). PARIS, March 8. After a riotous all-night session the French National Assembly today adopted by 393 votes to 186 the anti-sabotage Bill designed to protect American arms shipments from Communist action. The Assembly’s decision ended almost a week of’ vehement Communist obstruction.

The Communists have openly urged the workers to refuse to handle American arms, which are to arrive soon under the Atlantic Pact. They have also sought to interfere with military supplies for French troops in Indo-China: The Government made the Bill an issue of confidence in order to speed the deliberations and cut off the Communist filibuster. Parisians packed the galleries of the National Assembly shortly after midnight, when the debate on the Bill entered its last stages. Free-for-all brawling, expulsions, and Communist filibustering had made the debate the best show in town, and people walked from all over the city to attend. The public was not disappointed: As soon as the session opened, shouts of “Corruption” and catcalls resounded through the Assembly, nd Communists auickly sought to start another filibuster by taking advantage of a procedural requirement that the Assembly should a-dopt the minutes of the last session before opening a new one.

Just before dawn 200 - Republican Guards stormed into the building to break up a battle royal between Com munist and non-Communist deputies. The guards fought with the deputies for TO minutes before they drove a wedge between the rival factions. Three Ushers were injured in trying to; halt the fighting. One clause in the Bill provides punishment of five to 10 years in solitry confinement with hard labour for the following offences: neglect or destruction of war material; deliberately bad workmanship in arsenals; interference with the transport of war material; acts of demoralisation affecting the armed forces. The Bill will now go to the Council of the Republic, the Upper House. The Assembly adjourned until March 14, when it is to take up the Fr'ench-American treaty implementing the North Atlantic Pact. This will probably produce a repetition of Communist attacks against the Cabinet and manoeuvres similar to those employed to delay the passage of the antisabotage Bill.

CONSCRIPTING WORKERS

SUMMONSES TO BE SERVED (Rec. 10.40 a m.) PARIS, March 8. The Government’s action to "conscript” 100,000 workers in the nationalised gas and electricity industries to prevent a threatened strike, was taken in the midst of the worst strike France has had since 1947. Local police this afternoon were given summonses to be served on conscripted workers. Failure to obey the summonses means imprisonment. Meanwhile the position in the threeday strike of Paris bus and underground services showed v signs of improving as transport workers drifted back on the orders of non-Communist unions. All underground lines operated, although services were reduced. Strikers in Paris, however, were swelled by 10,000 insurance workers who went nut this morning. In Dunkirk all shipyard workers went on strike, bringing dock work to a standstill.