TEN MONTHS IN SOVIET GAOL.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 113, 16 May 1927, Page 9

TEN MONTHS IN SOVIET GAOL.

BRITISH SEAMAN'S EXPERIENCE. BOLSHEVIK FABLE OF £1 A DAY

Those who profess an admiration for Soviet Russia, and have influence with the Bolsheviks, have been invited to interest themselves in the case of a British sailor who, on no charge whatever, was thrust into a Bolshevik prison for ten months. The man, David Scott, aged 34, a Londoner, in October, 1923, shipped af a fireman in the steamship Syorono, which sailed from Newport (Mem.) for Italy and the Russian poit of Novorossisk, in the Black Sea. At Novorossisk Soviet officials invited the crew to visit the Sailors' International Club- Scott was so impressed by the tales of the beautiful conditions of life under the Soviet that he determined to desert his ship and live there. Scott said to a "Daily Mail" reporter: "They told me that there was plenty of work, and when they heard that I had been in a boiler-making shop they said I could easily earn £1 a day. When I asked for a job I was sent to a grain elevator, where I was paid 40 roubles (about £4) a month. After three months I transferred to an iron foundry where boiler-making was in progress. Instead of getting £1 a day, I was' paid 30 roubles (about £3) a month. I had to join the Metal Workers' Union, and had two kopecks stopped out of every rouble I earned." Odd Jobs a: the Docks. After about 18 months the part of the works in which I was closed down, and I had to take odd jobs at the docks. One day he was arrested and dragged off to the police headquarters- All that he could gather was that he had "been talking to foreign sailors," and for this he* was flung into a cell. Proceeding with his story, Scott said: "It was a room of about 12ft by 20ft, and'was already occupied by 17 or 18 men of all classes and nationalities. All we had to eat was lib of black bread in the morning; thin soup—it was really vegetable water—for dinner; and hot water at tea-time. I was in that cell 32 days, when I was taken to the prison outside the town,' and put into a cell smaller than the one at the police station, and overcrowded with political prisoners. Men Go Mad. "The food was the same as at the police station, and, as I could not. eat the eoup, I had to live on the black bread and water. Prisoners in other parts of the prison were going mad under the strain. Finally, after I had gone on hunger strike, I was told that Moscow had decided my case, and that I was to be deported- Some days later I was marched under armed guard to the port, and put on the steamship Koursk. I was signed on as a fireman, and reached Rotterdam. On my return to London I put my case before the National Sailors' and Firemen's Union." Mr. Havelock Wilson, of the National Sailors and Firemen's Union, said, when interviewed:—"l am writing to Mr. George Lansbury, Mr. A. J. Cook, Mr. Ben Cillett, and Mr- George Hicks, who claim to have such a great interest in Soviet Russia, inviting them to take up the case of Scott."