The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 1930. AUSTRALIA'S LABOUR WAR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 13, 16 January 1930, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 1930. AUSTRALIA'S LABOUR WAR.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

The New South Wales Government is evidently determined not to allow the strikers to menace the public safety or to flout the law with impunity. The vigorous action of the police in breaking up the large bodies of miners organised for aggressive purposes in the Northern colliery district has been at least temporarily successful, and this energetic assertion of the principle of "law and order" should have a decidedly salutary effect.

- As regards the tactics adopted by the police in dispersing the miners,, it must be remembered that these organised processions of strikers with which the police came into conflict are specifically forbidden by law. In November last, in view 'of the dangerous situation developing in the coal industry, and the outrageous violence that marked the timber strike, Mr. Bavin put through an Act which radically amended the law regarding the conduct of strikes, made "massed picketing" illegal, and provided penalties for annoying or intimidating workers. It is now an offence against the law to "watch" a house or its tenant, or his place of employment, or to "approach or attend" it in .such a way as to intimidate him or compel him to abstain from work. Further, the Act makes it an offence for more than two persons to follow a "tforkei? "in a disorderly manner" or to take part in an unauthorised procession or an "unlawful assembly." This last is defined as any gathering of five or more persons whose purpose is "by means of intimidation or injury" to interfere with anyone engaged in a lawful occupation. It is thus evident that the police, in taking the offensive against the strikers, have been simply doing their duty as prescribed by the law.

Taking all the facts of the case into consideration, it is not possible to argue seriously that this law in any way conflicts with the principles of democracy. In Britain in recent years it has come to be recognised that the so-called "peaceful picketing," when it directly or indirectly involves intimidation and coercion, should be prevented by law. In 1927 the Trade Disputes Act declared picketing a house illegal, and picketing anywhere in such numbers as to produce intimidation was also forbidden. The whole object of the organisations and processions now declared unlawful in New South Wales is intimidation and coercion, which is to say an intolerable interference with personal rights and liber ties, and public, opinion strongly supports Mr. Bavin's - determination to use all the resources of the State to ensure the public safety against revolutionary violence.