"RED" MENACE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 27, 1 February 1934, Page 15

"RED" MENACE.

THREAT TO WORKERS. TEXTILE MILLS' STRIKE. SERIOUS TROUBLE AVERTED. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, January 23. The strike in the textile mills, to which I referred last week, has run its appointed course and failed —as it was bound to fail. Tor some time, however, the position in Sydney was decidedly precarious. Over a week ago we were assured by the employers that only a few mills were affected, that the trouble was not serious, and that it would soon be over. The extremists of the Textile Workers' Union, however, made desperate efforts to embroil other mills, appealed to all industrialists to aid tlie good cause, endeavoured to organise a general strike, and declared all mills and workers "black" that resisted their demands. There is no positive proof that the Trades Hall "inner group" was actively involved in all this; though the "Labour Daily" gave the strikers much indirect encouragement by commending the determination of the workers to assert their rights. But there is plenty of evidence to show that the militant minority (Communist) group was at the bottom of the trouble. The "Sydney Morning Herald," in an rticle headed "Whose Strike is This?" so seriously annoyed the M.M. leaders that they went to the trouble of issuing a leaflet disclaiming any responsibility for the strike. But the employers were by this time really incensed, and the N.S.W. Textile Manufacturers' Association resolved to appeal to the Federal Government to invoke the Crimes Act "to prevent the paid officials of the union from further inciting employees to strike on infoi nintiou which has been proved to be false." Committee Ignored. At this juncture the striker organisers scored one of their greatest successes by inducing the 600 employees of the F. W. Hughes mills at Alexandria to "come out." For the moment the position seemed critical, but this was a final | "flash in the pan." The great majority of the workers simply ignored the strike committee and its edicts and thestiikers began to filter back. A timely lead was given by the Albany mill-owners, who announced that they would take back the strikers "without submitting them to any loss of wages for the time they kept the works idle." No doubt this generous action produced a definite effect, and at a compulsory conference of employers and workers convened on Thursday by the Federal Industrial Registrar the strikers gave way. They agreed to return to work without receiving any concession on substantially the conditions that existed before the stoppage. This strike has meant to the work ens a direct loss of £15,000 in wages alone. What it has meant to the employers through dislocation of "trade and di\eision of orders to Victorian mills cannot yet be computed, but it is <i serious, even if temporary, setback to the industry. This little outbreak of "industrial war" has an even more serious side, for it revealed once more the activity and the audacity of those "apostles of destruction" who are striving constantly to undermine the existing economic and social and political order. Open Ballot Taken. Let us take the single case of the Albury mills. When the militants first ordered the workers to leave work at Orange and Goulburn, the Albury employees refused tc> join them. The militant section then called a lunchhour meeting—at which the night-shift workers were not present —and by an open ballot, at which the objectors were afraid to vote against them, they carried a resolution in favour of striking. Two days later the whole body of the Albury textile workers held a meeting, took a secret ballot, and recorded a vote of two to one against the strike. But the militants were not done yet. They issued a proclamation that they "would not be responsible for anything done to people who went back to work." There was no mistaking the significance of this threat, which simply meant that the militants were ready to turn loose "basher gangs" upon the men and women who refused to join the strike. Xo doubt, for the moment, this brutal menace had the effect of intimidating the weaker section of the wage-earners. But it certainly strengthened the determination of the employers not to give way, and it provided a useful argument for these who wore then appealing to the Federal Government to employ all its powers to maintain law and order and to protect our people against this grave menace to our industrial and civic and social rights.