FRANCE IN THROES OF SERIOUS STRIKES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 279, 25 November 1938, Page 7

FRANCE IN THROES OF SERIOUS STRIKES.

TROUBLE SPREADS.

Ugly Clash With Workers And Mobile Guards.

80,000 NOW OUT OF WORE.

United Press Association.—Copyright,

(Received 2 p.m.) PARIS, Xovember 24. Strikers throughout France now number 80,000. Resistance to the economy decrees is steadily stiffening.

Despite employers' protests to M. Daladier. 25,000 miners in the Valenciennes district were called out, in order to demonstrate solidarity with the metal workers.

Light thousand miners held up 2000 Mobile Guards en route to evacuate men from the surface works. Denain strikers seized a coal train and drove it to a level crossing, where they dumped 20 truckfuls of coal on the railway line and fortified the mound with boards and beams.

Two hundred, armed with spades, bars and sticks, surmounted it and defied the guards, while thousands of others, reinforced by crowds of inhabitants of Denain, massed behind them.

Ihe sub-Prefect, failing to persuade Ihe strikers to withdraw, ordered the guards to charge, and a pitched battle ensued. The guards defeated the strikers, who counter-attacked and threatened to overturn a lorry fill of guards, who dismounted and fought their way through the strikers with rifle butts. Ihe strikers seized Press cameras in order to prevent the employment of photographs as evidence against them. The baffled authorities summoned reinforcements from Lille, and eventually an agreement was reached whereby the guards retired amid jeers. The strikers removed the barrier.

Mining and metal industries in northern France are at a standstill. The strikes continue to extend, including 4000 miners in the Anzin basin. Police, reinforced, are evacuating the workers.

Ten thousand guards and police came into conflict with strikers in the course of evacuation of the Renault works, and arrested 200. Twelve guards were injured. A policeman's skull was fractuied and an eve was gouged out.