THE STOPPAGE OF GAS SUPPLIES

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 302, 21 December 1943, Page 2

THE STOPPAGE OF GAS SUPPLIES

HPHE dangers of war are held at bay by the devotion and fighting ■*■ spirit of our men and those of our Allies in the Solomons and New Guinea! Without that shield we would be in as precarious a plightas.any of the-other islands which the Japanese have, first threatened and then overrun. Our present security is being bought at a price, the price of the lives of thousands of our own and our Allied soldiers, andjtis our plain duty to see that nothing that we can do is left undonT" to ensure that the men, whose welfare we have accepted as a national responsibility, are supplied with all that we can produce. That cannot be done when industries vital to ■ the war effort are summarily interrupted, as was the case yesterday by the stoppage of the production of gas—an action which has taken the industry and the home by the throat. The strikers have slowed the wheels of industry throughout the whole of Auckland. They have not exhausted the constitutional methods of securing" the acceptance of their demands, and they have the-disapproval of their central executive in the step which they have taken. Strikes are illegal; the Government has not always treated them as such; but when its authority is openly flouted and the pressing needs of the war and the community are used as weapons against it, a definite stand must be taken somewhere or anarchical conditions will prevail throughout the Dominion.