"RED” TERRORISM BY COMMUNISTS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LVIII, Issue 10356, 17 April 1930, Page 5

"RED” TERRORISM BY COMMUNISTS

Charge Made by Union Secretary. PERSONAL VIOLENCE, Christchurch, April 16 A terroristic-campaign is reported to have been inaugurated among the freezing workers of the Dominion by a Communistic organisation known as the Propaganda Committee, which has been responsible for the extension to Canterbury of the recent dispute in South Otago freezing works. Members of this organisation, It is stated, have resorted to personal violence their views and their activities. Mr H. C. Revell, secretary of the New Zealand Freezing Workers’ Federation, was recently the victim of an asault by a much younger man when visiting the Paparoa freezing works, an<f Mr Alex. McLeod, secretary of the Wellington Freezing Workers’ Union, was attacked inthls office. It is also reported that Mr H. T. Armstrong, M.P., was attacked personally in Wellington recently by a gang of Communists.

Mr Revell said this morning that members of this self-constituted committee, while declaring that they were out to fight intimidation and victimisation on the part of the employers, resorted to far baser methods than the employers could ever descend to. During the past few months, said Mr Revell, an Intense struggle had been taking place in the freezing workers’ organisation between the official body and the Propaganda Committee. It had been a desperate fight on account of the methods which these men were prepared to adopt in order to gain their ends. At Islington last week there was a vote of about 420 to 20 against the proposals of the Propaganda Committee, but in spite of such huge majorities against them they attempted to intimidate slaughtermen at various works. ‘What they can’t get by reason they attempt to get by brute force,” said Mr Revell, “and anybody who questions'anything they say or do is liable to be severely knocked about.” Mr Revell remarked that it was quite a usual thing, when talking to such men, to find them in possession of what was regarded as the slaughtermen’s first line of defence, a knife and a whetstone.