THE TRAM STRIKE.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18073, 15 May 1924, Page 11

THE TRAM STRIKE.

STILL UNSETTLED.

(BY CA»IJt—KUSSS ASSOCIATION CSJTJUMT.) (AUSTBAAIiJt AXO K.Z. CAMUt ASSOCIATION-) (Received May 14th, 9.50 p.m.) MELBOURNE, May 14. The conference of parties to the tram strike was held in camera at the Arbitration Court: The result was not made public, but it is known that the strike is 6till unsettled. The Federal Executive of the Tramway Workers' Union has now taken control of the negotiations.

HOSTILITY TO POLICE.

AFTERMATH OF MUTINY.

(raox ora omr co»a»eponDsirr.) SYDNEY, May 8. The strike of tramway employees in Melbourne, which has paralysed a large pcrtion of the city's tramway system, is the direct outcome of the discontent amongst all Melbourne unionists as a result of the utter defeat of the participants in the recent police strike, or mutiny, as the authorities prefer to call it. The Government stood firmly to its determination not to re-engage the men who had refused duty, and months of agitation, pleading, and threatening found them unmoved from their determination to make the affair a grim warning that constitutional methods and no others must be employed by such a body as the police force. Naturally the chief sufferers from the chagrin of these unionists who sympathised with the police who thus lost their positions were men who had enlisted for special duty during the mutiny. The special force employed during the crisis far outnumbered that which would be required for the permanent reconstruction of the force, consequently many men who served were bound later to seek other employment. It so happens that the man over whom the present trouble has arisen did not actually serve, but merely enlisted and was -rejected on physical grounds. He had succeeded in obtaining' promise of employment in the tramways, and the gripman whose duty it was to instruct him ascertained the fact of his enlistment, and obstinately refused to instruct him. This the authorities could not countenance, and they dismissed the gripman. Immediately the whole of the employees on a large section of the system struck. The strike has now lasted some days, and at the time of writing there is absolutely no sign of settlement, there being all the elements of a prolonged struggle in which all the bitterness engendered by the result of the police mutiny will find expression. It is considered that this action of the men, in bringing the disgraceful results of the police mutiny, when Melbourne was ridden with lawlessness and violence, so vividly before the public again l at a time when an early election is almost inevitable owing to the divisions, between the Country Party and the Natonalists in the State, will greatly mar the chances of Victorian Labour from repeating the successes of, the party in South Australia and West Australia. The feeling against the police which the strike has revived has found expression in several ugly scenes, individuals and groups of policemen being taunted and even, molested by crowds of idle- men. On one, occasion a small body of policemen, enormously outnumbered, was chased, the pursuers only desisting when one of the policemen turned and fixed a blank Bhot with his revolver. . - ■ ..