TRADES UNION CONGRESS.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20025, 5 September 1930, Page 5

TRADES UNION CONGRESS.

COMMUNISTS CREATE BEDLAM. FREE FIGHTS IN THE GALLERY. (UKIMS PRKSS ASSOCIATION—B7 .ELECTRIC raufcoairH- copyßight.) LONDON, September 3. Thirty Communists on a hunger march and using faked tickets at the gates crushed into the gallery at the Trades Union Congress and turned the proceedings into a Bedlam. Throughout the morning small relays yelling and gesticulating rose up in succession. The chairman's bell clanging for order. Delegates cried, "Chuck 'em out," and the interrupters shouted, "To hell with the Trades Union Congress." They defied the stewards, and the resulting struggles produced repeated pandemonium.

The demonstrators resisted ejection, fighting, kicking, and biting. One man required nine to eject him, and one of these returned bleeding at the nose. Another's collar was torn off, and a third, who was covering a particularly noisy Communist's mouth, was badly bitten on the hand.

There once were nine free-fights going on simultaneously, the delegates standing up and cheering the stewards like spectators at a boxing match, and greeting tolling punches with cries of "That's the stuff to give 'em." A girl interrupter, whom a steward tapped on the shoulder and asked to leave, smacked his face, after which she was carried out, shrieking, "Down with the Labourites. Up with Russia!" Thousands watched the Communists being flung out on to the pavement, the police preventing their rushes to regain the entrance to the hall. The Communists boo-ed delegates when they were departing, especially the chairman, Mr Board, who had ordered their speedier removal. The demonstrators were so threatening that Mr J. R. Clynes left by a side-doof, guarded by police.

GOVERNMENT AND SOCIALISM.

MR J. R. CLYNES'S ADDRESS. (BBmsn OFFICIAL WIBBLESS.) EUGBY, September 3. The Home Secretary (Mr J. E. Clynes) was considerably interrupted when addressing the conference. He said that if they did not get "Socialism in our time" in its complete form, they were getting it all the time in one degree or another. But Socialists could only be made by argument and example. It was in that spirit that the Government had pursued its course, and they looked to the immediate future and remote time ahead with the knowledge that things that were to last must be things of slow growth. The Government was awaiting an opportunity to reverse the Trade Disputes Act, and it was committed to that attitude. It was the purpose of the present Government to give back to trade unions the freedom of which thoy Were deprived by the Parliamentary action of the Government's opponents.