STRIKE PICKETS DISPERSED FEDERAL REGIME IN INDONESIA

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25445, 17 March 1948, Page 5

STRIKE PICKETS DISPERSED

FEDERAL REGIME IN INDONESIA

POLICE ACTION IN BRISBANE ARREST OF WATERSIDERS’ secretary " (Rec. 9 p.m'.) BRISBANE, March 18. In the swiftest and most successful police action since Strike picketing began at the Shell Company depots in Brisbane, the police to-aay arrested the State secretary of the Waterside Workers’ Federation (E. C. Englart) and broke up a demonstration of about 60 men and women. Englart later appeared in the Police Court on traffic charges and was remanded. Bgil was allowed. The police surrounded the demonstrators and read portions of the Antipicketing Act. The pickets were then dispersed and shepherded out of the area. The final refusal of the N.ew South Wales Road Transport Department to issue permits for the transport by road to Queensland of urgently needed goods will be investigated by the New South Wales Premier (Mr J. McGirr). An attempt to wreck coal trains running between Ipswich and Brisbane was foiled by the watchfulness of a railway linesman. Railway officials admitted that a linesman who was patroling the irack 30 miles from Brisbane found, that 14 dog spikes had been pulled up from one length of line and that a fishplate coupling had been partly removed. Detectives believe that the damage was done by an experienced railwayman, as aog spikes are difficult to remove. At least one coal train passed over the damaged section without being derailed. An expert who examined the line said that a second train would probably have caused the lines to spread, making a derailment inevitable. A fast passenger train would have been wrecked immediately. Trains running yesterday carried 26,000 passengers, mostly on suburban lines.

REPUBLIC PROTESTS TO U.N. COMMITTEE “UNILATERAL COURSE BY DR. VAN MOOK ” (Rec. 10 p.m.) BATAVIA, March 16. In a letter to the' United Nations Security Council Good Offices Committee in Batavia, the Indonesian Republican Government to-day strongly protested against “the unilateral course followed by Dr. Van Mook” in forming a Provisional Federal Government for Indonesia without consulting the Republic. The letter asked the committee to lodge the Republican protest directly with the Security Council and with the Netherlands negotiating delegation. The Provisional Federal Government, with Dr. Van Mook as President and including 10 Dutchmen and eight Indonesians, out no representatives of the Republicans, was installed on March 9. The Republic’s letter to-day said that this action was contrary to the agreement signed aboard the U.S.S. Renville, and the Republic hoped that negotiations for a Provisional Federal Government as visualised in that agreement would begin soon. Using machine-guns and mortars, Republican irregulars have made three night attacks on the positions of the official Republican forces in the Bantam Residency in West Java, according to information released by Republican sources. Reports from Republican battalion headquarters at Serang, the principal town in the Republicanheld Bantam, said that the official Republican forces killed seven irregulars and succeeded in disbanding an irregular unit which was part of a revolutionary army. The fighting is reported to have followed the decision of the regular Republican army to unify the customs control along the coast in the extreme western ena of Java.