Footsore Londoners Welcome Buses Back

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28619, 23 June 1958, Page 11

Footsore Londoners Welcome Buses Back

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, June 21. Footsore Londoners were today welcoming the city’s 8400 buses back on the roads after seven weeks of walking and hitch-hiking to work.

The first of the double-decker buses of the world's biggest transport system rumbled out of a garage in Hammersmith, London, at 10.45 p.m. yesterday to be greeted by cheers from a crowd four-deep along the roadside.

The strike ended yesterday afternoon when busmen voted overwhelmingly to accept the latest peace offer from London Transport executive. The “Daily Express” said that Londoners will have to pay for the settlement between Mr Frank Cousins’ union and Sir John Elliot of London Transport with higher fares The strike had cost London Transport £2.000.000 and the 8s 6d a week award increase to London’s central busmen would take another £1,000.000. London's other big strike, in the docks, will end on Monday if workers at Smithfield market return to work. If they do. the 3500 striking dockers at the pool of London have agreed to go back at the same time. Smithfield was expected to resume work a-t midnight on Tuesday and the market would beoperating on Wednesday. a spokesman for the market tenants' association said later today.

The resumption still depended, however, on a satisfactory conclusion to talks which were still in progress between representatives of the Wholesale Meat Provision Transport Association and Transport and General Workers’ Union leaders representing 1700 meat drivers who began the strike on April 19.