WAVE OF STRIKES

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29227, 10 June 1960, Page 15

WAVE OF STRIKES

Trouble For De Gaulle (Rec. 10 p.m.) PARIS, June 9. About 639,000 metal workers throughout’ France are staging strikes in support of wage demands today as more than 1,300,000 Government employees prepare to strike tomorrow. President de Gaulle discussed the gathering momentum of labour unrest and rolling strikes at a Cabinet meeting yesterday. Later the Government announced a new deal in 1961 for civil servants, but union leaders said tomorrow’s strike would still go on because the Government offer was “too vague’’ and contained no new wage offer for the current year. French civil servants in Algeria will start work two hours late tomorrow as a gesture of support for their colleagues in Metropolitan France, .it was announced in Algiers last night The current strike wave is the most serious since General de Gaulle came to power two years ago. Civil servants argue that their pay lags far behind that in private industry, and has not kept pace with the cost of living. Tomorrow’s strikes threaten to paralyse Orly £.nd Le Bourget airports as vital ground staff are due to walk off the jobs. Some international services are being rerouted to Brussels.

The speaker, Mr Liu ChangSheng, was addressing a general council meeting of the Commu-nist-backed World Federation of Trade Unions, of which he is vice-president He said the purpose of pitting forward the general complete disarmament proposal “is to arouse people throughout the world to unite and oppose the imperialist scheme for an arms drive and war preparations, to unmask the aggressive and bellicose nature of imperialism before the world’s people, in order to isolate as far as possible the imperialistic bloc headed by the United States, so they will not dare to unleash war lightly.” Observers said the speech was the most outspoken Chinese Communist conunent since Mr Khrushchev last week announced the new Soviet disarmament plan. As Mr Liu is a member of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, it presumably represented the official Peking view.

The Chinese announced earlier this week that they supported the Soviet plan, but warned against “any unpractical illusion about peace." U.S. Assessment Chinese Communist leaders are “intoxicated” with the anticipation of success in their “arrogant and aggressive” policies, a top State Department official said in Congressional testimony released today, according to a Washington message.

The Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, Mr J, Graham Parsons, gave this appraisal and said that because of Peking's attitude no early compromise could be expected. He warned that the West and its Allies mstead must anticipate that the Chinese Communists would resort to force whenever it suited them.

Mr Parsons appeared before a House of Representatives Appropriations Sub-committee on May 9 to support President Eisenhower’s request for 1231 million dollars in military and economic aid for the Far East region in 1960-61.

“Inasmuch as the Chinese Communist leaders are intoxicated with their doctrinaire anticipation

of success,” he said, “it is not to be expected that they will soon desire to reach any form of accommodation or will see any need to modify, except tactically, their harsh attitudes.

“We must instead anticipate that the Chinese Communists will resort to force whenever it suits their purpose and that the threat to force (spoken or unspoken) wiU remain a major instrument of their policies.”