Unemployed Choose New Venue

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31763, 21 August 1968, Page 1

Unemployed Choose New Venue

After the Canterbury Organisation of the Unemployed decided yesterday to meet in the Trades Hall, instead of in the Social Credit Hall, its secretary (Mr G. M. Edmonds) announced that he intended to resign because of pressure of work. The meeting was attended by- 27 persons, two of whom voted against the move. The organisation has held its meetings in the Social Credit Hall for the last year. . Mr Edmonds is a member of the Social Credit Political League and has been a Parliamentary candidate on its behalf.

Mr R. Eden, the Kalapoi works delegate on the Canterbury Freezing Workers’ Union executive, told the meeting that the Canterbury Organisation for the Unemployed had become a political football. “The Trades Council allowed it to get out of its hands for 12 months,” said Mr Eden. “We" have got the Trades Council now to see its folly. I’d like you, Mr President, and the Trades Council members here, to see that the council and the unions fight as hard now for the people who are not working as they did to get the 5 per cent, increase. “In my opinion the unem-

ployed have been given a very raw deal by the Trades Council. The trade unions did more fighting in the depression for the unemployed than they are doing today. The unemployed, in my opinion, are just a back number to the trade unions. I am disgusted.”

The trade union movement, he said, had not done one thing for the unemployed. It had said the unemployed were not its responsibility, said Mr Eden. . “That was before Social Credit had the decency to give them a free hall,” Mr Eden said. “I said then that the trade union movement was letting the .unemployed down, and I will still say it till the trade union movement turns round and does something." When Mr Eden said he congratulated Mr Edmonds on the work he had done, there were claps and cheers from the unemployed present. The organiser of the Canterbury Freezing Workers’ Union (Mr W, Cameron) said that the trade unions called the first meeting of the unemployed. Members of his and ether unions had done much to help unemployed, and unions had also made represeritations to the Government and had brought pressure to bear to create work for the unemployed. Mr Cameron said he would agree that the trade unions as a whole had initially tried to pass off their responsibility. for the unemployed.

“We now want to take over the responsibility that has been ours since the outset and to shoulder this in future,” said Mr Cameron. When an unemployed man asked earlier whether this was a “trade union movement takeover,” the president (Mr G. G. Walker) said that it was not. Mr Walker said there had

been some criticism about the lack of meetings called by the organisation. Nine hundred pamphlets had been given out in the last two days asking the unemployed to come to the meeting, and 27 persons attended. “The results we are getting are heart-breaking.” A vote of thanks to Mr Edmonds was passed.