Rubbish Piles Rise

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32114, 9 October 1969, Page 17

Rubbish Piles Rise

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, October 7.

The refuse strike which started in a small London borough 15 days ago and has choked the British capital, spread to Scotland and was discussed in the Cabinet room of the Prime Minister’s Number 10 Downing Street residence yesterday.

The Cabinet discussed possible emergency measures to collect refuse now piling up in the streets in all but one of London’s 32 boroughs and in many provincial cities. Rubbish collectors of Dundee in north-east Scotland yesterday decided to join the unofficial strike called by the dustmen of Hackney in a bid to win a basic pay of £2O

a week. They are now earning about £l5 a week.

The strike has spread to what Britons call the dogsbody trades—grave-digging, cesspool cleaning, roadsweeping and lavatory cleaning. One London borough has reported more cremations because of the difficulty of getting a grave dug. The strike has also raised fears that a fly, immune to ordinary pesticides, may

hatch out soon from the rubbish. But Mr Richard Crossman, Secretary of State for Health and Social Services, last night discounted this danger. He added that there was no need to worry about , immediate epidemics. The Government’s Chief Medical Officer, Sir George Godber. said that because of the autumn weather there was no danger from flies.

But Dr Geoffrey Poole, medical officer for a hard-hit East London borough, said that the fly population had increased. He said that the pew breed seemed to be developing an immunity to D.D.T. and other pesticides. The cabled photograph shows bags of rubbish stacked round a traffic island in London’s fashionable Oxford Street shopping district.