Boycotting Miners Fill Otautau Hotel

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32209, 30 January 1970, Page 14

Boycotting Miners Fill Otautau Hotel

(New Zealand Press Association) INVERCARGILL, January 29. Southland beer-striking miners’ oasis, the Railway Hotel, at Otautau, was packed to the doors tonight as car-loads of drinkers from all over western Southland packed in to enjoy the miners’ cheaper drinking.

There was standing* room only, the president of the Ohai-Nightcaps Miners’ Fairer Prices Committee, Mr Jim Neylon, and the hotel licensee, Mr John Mountney, reported from the barside tonight. There were no chartered buses running tonight but miners ran a ferry service with cars packed with drinkers. Cars from Tuatapere, Riverton, and other Southland towns also brought drinkers in.

Mr Neylon said that chartered buses would run from Nightcaps and Ohai tomorrow night and on Saturday night. “Tomorrow is the crisis day,” he said. "The boys get 10 days’ pay tomorrow and we’ll all be celebrating tomorrow night and Saturday night.”

From now on there would be chartered buses running from the coalfields to the Railway Hotel in Otautau every week-end, said Mr Neylon. “We’re going to stick with tfohn Mountney even after we’ve broken the other pubs from their high prices,” he said. “The miners never forget.”

Pickets Possible On reported moves by the Southland Hotel Association to take some form of economic action against Mr Mountney’s hotel, Mr Neylon said:

“If they try anything on John, we’ll all put on our hard bats and look the other pubs up, and picket them. We won’t stand by if they pick on him.” Mr Mountney himself said he would never give in to any form of pressure. ’They’ve got nine months to try and break me before I renew my lease, because if I survive I’m going to renew it,” he said. ’TH never give in. The miners are right.” Mr Mountney is selling jugs and bottles of beer at 40c compared with 43c and 45c in other Southland Hotel Association hotels.

Whisky Unchanged He is charging 10c for nips of gin compared with 12c in

the other hotels. Whisky is the same price at 20c a nip, but Mr Mountney is not charging for lemonade or other cordials to go with the spirits. Mr Mountney said he was not a member of the South-

land Hotel Association or the Hotel Association of New Zealand. Mr Neylon said tonight that he was delighted to hear that a Whangarei group was considering joining in on the beer strike.