Pickets and police clash

Press, 1 June 1984, Page 1

Pickets and police clash

PA Whangarei The police used a “wedge” last evening in a bid to clear pickets trying to block the exit of eight scaffolders at the centre of the dispute at the refinery expansion project. The police were punched while pickets were bruised and suffered bloody noses in the encounter about 5 p.m. The wedge could not break the line of about 40 pickets, who are workers at the Marsden Point site who have been either sacked or are on strike over the eight scaffolders working on the project. After the police had regrouped and donned riot squad helmets, union delegates defused the situation and talked pickets into disbanding. Union delegates finally walked the van past the pickets with police alongside. The Northland police

chief, Superintendent R. P. Silk, praised delegates who he said had constantly tried to talk the pickets out of barring the van’s entrance. “I can tell you it was a fairly uncomfortable experience,” said Mr Silk. “Without the delegates it would have been a different situation.” Onlookers said the ordeal was too much for at least one of the eight scaffolders who was “howling” in the van. The scaffolders have to pass the pickets again at dawn today. They have been travelling in a fortified van with plywood barricading windows smashed during an incident on Wednesday morning. A wire grille has been welded over the windscreen. When the van arrived for work yesterday morning a hole was smashed in one plywood panel, said Mr Bob Duncan, for whom the eight work. Further report, page 6