MELBOURNE'S WOES

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 124, 22 November 1923, Page 7

MELBOURNE'S WOES

AFTERMATH OF RIOTS

BOARDED SHOPS AND BAYONETS

PUBLIC RESTLESS.

(fROS OUR OWN COBRESPONDENT.)

SYDNEY, 15th November

After a week of great anxiety it seems fairly certain now that no general industrial upheaval will arise out of the police strike in Melbourne. Threats that the tramway and railway men would cease work in sympathy with the police, and that other great undertakings might be paralysed, created the greatest apprehension that something in the nature almost of revolution was imminent, and this undoubtedly influenced the authorities in taking the firmest possible measures to maintain law and order by recruiting a force of special constables, and bringing in men from the country, untO the Force was organised on military lines with an over-strength approaching eight thousand. The bellicose utterances of some unionists, however, in face of this determined aspect'of things, and the unquestionable evidence that the authorities were in earnest, resolved themselves into small monetary grants for the assistance of the strikers, and a declaration by the Trades Hall Council calling upon all unionists throughout the Commonwealth to support the men in fighting the issue. Beyond this nothing has been done, and Melbourne has gradually got back to something approaching its old atmosphere of respectability and order—so much so that Lieu tenant-General Monash, who commanded the Australian Army Corps during the war, and who was placed in charge of the special constabulary force, felt justified during the past week-end—only a week after "Red Saturday'"—in coming to Sydney to fulfil a number of engagements which he had previously entered into, including the opening of the big Jewish memorial hall which has been erected in honour of Jews who fell in the war. ELABORATE PRECAUTIONS. Nevertheless, Melbourne has had a gruelling time during the past week, and it will never forget its anxieties and discomforts during this period. Taking no further risks following the looting and ruthless damage during the notorious Saturday's orgy of lawlessness and riot, all the principal firms had their show windows heavily boarded, and kept volunteers from their staffs constantly on guard throughout the nights. The appearance of the main city blocks swathed in raw pine boards gave to one imaginative observer the impression of being packed for immediate export. By these and other measures the public nerve has been kept constantly on edge. Even an innocent gathering round some street hawker with a dancing doll would draw a clatter of hoofs as mounted constabulary dashed along the street terrifying all and sundry. Men with fixed bayonets stood ready to transfix anybody entering the public offices who failed in an immediate response to rapped-out challenges. Even Ministers did not escape such indignities from some raw recruit invested with a brief authority, and found wisdom lay in philosophic compliance on the steps of their own offices.. So elaborate and thorough have the precautions been that it is said that, far from more outbreaks of lawlessness, Melbourne has never been so immune from crime. With constables and bands of constables—their armlets and batons of the special force always in evidence —cropping up at every twist and turn the underworld had apparently realised tho discretion of lying very low. Meanwhile, with many police witnesses on strike, many cases that were' pending before the Courts have had to be indefinitely postponed, and a curious situation thereby arises. STRIKERS NOT TO BE REENGAGED. The Ministry adheres to its determination not to re-engage any of the men. It regards them as mutineers who have, by breaking their oaths, shown themselves unfit for the trust which it is necessary to repose in the Police Force, and it has now entered upon tho task of reconstituting the Force with the embarrassment of material at its disposal. Though many of the specials are men who merely joined in order to support authority in the emergency in the dark days following the riot there were men on duty who had volunteered in tha heat of the Saturday night and had not even had a chance of changing out of their dress-suits—there are more than enough ready to join the permanent Force to enable it to be entirely reconstructed. The Cabinet is now considering the reduction of the needlessly large Force and the Creation of a semi-permanent body which can later be incorporated into the Force proper if it is found desirable when the whole question of Melbourne's police protection has been investigated.