PITCHED BATTLE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 127, 25 November 1938, Page 10

PITCHED BATTLE

MINERS V. GUARDS

THE FRENCH STRIKES

80,000 MEN IDLE

i (B.v Telegrui-li—Press Association —Copyright.) (Received INovember 25, 2 p.m.) PARIS, November 24, Strikers throughout France now number 80,000. The resistance to [decrees is steadily stiffening, despite ■ protests by the employers to the Premier, M. Daladier. In the Valenciennes district 25,000 miners have been called out in order to demonstrate their solidarity with the metal workers. Eight thousand miners held up 2000 mobile guards en route to evacuate men from the surface works at Denain. The strikers seized a coal train, drove it to a level crossing, and dumped the coal from twenty trucks on the railway line. They fortified the mount thus created with boards and beams, and 200 men, armed with spades, bars, and sticks, surmounted it and defied the guards, while thousands of others, reinforced by a crowd of the inhabitants of Denain, massed behind them. The sub-prefect failed to persuade the strikers to withdraw, and ordered the guards to charge. A pitched battle ensued, and the guards were defeated. The strikers counter-attacked. They threatened to overturn a lorry filled with guards. The latter dismounted and fought their way through the strikers. wtih the butts of their rifles.

The strikers seized Press cameras in order to prevent the employment of photographs as evidence against them.

Baffled, the authorities summoned reinforcements from Lille. Eventually an agreement was reached by which the guards retired amid jeers. The strikers afterwards removed their barrier.

The mining and metal industries of Northern France are at a standstill.

Ten thousand guards and police were in conflict with strikers in the course of the evacuation of the Renault works. They arrested 212 of the strikers. Twelve guards were injured, and a policeman's skull was fractured and his eye gouged out.

The Paris correspondents of the "Daily Mail" and the "Daily Herald" estimate that the strikers number 100,000.