ANGRY SCENES IN TALKIE STRIKE

Evening Star, Issue 20688, 10 January 1931, Page 18

ANGRY SCENES IN TALKIE STRIKE

CROWDS THREATEN PICKETS Cinema crowds demonstrated angrily outside a number of Liverpool cinemas when operators, acting under ■sealed orders from the Electrical Trades Union, started the great talkie strike. The managements, taken by surprise, wore unable to make use of their corps of emergency operators, and at eleven of tho twelve houses selected under the plans of the union doors failed to open to tho public. Hundreds of people who waited outside the Fazackerley cinema in tho heavy rain created a scene when, drenched to tho skin, they found that the operators had been withdrawn, and the management was going to close tho cinema. Police bad to bo called to persuade the crowd to disperse. Men in the crowd who claimed to be unemployed operators offered tbeir services. This caused further trouble when it came to the knowledge of tho pickets, and to prevent pandemonium tho cinema management decided to make tho best of a bad job by not opening the doors. In the Edge. Hill district pickets who attempted to stop tho cinema fans from entering were roughly handled, and the crowd called on tho management to bring police to remove the pickets. The strike caused a wild rush to bo made on another cinema at Toxtetli, where tho management were unable to control tho crowds that demanded admission. Attendants were rushed off their feet, and when the police arrived hundreds of people, brandishing umbrellas, surged round tho -booking office. At a cinema in West Derby the management refunded the admission money. The operators at one cinema addressed the audience, stating that they had no grievance against the management of their own cinema, hut were compelled to act on tho instructions of their union. A largo crowd outside a cinema in Anfiohl, and traffic was held up until the police were called. Tho strike was called to enforce tho demands of tho operators for higher pay and shorter hours in view of Hie heavv strain which they claim is imposed on them by the introduction of talkie apparatus.