AUSTRALIAN MINERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 November 1945, Page 4

AUSTRALIAN MINERS

‘BETTER UNDERSTANDING’ PLEA SYDNEY, November 1. “Propaganda against the miner has been so vicious that it is not safe for a man to acknowledge he is a member of the Miners’ Federation in any Sydney hotel where the rougher type drink,” said Mr. F. Riley, of Kandos, at a western union conference at Bathurst yesterday. Mr. Riley, who said he had worked in mines for 30 years, was pleading for “a better public understanding of the miner.” “We must campaign with that objective in view,” he added, “and we must also try to educate ourselves better than we do at present. The miner’s outlook now is limited at times. When we go to the pub we talk about work, and when we go to work we talk about the pub.” Mr. Riley said that many people looked upon the miners as “the scum of the world.” “That is not nice,” he added, “and I, for one, do not like it It is all right for Mr. McNally and Mr. Gregory Forster to say and have things printed about us. That is their job and they are paid to do it But we don’t want other people believing that about us. We are not the ‘scum of the world,’ and some of this country’s finest and brainiest men have come from the ranks of the miners.”