8000 Striking Miners Condemned By Leaders

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 September 1947, Page 8

8000 Striking Miners Condemned By Leaders

(Recd. 9.50 a.m.) ’ LONDON, September 1. It 18 Wm&d that .8000, miners are still ,?3h strike m Soiith Vo&Wl.pk tfespitb WrMfe; of the Grimethorpe, Ferrymbre jand Thorne pits are still out. The Jrickley and Mchell main employing 4000 men, hav? partly Omed. Seventeen .thousand miners at the remaining 11 pits have ill returned to work.

The Grimethorpe colliery mmqrs, voted against . returning .to.jvprk.. About 6000 attended the meeting, but only. 454 voted, 13p favouring, r.e-l suhiptioh , ( .and ~594^.. /.opposing it.j Twentyr.ohe papers, were kppjlt. , ( One-third o’f the miners, dpe; on the; .a#eynbbh.-shift a’llh§ .colliery decided, after, a pi’thead raeet■irig,:against returning;towvprk. Four hundred of the .500 afteriioon,. shift miners, at Prick'ley - and, also 120, ;ip.enat the nearby South Kirkby colliery' refused to work. L , T Later, work at the Dearne Valley colliery was .stopped again when the afternoon shift of 250 men,assembled at the pithead and refused, to go down. 'Ohly ..half of the. afternoon shift was working at Mitchell Main.

No Justification. ; .._ ; There was no justiflcatidn. 'for the; present stoppages on the. coalfields,, said Mr Andrew-Naismith, •of .the Weavers’ Union, opening the T.LI.Cx debate, bn the general council’s declaration bn “Miners and the Nation.” - n . The mine workers’ secretary, Mr Horner, second ing : . the , adoption of the declaration, said that -workers were needed in the mines from all sections of the community for the task of resuscitation. “We heed help,” he declared. - Mr Horne added, that the Mine Workers’ Union did not depart in the smallest degree from the demand for full implementation of the miners’

charter. . The solution .of the crisis was hot solely ,the affair of the mihers.br their .union. - ; . . .■ The T.U.C. .without dissent adopted the declafatibri. . Wlnie .approving the . steps Ukeh v to ; improve mining, cohditidhs.-./it says. the,-, Ration ...cannot, , ( wait;Tor -the. .full .'benefits .from- : ha-. tibhalisat'idn. ?tb ‘100X6886--production, ahd ; >it urges -the Coal Board mid the Tn'fners to secure ah Immediate expahsidh .h'f output. - . ■ •„... ; Mr Horner, discussing -strikes,- said: “The Natibhal Union pi. Mine Workers does-riot seek to excuse these..incidents, but we must fry to understand the cause, for we must take it for 'granted that, mihe-wdrkers in ’general.,are absolutely loyal to-the Gbverhmeh’t arid the Labour movement.” Clerical Union Move Offered The T.U.C. council, m a special' report ,to the Congress, supported the National Union -.of -Mine-workers in the dispute with the Clerical Administrative Workers’ Union. Congress by 6,359,000 votes to 923,000 rejected the clerical workers’ motion to refer back the report. The clerical workers’ delegate said the dispute was a case of a. big union trying to push out of existence a smaller organisation. The Mine-workers’ Union secre- ' tary, Mr Arthur Florner, said the union was hot intimidated by the clerical wprkesr’ threat to strike.