FRENCH RAIL STRIKES MAY SOON COLLAPSE

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 October 1948, Page 5

FRENCH RAIL STRIKES MAY SOON COLLAPSE

(Rec. 11.30 a.m.) LONDON, October 12.

The French railway strikes, organised by the Communist Party, seem to be collapsing, says the British United Press Paris correspondent. 4 The railwaymen on strike in Alsace and parts of Lorraine voted to return to work unconditionally. They have already gone back in Colmar and Mulhouse, and the strike at Strasbourg is due to end at midnight. The interruption to traffic today is generally much less serious than yesterday. Reports from Lorraine, where the General Confederation of Labour Called a 48-hour general strike of the iron miners and coke and metal workers, indicated that it was only partly successful. Nearly seven in every ten workers at the coke plants and blast furnaces in the Thionville region “docked in.”

Russia Gave Order

The French Minister of the Interior (M. Moch.) told French Socialists that orders to the leaders of the Com-munist-led General Confederation of Labour (the French T.U.C.) to start the French miners, strike, now in its second week, were given in a note from General Andrei Zdhanov, Mr Stalin’s right-hand man, just before he died suddenly last August. M. Moch said that a few days later the French Communist Party and the Confederation of Labour replied that everything was set for the end of September. The Minister added that the Government had moved enough troops and Mobile Guards into the northern coalfields to avoid provocations and incidents.

Call for Action “Two Paris newspapers yesterday called on the Government to act against the Communists,” says Reuter’s Paris correspondent. “The Right - Wing newspaper JL’Epoque,’ commenting on an allegation by the Minister of the Interior (Mr Jules Moch) that the Comminform had instructed the Communist Party to sabotage Marshall aid, said: ‘As the Government knows that the Communist Party is acting on our territory on orders received from outside the Government’s strict duty is to dissolve the Communist Party.’ The Right-wing Radical newspaper ‘L’Aurore’ asked the Prime Minister (Dr Queuille) why he delayed, in taking action against the Communists after Mr Moch’s revelations. ‘Are you waiting for Thorez to come to power and for Republicans to march by rows .towards Siberian camps?it asked.