MR WALSH REPLIES TO MR BARNES: WATERSIDE ISSUE

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 February 1950, Page 3

MR WALSH REPLIES TO MR BARNES: WATERSIDE ISSUE

WELLINGTON, Feb. 15 (P.A.).— A reply to a statement by Mr H. Barnes, president of the New Zealand Waterside Workers’ Union, on the conduct of last evening’s meeting of the Wellington Trades Council, was made today by the chairman of the meeting (Mr F- P. Walsh). He said Mr Barnes’s statement was typical of a number of recent distortions and was completely at variance with the facts. '

Mr Walsh said Mr Barnes was attending his first meeting of the trades council as a proxy delegate from the Wellington Waterside Union, and the chairman would have been within his rights in refusing him admission to the meeting. Mr Barnes was allowed to speak, but endeavoured to dictate the terms under which he should be permitted to,

“As chairman, I explained to him the rules of debate,” said Mr Walsh. ‘Mr Barnes accepted this position and began to speak in defence of the ’attitude of his watersiders’ executive in connection with their letter to the federation executive and their affiliation with the maritime section of he Communist World Federation of Trade Unions. He made reference to compulsory unionism and derided the delegates present at the meeting as ‘hot-house’ unionists. “Delegates took very strong exception to this attack and to the language in which it was couched.. I was therefore obliged to explain to Mr Barnes that the meeting was not a watersiders’ conference but a regular meeting of the Wellington Trades Council, whose business has always been conducted in an orderly manner. Each delegate had the right to express his views provided his language was in reasonable terms. “This incident should give trade unionists a further instance of, the methods adopted by the present lead-

ers of the Watersiders’ Union,” said Mr Walsh. “It is for their failure to co-operate and to work in unity with their mates that these leaders have brought expulsion upon their union.,”