DISQUIET GROWS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21830, 28 September 1945, Page 3

DISQUIET GROWS

N.S.W. LABOUR UNREST

SYDNEY PRESS CRITICAL

GOVERNMENT INACTION (Special Australian correspondent.) (10 a.m.) SYDNEY. Sept. 23.

Among' all political parties and in all sections of the community growing uneasiness is being aroused by the extent of the current stoppages in New South Wales and by the complete disregard. so often displayed, lor any authority, whether that of the Government, employer or trade union.

As the Sydney Morning Herald says: “The long war has left a legacy of strain and maladjustment in industry, but the apparent helplessness of the Ministers before the prolonged strikes is an outrage on ordered democracy. ‘Direct action" on the coalfields and on the wharves is robbing the country of vital day-to-day necessities in coal and shipping Stoppages on the waterfront have paralysed dozens of ships and cargoes urgently needed by soldiers and civilians. The Government possess full powers of compulsion if it cares to use them, but the Prime Minister, Mr. J. B. Chifley, has stated that he refused to crucify the workers —meaning apparently the strikers. In this, he ignores the fact that those who are being crucified are the rest of the community.” “Who is Crucified?” Mr Chifley has been taken to task by the newspapers for hi s declaration that he would be no party to crucifying the workers The Sydney Sun, in an editorial headed “Who is Crucified?” says: “It looks very much as if hundreds of thousands of workers in New South Wales are being crucified by a few thousands who refuse to carry on essential public services. It may be admitted that the job of intervention which may challenge the whole structure of unionism and cause a struggle for power between industrial unionism and the Government is one upon which any Government would be loth to enter. “Yet the Government is the government of the whole people, and the alternative to such a struggle is nothing less than an abdication of power to industrial pressure groups.” concludes The Sun. Council of Parties Urged A proposal made in the House of Repiesentatives by Sir Earle Page that all parties should meot on a nonpolitical basis to discuss the current industrial unrest is strongly supported by the Sydney press. The Sun says the suggestion of a council of all parties to control an industrial situation that has got out of hand and is fast running to chaos is sound and reasonable. The Daily Telegraph considers that we probably have not seen the worst yet in industrial violence “that Ts bleeding Australia white.” The paper says: “The consequences are so potentially dangerous to our whole future that no prejudice of doctrinal difference should discourage the political leaders, leaders of industry or leaders of trade unions, from exerting every effort to bring about a meeting at which fundamental problems outstanding in industry could be discussed frankly arid with the honest mutual hope of .finding some solution." The Daily Telegraph adds: “Leaving aside tne rights or wrongs of the grievances which urged them into this large-scale industrial disorder, the men must surely see that no economy, however right and resilient, can long stand the pressure of wastage, interruption and discord of such magnitude.”