Indian Reds Foment “Blockade” Of British Staff Of Mills

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22889, 8 March 1949, Page 5

Indian Reds Foment “Blockade” Of British Staff Of Mills

LONDON, Mar. 6.

The latest Communist ruse In Bengal is to persuade jute workers to surround the British workers and managers in their offices. They then make impossible demands and prevent the Britons from leaving until the police arrive. V

The Daily Telegraph's correspondent in Calcutta, who reports tlvs, adds that there is no violence in meftt cases, but sometimes bricks have bfeen thrown and there was one case of attempted stabbing.

Mills managed by Indians have not been given this treatment. The instigators’ motives are certainly more political than racial. They hope to spread disorder by attacking the authority of the British managerial class.

Despite the workers' general temper, the authorities hope the Communists’ ambitious plan to organise a mass labour rising on Wednesday, heralded by a nation-wide railway and postal strike, will be a fiasco.

The central Government is attempting to control the situation without giving too much scope for hostile propaganda. For this reason It abandoned a bill for making strikes in essential services illegal, but it retains the existing right of arbitrary arrest. The police are taking all possible prei cautions and Gurkha troops are standing by in the industrial areas.