MINING STRIKE

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 26 August 1926, Page 5

MINING STRIKE

MYSTERIOUS MEETING.

INTIMATION OF WORKERS DISTURBANCES AT MANSFIELD. BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—OOPS AIGHT LONDON, Aug. 25. Officials of the Miners’ Federation, including Messrs Herbert Smith (president) and A. .7. Cook (secretary), have returned to London for the meeting lo which Mr Cook referred mysteriously during his Midlands’ campaign. The Daily Herald states that there are certain developments, but their nature has not, been disclosed.

The Morning Post admits that Mr Cook -won at Mansfield, and attributes this to mass intimidation, wliic.h the Government should find a means of preventing.. There was a serious clash between the police and the strikers at the Clip stone colliery near Mansfield. A crowd, armed with sticks, gathered on the road along which the miners who are working pass. A body of police demanded the sticks and a scuffle ensued, in which several miners were wounded bv batons.

In another place in the same district, two policemen assisting a man through a hostile crowd were knocked down and beaten. Three miners were arrested near Chesterfield, where a motor ’bus containing police was stoned. Hundreds of policemen are patrolling (he road leading to the. Mansfield pits, which are deserted by almost all the miners who worked) at- the week-end. The miners’ officials in Midlothian deny that there has been any breakuwav in that district.