KEEN COMMUNIST BID

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 63, 10 February 1930, Page 7

KEEN COMMUNIST BID

SUPREMACY OF MINEFIELDS. N.S.W. CRISIS. DOMINION MINERS’ OFFER. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) SYDNEx, Feb. 9. It is reported that Communist emissaries are making final desperate efforts to secure the supremacy of the coal mine fields and control of the big aggregate meeting which will be held on Tuesday. The moderates, however, are said to be concerting opposition to the Reds, whose promise of financial aid to the miners, if they showed fight, has not been fulfilled. Fines aggregating between £SOO and £6OO have been imposed on the miners as a result of the recent disturbances, but not a penny of Red money has thus far been forthcoming. The Miners’ Federation will not pay because it did not countenance mass demonstrations. The only hope of the convicted men — they number about one hundred — escaping goal is that the Communists will honour their promise to pay, but a feeling prevails that they will repudiate' it. If the Extremists fail to rush the aggregate meeting, their influence is expected to w-ane rapidly. There is a growing body of moderate opinion among the miners in favour of a settlement. A statement was published to the effect that the miners intended officially to advise the Federal Government to-day of their bed-rock terms of compromise, but the secretary of the Miners’ Federation, Mr Davies, denies anv knowledge of the proposal. Mr A. Woods, a delegate from the New Zealand Mine Workers’ Association, states that the Dominion miners will pay a levy of 3J per cent, of their earnings toward the relief of the idle New South Wales miners. MINERS LIFT BAN. Hot weather yesterday made beer “white” in the hotels at Cessnock. The idle miners, who have been declaring all bare “black” for a month past, apparently became colour-blind, and bartenders had an exceedingly busy time when the ban was unofficially raised and the met}, who had been unwilling prohibitionists, set to work to drink up arrears.