SENSATIONAL CLASHES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LI, Issue 170, 20 June 1931, Page 9

SENSATIONAL CLASHES

WILD TIME IN SYDNEY. > POLICE USE REVOLVERS. METROPOLITAN FORCE DOUBLED. (United Press Association.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) SYDNEY, June 19. Another sensational clash between anti-evictionists and the police took place at noon to-day in the suburb of Newtown. The police on this occasion made greater use of their revolvers, and fired fifteen shots before raiding a semi-detached two-storeyed house. .Fourteen anti-evictionists and eight police were injured, and a spectator—a man of about 40 years of agedropped dead with excitement while watching the battle. Leading Communists were again associated with the affair. Many of their members addressed the crowd before the police raid and urged the workers to fall in behind them and fight the police. The police, regarded the challenge as an open defiance of . the law, and with surpj-ieing suddenness they arrived in a motor-bus. Their arrival was heralded by shouts ajid volleys of stones. Men on an upstairs balcony maintained a fusillade of stones, whereupon an inspector of police commanded his men to draw their revolvers and fire. Immediately there was a succession of shouts, and the balcony defenders disappeared inside. The police battered down the doors and were met by a shower of stones and half-bricks. The wonder is that they escaped with their lives. The battle inside raged for twenty minutes, everything breakable being reduced to ruins. Huge stones came hurtling downstairs and missed policemen by inches. A thin cordon of police kept order outside the house, but were constantly ducking to avoid flying stones. The hoots of onlookers were never allowed to subside.*

Eventually the police emerged with a number of bedraggled and bloodstained defenders, handcuffed together, who were marched to a waiting police wagon. They received medical treatment at the gaol hospital before being loosed up and charged. The injured police were treated at the police hospital. The police must have dealt severely with tne anti-evictionists, as four are suffering from' concussion and extensive cuts, probably caused by batons.

Bullets shattered the woodwork of the balcony,'and one man was shot in the arm. Eighteen arrests were made. The police wounds were mostly superficial. One constable has a fractured hand.

Mr J. Lamaro, Attorney-General, has announced tlrnt the Government is introducing legislation ix> protect tenants against eviction in certain instances. It is hoped that this will minimise the evicition disturbances.

DAY OF UNEXAMPLED VIOLENCE. NUMBER IN HOSPITAL. Received June 20, 9.40 a.m. SYDNEY, June 2Q, Yesterday will be remembered in Sydney as a day of unexampled violence. Following the riot at Newtown, there was a wild demonstration in Railway Square, where shop windows were broken. Even the Labour Daily newspaper office suffered. Altogether 22 arrests were made. Six others are in hospital. For the first time since the razor war of 1927-28 the police in the metropolitan area have been doubled.