WATERFRONT CLASH.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 142, 18 May 1936, Page 7

WATERFRONT CLASH.

TROUBLE AT NEW YORK. NEW YORK, May 16. Sporadic labour trouble along the New York waterfront reached a climax to-day when 2000 maritime union pickets and sympathisers engaged in a clash with the police, which lasted an hour. Twenty-five pickets were injured, some seriously, and two policemen were injured, while 55 strikers were arrested. For some time the left wing of the union, which is said to be affiliated with Air T. Bridges’ organisation, has been striking against several steamship lilies operating between the east and west coasts. To-day a picket line was formed in anticipation of the sailing of the liner Virginia for San Francisco. According to the police, the pickets ignored a warning not to cross the police lines, and when they did the battle started. Mounted police repeatedly charged the pickets, swinging their batons freely. At least five women pickets are among the injured. . . . Despite the disorder, the A 7 irginja sailed according to schedule, although tbe strikers claimed that she was undermanned and made a specific assertion that two of the engine-room crew were one-armed men. The strike originated following the recent California incident, when Aliss F. Perkins (Secretary for Labour) resisted the intention of Air D. C. Roper (Secretary of Commerce) to charge a group of strikers on a ship with mutiny, although Air Roper’s charges were not pressed.