Police Use Tear Gas

Northern Advocate, 3 December 1947, Page 5

Police Use Tear Gas

Paris was almost without bread tonight as the result of full or partial strikes in 2000 French flour mills.

Some bakers are rationing consumers to one slice a day. , Postmen, who are rarely seen, are each escorted by four or five gendarmes. Troops are guarding all radio stations.

Increasing tension, with more numerous and more violent clashes between strikers and police is reported from Marseilles.

Groups several hundred strong today forced their way into factories and machine-shops and made nonstrikers to leave their jobs.

Police in the port area used tear gas against strikers attacking the police station.

Strikers from Renault factory, after an unsuccessful attempt to batter a

way through Mobile Guards protecting non-strikers in the Salmson car factory, outside Paris, used a tractor to breach the Salmson factory wall.

Guards and non-striking Salmson workers met them in the breach and repulsed them. Three guards were seriously wounded. A railwayman who refused to strike at St Etienne, Central France, was knifed and taken to hospital seriously wounded. The result was that striking railwaymen returned to work.

The situation in the textile industry, on the average, remained the same with some workers returning to their jobs and others leaving. Only 200 strikers remained out from the giant railroad shops at Tourcoing. Lorraine steel workers returned to their jobs, seriously breaching the solidarity of the national strike in the metal industries.