Miners In Northern France Stand Fin

Northern Advocate, 29 October 1948, Page 5

Miners In Northern France Stand Fin

PARIS, Thu. (11.30 a.m.)—While striking miners in Lorraine are returning to work, strikers on the northern coalfields are standing firm. On the northern fields troops today moved against 42 pits which the strikers have blockaded.

The troops have tanks and armoured cars.

A National Coal Board spokesman said this was likely to be the most difficult operation of the campaign but up to this afternoon there had been no l'eports of serious opposition. Security forces prevented striking miners from picketing the Alsatian itash mines where the majority of workers turned up at their jobs. Troops and police began to move to occupy the Ricard shaft of the Grandcombe group of pits near Alais, which the local strike committee described as a “symbol of resistance.” MANY PITS DAMAGED A Ministry of the Interior spokesman said many pits in the Lens area are seriously damaged where props have collapsed, and several falls have taken place. The spokesman, revealing that the police seized 70 hand grenades in “mopping up” south of Arles, in southeast France, declared that 285 persons are in prison and 86 on provisional liberty awaiting trial for offences against public order. French soldiers at La Rochelle began unloading American coal after the dockers struck in sympathy with the miners.

Dockers at ’ Bordeaux, Calais, Dunkirk, Dieppe, Le Havre, Rouen, Nantes and St Nazaire, also refused to unload coal arriving from abroad.

However, dockers at Paulillac, north of Bordeaux unloaded two Italian coal shipments. OTHER HOLD UPS

One thousand metalworkers went on strike at Denain in the Nord department of Northern France.

Trains from Paris, Marseilles and Bordeaux were stopped at Nimes where railwaymen took part in a 24hour strike in the Gard department.