RAND MINING RIOTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15407, 16 September 1913, Page 7

RAND MINING RIOTS.

PEACE AT PISTOL'S POINT.

LABOUR DECLARATION.

MINISTERS IN PERIL.

RIGHT OF FREE SPEECH.

By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (Received September 15, 10.55 p.m.) London, September 15. A sensation has been caused on the Rand by a statement from an authoritative source that after the rioting in Johannesburg on July 5 peace was concluded at the point of the revolver. General Smuts emphatically denies this statement.

Mr. Bain (secretary of the Labour Federation) now states that when the settlement was signed the Prime Minister (General Botha), General Smuts, and the delegates went on the balcony of the. Carlton Hotel. Trfe soldiers then had their rifles levelled on the crowd, and, if a shot had been fired by them, General Botha, General Smuts and Colonel Truter (Chief of Police of the Union of South Africa) would not have lived a minute.

Mr. Matthews (secretary of the Miners' Association) states that two members of the Labour Party had covered General Botha and General Smuts with their revolvers, intending to kill them if the troops below fired a single shot.

A great Labour Party demonstration in thr Market Square, Johannesburg, passed a resolution urging that the right of free speech in public assembly should be established at all costs.

The Johannesburg correspondent of the Daily Telegraph says that until the Labour leaders' revelations it was generally believed that General Botha had secured a stoppage of the hostilities by threatening that the Labour leaders would be tried summarily and instantly shot if they continued openly hostile.