JOCKEYS' STRIKE ECHO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17843, 26 July 1921, Page 7

JOCKEYS' STRIKE ECHO.

DISMISSAL OF APPEAL.

DELAY TO THE MOKOIA.

FIREMEN'S CONVICTION UPHELD.

Judgment has been delivered by Mr. Justice Frazer on the appeal of W. Tighe, against his being convicted and fined £5 for participating in the strike of the firemen of the Mokoia at Lyttelton on July 12, 1920, the object of which was to prevent Sir George Clifford from travelling by the vessel. The incident occurred at the time of the jockeys' strike. The appellant contended that in law no discontinuance of employment or breach of contract of service occurred.

The Arbitration Court's judgment says it was an appeal on a point of law from a determination of the Magistrate's Court, Auckland. "The disobedience of an order by the 8 to 12 watch arose out of an improper and unjustifiable demand that Sir George Clifford should not be carried as a passenger," states the judgment, "and wo cannot see any distinction ini law between a case cited and the case now before us. The magistrate has found that the breach in the present case was due to concerted action for one of the purposes set out in section 3 of the Amendment Act of 1908, and his finding brings the br within the definition of a strike. "The present appeal is in the nature of a test case, inasmuch as the magistrate delivered a written decision covering all the cases, but. gave final judgment in respect of the present appellant only, and reserved the matter of penalty in the case of the remaining 22 defendants. The Court was asked by both parties to consider the magistrate's judgment in so far as it affected the other defendants, most of whom were members of watches other than the watch in question. The question as to whether a breach of contract amounting to a strike had been committed by those defendants was to be decided bv reference to the facts as found in the Magistrate's Court, It is not necessary that all watches should in turn disobey specific orders. The action of the men as a body in refusing to take the ship to sea so long as Sir George Clifford remained ou board was inconsistent with the terms of their contract of service under which they were bound to obey all lawful orders. It was contended for the appellant that their action could, at most, be regarded only as a threat to strike, and not as an actual strike. The inaster, however accepted the threat as definite, and' the magistrate considered that in the circumstances he was justified in so accepting it VV hen it is borne in mind that the vessel was due to sail almost immediately, and was in fact delayed for nearly an hour such a threat may properly be regarded as a threat of action so imminent of performance that in itself it constituted a strike.

In such circumstances, with the magistrate s finding that the men acted in concert, it is impossible to distinguish between the men who disobeyed a specific order and the men to whom no specifio order had been given. They were alike implicated m the strike, and the question as to whether any individual defendant was neither a party to the strike, nor aiding abetting, or assisting therein, was one of fact for the magistrate. The second engineer s evidence contained a statement that the men went to him in a body and said they would not sail with Sir George Clifford on board the ship. This wis evidence that the magistrate was entitled to act upon, and disposes of the subsidiary ground of appeal that there was no evidence be-ore the Court upon which the magistrate could have decided that the appellant was a party to a strike. The appeal is accordingly dismissed."