MINING DISPUTE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22708, 22 October 1935, Page 9

MINING DISPUTE

STRIKE FIZZLING OUT MEN RETURN TO SURFACE (United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) LONDON, October 20. The Nine-Mile Point strikers looked haggard and worn and stumbled about and needed support to reach the waiting motor cars and ambulances. “We mainly lived in the stables, from which the ponies had been sent up,” said a miner. “We slept on boards, played quoits, and held concerts and services. We were never short of food, but got tired and stiff.” The owners promised no victimisation and negotiation on other points. The sympathetic strikers are gradually returning to work. THE PROPOSED BALLOT (British Official Wireless) RUGBY, October 19. (Received Oct. 21, at 5.5 p.m.) The situation arising from the failure of the approach of the Miners’ Federation to the owners’ organisation last spring for the national wage negotiations, and later developments leading to the decision of the delegate conference yesterday to take a ballot of the coalfields on the question of empowering the national executive to take action on behalf of the claim for a wage increase of two shillings per shift are the subject of leading articles in several newspapers. The point is generally made that the miners do not believe that the claim is obtainable in the present state of industry, but the demand is put forward as the best way of focussing attention on needed reforms.

The movement, says the Manchester Guardian, is due to a deep sense of angry frustration.

“ The position is,” says The Times, “ tliat the Government would welcome national negotiations, and the Secretary of Mines has been and is willing to arrange a meeting but cannot do so when the colliery owners would decline to attend because they have no intention of entering into negotiations or making any national agreement.” The Manchester Guardian thinks the owners will “act foolishly if they persist in flouting the Government and public opinion, first, on the question of national conciliation machinery for dealing with labour disputes, and secondly, on improvement of the machinery which Parliament set up in their inteersts for the control of output and sales.” The Financial News writes: “In refusing to meet the federation at _ a national conference the Mining Association did not feel it was necessary. It states its reasons > for objecting to a national wages . agreement. The tactics of the owners are their own affairs, and they probably feel there is nothing to gain by repeating arguments which have been heard many times already. It may, however, be questioned if they have been entirely well advised.” The Times agrees that the colliery owners are certainly not making the best use of the facilities which Parliament has given them to put the industry in order, but warns the miners against the danger of inviting a repetition of the disaster which overtook them in 1926, carrying suffering into every miner’s home. If their leaders follow that sorry example “and demand that the Government shall fight their battle by compelling the owners to make a certain agreement they will give the threatened strike the tainted character of a political weapon.” The Financial News underlines the fact that the powers sought by the executive in the coming ballot are for use in case of need, and there is no reason to assume that they will necessarily bo used.