TROUBLE IN SOLOMONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26792, 8 June 1948, Page 4

TROUBLE IN SOLOMONS

COMMUNIST INFLUENCE BLAMED WAR-TIME PENETRATION p.A. GISBORNE, June 7. The infiltration of Communist doctrines into the Solomons during the war years was attributed by Mr T Stuart Mill, a member of the Sputh Seas Evangelical Mission, to the recent troubles with natives in the Islands. Propaganda was introduced by European. Communists and American negroes who visited the Islands during the war, resulting in a determined stand for bigger wages by plantation workers, who demanded a higher wage than before the war, regardless of the economic aspects of the copra trade. The “ Marching Rule ” Association, which governed the workers, had created its own spy system and courts to deal with offenders against the embargo created by Marching Rule. These courts had led to Government detention of the leaders and the showing of the flag by naval flotillas. As a result of the drop in production, Australian shippers had ceased regular shipments, and the Islands were quickly short of European foods. Conditions, however, were now improving with the weakening of Marching Rule authority, of which a tribe at the northern tip of Malaita was the mainstay in recent months, but its influence seemed to be waning, and it was only a matter of time before conditions would return to normal. Marching Rule influence could not have become important if the natives had not been without regular sources of information and guidance in the war years.