FRENCH WORKERS CELEBRATE

Southland Times, Issue 22917, 16 June 1936, Page 7

FRENCH WORKERS CELEBRATE

l , Communists Hold t Demonstration f NEW FLAG FOR “SOVIET FRANCE” (United Press Assn. —Telegraph Copyright.) London, June 14. The Paris,correspondent of The DailyMail says that, marking the termination of the majority of the strikes, hundreds of thousands of employees who are resuming work to-morrow marched in orderly files from their workshops. Bodies of men afterwards returned to many of the factories and spent hours in removing the revolutionary mural drawings and notices. .The Paris correspondent of The Manchester Guardian says that while racegoers representing half Paris went to Chantilly to see the French Derby the • other half spent the afternoon in a vic1 tory festival organized by the Com2 munist Party al the Velodrome Buffalo, 1 a vast open-air stadium in the work2 ing-class suburb of Montrouge. 2 Everything was well organized, with flags and banners on a colossal scale, r A hundred' thousand crowded the 1 grandstands and 100,000 stood in the 1 sunny arena, which was bisected by a raised gangway leading to the speak- ■ ers’ forum. Tricolours alternated with 1 red flags and banners inscribed: “Free, " strong, happy France,” floated at each 2 end of the stadium. Everyone wore t red emblems, and a huge picture of 1 the late M. Henri Barbusse (the Com- - munist journalist) adorned the speakers’ platform. i A band played revolutionary tunes, t while squads of victorious strikers ■ bearing banners and displaying hammer and sickle badges paraded the gangway. As the crowds cheered for the Soviets suddenly four great flags were broken from the flag-poles in the middle of the arena. These were examples of the newly-devised national flag of “Soviet France”—a red field quartered with the tricolour and the Communist hammer and sickle, between the golden letters “R.F.” on the fly. The correspondent says that there was a-strange vision of new France in the making when the names of 22 victims of Fascism, killed in street fights in the past two years, were read out. A drum tapped a requiem after each name, the band finally playing a Rus- . sian funeral march. Speakers delivered addresses triumphantly recording the result of the . strikes and prophesying a more prosperous future for the workers. I GENERAL STRIKE IN ; ■ BELGIUM I COAL-OWNERS REJECT CLAIMS. i (United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright.) Brussels, June 14. After a fruitless conference, at which the coal-owners rejected the miners’ demand for an increase of 10 per cent, in pay, the miners announced that a i general strike would begin on June 15. > The tug hands have joined the i dockers who are on strike at Antwerp, I and refuse to assist cargo vessels to leave port.