TRANSPORT STRIKE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIII, Issue 29, 31 May 1912, Page 5

TRANSP ORT STRI K E.

:]iy Electric Telegraph.—Copy right.) (.United Press Association.) London, May 30. The Strike Committee interviewed Air. Buxton and discussed preliminaries for Friday's conference. The men declared their desire for a hill recognition, and also for an investigation of all questions underlying the pre-n----ent unrest and a guarantee by a really representative attendance of employers that agreements in the future would be maintained. Mr. Gosling, addressing twenty thousand men at Tower Hill, said that Sir 10. Clarke had decided that they were not entitled to work with nonunionists, but this they were going to do. Carmen were the worst paid class. They asked for a minimum wage, with machinery for adjusting future dII culties. l'ho Corn Exchange of London lias drawn the Government's attention to the diminishing stocks of grain, and the danger of the diversion of fresh supplies to the Continent. The Maidstone members of the Amalgamated Society of Watermen Lightermen have struck. Yesterday 3237 quarters of beef were conveyed from the docks at Smithficld. .Five vessels, with 100,000 carcases of Australian and New Zealand mutton and lamb, are waiting in tho river. The Baltic Mercantile Shipping Exchange has demanded immediate legislation to deal with the situation, inasmuch as the present methods of protection are entirely inadequate. Mr. Anderson, secretary of the transporters, threatens a national strike unless tho importation of blacklegs ceases. Mr. Orbcll, secretary of the Doctors' Union, states that steps will be taken to prevent the unloading of ships which are diverted to tho Continent. The central council of the International Transport ers' Federation are meeting in Berlin, with a Hew to taking international action. ■ Mr. Potter, of fiirt. Potter and Hughes, in a letter to Mr. Buxton, on behalf of the London shipowners; says that the Dock Labour Committee declines h's invitation, qn the ground that last autumn's agreement: and award have now been set aside arfutile. The shipowners have no confidence and no assurance that any negotiations at present will have any greater reality or be more permanent. Mr. Tillett, interviewed, said that thp shipowners as a body never honestly recognised their contracts. Potter's organisation never attempted U enforce the agreement or hold "hipowners, contractors and wharfingers to honour the agreement:; reached.