SABOTAGE SUSPECTS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 52, Issue 3756, 15 May 1936, Page 11

SABOTAGE SUSPECTS

DISCHARGED FROM DOCKYARD. ALL FIRMS WARNED AGAINST ONE. London, March 24.. Secret service officers, working in conjunction with Plymouth detectives and the Royal Marine police, have now compiled a list of persons suspected of complicity in the recent cases of sabotage in British warships at Devonport (says the Plymouth correspondent of the Daily Telegraph.). Four men have been discharged from the dockyard. No reason was given them. All firms carrying out Government contracts have been warned not to employ one of these men, who js described as a skilled craftsman. Trader union officials took up the case of this man and asked for an official inquiry. Following information from the Admiralty, however, they dropped the matter. I understand that they were told that the man had been associated with several incidents in various parts of the country. It is stated that he was involved in a strike at an aircraft factory where he was employed, and that he had been connected with several industrial disputes. No Shielding by Unions. Indignation was expressed by trade union officials here at a suggestion that some men connected with the acts of sabotage were being shielded by their organisations. “We deplore these incidents as much as all right-thinking citizens,” said Mr. T. Barbell, secretary of the Admiralty Joint Industrial Council, and a prominent trade union official. H.M.S. Griffin, which, as was reported in the Daily Telegraph this morning, is the latest victim of suspected sabotage, left here to-day to serve in the 20th Destroyer Flotilla. The authorities are satisfied that the outrage—believed to be the placing of brass bolts in induction machinery —was not perpetrated during the fortnight the destroyer has spent at Devonport.

There have been seven cases of suspected sabotage to vessels undergoing refit in the last few months.