ADVOCATE OF VIOLENCE.

Colonist, Volume LIV, Issue 13411, 8 May 1912, Page 2

ADVOCATE OF VIOLENCE.

At the criminal sittings of tho Brisbane District Court the other day James Munro was arraigned on a charge that he attempted to procure certain persons to do grevious bodily "harm to nonunionists and special constables, and with having made.use of seditious language i Acting-sergeant O'Sullivan deposed to having attended a meeting on the evening of February 21 in Fortitude Valley, when a speech defendant said, "As organiser for A/W.A. I have been through the North. I tell you unionists you are justified in forcing nonunionists to join your union. When in [ Broken Hill I asked old miners how it | was that everyone there belonged to a union. 'Boy, 1 said an old man, if a man refuses to join, and we exhaust all moral suasion, and he still declines to join, he meets with an accident.' In Sydney I put a similar question to^ a wharf labourer. He said, 'We ask him to join a union. If he persists in declining to join, then something happens to him ; something seems to fall on him, or he gets pushed overboard.' I say if a man will not join the union we are justified in dealing with him as the Broken Hill' miners and the Sydney wharf lumpers do—drop something on him, give him a poke, or push him overboard. If a girl refuses to join the union, put something in her way so that she will fall over .and break her neck. If you happen to be working alongside a man who has been a special constable, don't forget to treat him as the Sydney wharf labourers treated the non-union-

ists."

Munro was found guilty, but the jury brought in a recommendation to mercy, and the sentence imposed was imprisonment with hard labour for six months. His Honour deferred passing sentence pending reference to the Full Court of certain points raised by counsel for the

accused