MINORITY VOTED FOR STRIKE

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVIII, Issue 23375, 5 December 1945, Page 5

MINORITY VOTED FOR STRIKE

z Most Miners Ignored Poll Rebuff To Leaders N.Z.P A.—Special Correspondent (7.30 p.m.) SYDNEY, Dec. 4. The effect of tjie vote at yesterday’s aggregate meetings on the coalfields is that 15 per cent of the miners are holding the community to ransom. Only 4722 miners out of 18,000 voted at yesterday’s meetings. Of these, 2717 voted for the strike and 2005 against. It is believed that the great bulk of the miners deliberately stayed away from the meetings because they were against the strike. The industrial correspondent of the “Sydney Morning Herald” says: “The miners’ vote represents the most emphatic rebuff ever given by the rank and file of the Miners' Federation to their leader, and especially to the Communists amongst their leaders. Never before in more than 100 years of coal unrest in New South Wales has the miners’ leadership had to begin a general strike in the knowledge that less than 20 per cent of the membership is actively favouring a strike.

"Yesterday’s meetings were the smallest in strike history. Voting was by open ballot and the fact that less than one-third of the miners attended the meetings places emphasis on the need for a secret ballot, when such a decision is being made.” Commenting on the voting figures, the Commonwealth Coal Commissioner (Mr N. Mighell) said the result was an example of how the minority got its way when the majority was apathetic. “It is a dreadful state of affairs that in the absence of a secret ballot any matter can be decided by about one-third of the members of an organisation. If there had been a secret ballot and all those entitled to vote had voted, those against the strike would have swamped the poll.” Dispute May Spread While hopes of a settlement of the strike are placed on Mr J. B. Chifley’s meeting with the union leaders in Canberra to-morrow, the position will be aggravated if mass meetings of miners in other States have decided to extend the dispute. The Miners’ Federation has been empowered to extend the strike to all mines in Australia and a vote will be taken in Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia to-morrow. Commenting on the decision of the unions to invoke the assistance of the Prime Minister, the president of the Miners’ Federation (Mr H. Wells) said: “It is very good that steps are t>eing taken by the Australasian Council of Trade Unions and the Trades and Labour Council and the unions involved to begin negotiations with the Prime Minister that can lead to a speedy and satisfactory end to the dispute.” It is beljpved ip political quarters that Mr Chifley will not be able to tell to-morrow's delegation anything involving any alteration in the Government’s policy of non-in ten vention. Government supporters point out that Mr Chifley could do so only by surrendering the authority of the Government to that of mob rule. They also sav that to yield now would be to involve the Australian Labour Party and sections of the A.C.T.U. which have been fighting for a settlement of the dispute bv constitutional methods, in defeat at the hands of Communist union leaders.

The “Sydney Morning Herald,” in a leading article, says: “A showdown has come. Mingled with public alarm and anger at the prospect of widespread unemployment, distress and impoverishment resulting from the extremists' challenge must be a conviction that the struggle now joined was inescapable and that it must be fought to a finish. That the Communists and their henchmen will be defeated is a foregone conclusion unless the Government provides them with a way out.”