THE FRENCH STRIKE

Wairarapa Age, 14 February 1934, Page 5

THE FRENCH STRIKE

Rioting In Some Parts Of Country LITTLE DISORDER IN PARIS. PEACEFUL DEMONSTRATION AT VINCENNES. TRAM'S & BUSES ATTACKED. PARIS', February 12. Though there were four hundred arrests and a certain amount of rioting a feature of the day-long demonstrations in Franco was the peaceful and orderly conduct of the Communists and Socialists, many of whom were accompanied by their wives and children. At the big meeting at Vincennes the Government withdrew all the police and allowed the Socialists’ guards wearing berets and dark uniforms to manage the entire demonstration. Elsewhere the authorities patrolled the main thoroughfares, using motorlorries, each carrying twenty-five steelhelmeted police. A Gilbertian situation developed in the schools as the pupils were at their desks, but the teachers refused to give lessons, though they attended to keep order. Stink bombs were thrown in the Bourse, but trading was uninterrupted. A number of municipal dustcarts were overturned. The attempt to run a skeleton transport service was abandoned after the Communists had burned two tramears and overturned several Parisian buses, but the railway workers at the last minute refused to obey the union’s call for the stoppage of a minute |very hour, pointing out the groat danger of accidents. VIOLENCE AT MARSEILLES. SHOPS AND CAFES LOOTED. POLICE REGAIN CONTROL IN TWO HOURS'. (Received Tuesday, 7 p.m.) LONDON, February 13. The worst French rioting yesterday appears to have been at Marseilles, where sixty thousand strikers demonstrated tn the streets. By eight o’clock, infuriated crowds were storming and looting cafes and shops, assaulting shopkeepers and burning furniture, but the police regained control by 10 p.m . A motor car containing a machinegun drove at midnight at full speed from Marseilles to Cannebierre, firing as it went, killing two policemen and wounding one before disappearing in the darkness at the docks. Strikers fired a mill at Boubaix, where non-unionists were working and fought non-unionists at Dunkirk until the police intervened. Other strikers Vralysed activities at Calais and Boulogne and demonstrators vainly attempted to release the prisoners in Mulhouse G'aol. Ninety per cent, of the workers struck at Lille, Tourcoing, Valenciennes, Maubeuge, Arras and Douai. The most critical time in Paris was when a procession of forty thousand Socialists, undq,r the leadership of M. Blum, marched to the Place de la Nation. A man climbed the statue of the Republic, in the centre of the Place and unfurled a Red Flag at the hop. A youth tested a pistol by firing it into the ground. The crowd swirled uncertainly, held its breath as armed guards prepared for action and then breathed, a sigh of relief as tension relaxed and it was seen that only a few speeches would be loosed off, after which all returned, to their starting point and dispersed. The strike ended at midnight in complete calm.