TROOPS ASSIST NONCOMMUNIST DOCKERS AT MANY FRENCH PORTS

Wanganui Chronicle, 2 November 1948, Page 5

TROOPS ASSIST NONCOMMUNIST DOCKERS AT MANY FRENCH PORTS

PARIS, Nov. 1 (Recd. 9.15 pm).— Troops assisted non-Communist dockers to unload coal-ships at Dieppe, Cherbourg, Rouen La Pillice and Le Havre. Other troops are on the way for the same job at Bordeaux, Nantes, St. Nazaire, Dunkirk and Boulogne. Twenty-eight of 34 coal-ships in French (ports during the week-end were held up by the dockers’ refusal to handle imported coal. An explosive device placed near the home at Douai of a. mechanic who was requisitioned to work in mines, injured the mechanic’s wife. Strikers pillaged the houses of other requisitioned workers.

Two demonstrations organised by strikers marched on the mines. Police and troops turned them back without violence.

PARIS, Oct. 31.—The French Ministry of Industry has suspended the secretary-general of the Communistled Miners’ Federation, M. Duguet, the secretary of the Federation, M. Celestin Bias, and the secretary-gen-eral of the Railwaymen’s Federation, M. Raymond Tournemaine, from their posts on the French National Coal Board.

The Ministry accused the two miners’ officials of havng appealed to the miners to discontinue the safety services in the mines. M. Tournemairfe had already been suspended from the directorship of the French railways because of his appeal to the railwaymen to stop trains carrying imported coal.

M. Marcel Combe, Mayor of Firminy, the strike trouble centre near St. Etienne, in the Loire coalfield, has been removed from his post by order of the Ministry of the Interior, which stated that M. Combe had had a poster printed ana displayed “containing defamatory imputations against the Government.”

Reliable reports state that the Government is preparing a big-scale purge of Communists in the Civil Service and the armed forces. ECONOMIC CONFERENCE. The British United Press correspondent in Paris sa,ys the Prime Minister, Dr. Queuille, and his chief economic adviers met representatives of the employers and non-ommunist labour unions in a round-table conference aimed at fixing a new balance between prices and wages. A communique issued after the conference said the Government had refused to consider an increase in wages beyond the 15 per cent, granted in September. The Government’s financial advisers insisted that any further general increase would undermine the painfully achieved balancing of this year’s Budget. The communique announced higheb prices for sugar, fats, oil and other basic food items and promised cuts in clothing, wine, and butter prices. It said that these price adjustments were the final moves to the new price and wage level, and left the worker with 6 per cent, more purchasing power than in August and 15 per cent more than in February, 1947. Hopes that a new price cut in meat, fish, clothing, wine and other items would end the strike decreased today when the secretary-general of the non - Communist Confederation of Labour, M. Jouhaux, said that the reductions still left too great a difference between wages and prices. Butter, which is almost non-exist-ent for French housewives except in the black market, will be rationed at about lOAoz a month, as from tomorrow. THREAT OF NEW OFFENSIVE. As a result of the new price adjustments, the Government is faced with a threat of a non-Communist offensive against its wage and price policy before it gains control of the Communist campaign in the ports and coalfields. The Christian Trade Union Federation said: “We cannot agree to the new price and wage level proposed by the Government.” The Minister of Production, M. Lacoste, cancelled a broadcast he was to have made appealing to the miners to return to work and explaining the wage concessions granted to them. T'he council of the Communist Iron and Steel Workers’ Federation has called its one million members to light for higher wages and to remain mobilised against the rising cost of living. It declared. “The iron and steel workers will never become General Marshall’s toot-soldiers.” 'Hie Communist Textile Workers’ Union issued an ultimatum to the employers for wage increases by November 5 at the latest.

Reuter’s Prague correspondent says the Czechoslovakian trade unions have promised at least £lOO,OOO to aid the striking French miners. The largest single contribution is £60.000 from the building trade organisation.