Steps Being Taken To Recover £5000 In Fines Imposed On Striking Unions In Australia

Wanganui Chronicle, 23 July 1949, Page 5

Steps Being Taken To Recover £5000 In Fines Imposed On Striking Unions In Australia

SYDNEY, July 22 (Rec. 8 pm).—Steps to recover fines totalling £5OOO imposed on the Miners’ Federation, Iron-workers’ Association and Waterside Workers’ Federation for contempt of court are being considered by the Registrar of the Arbitration Court. Officials who were fined were given time to pay, but no time was allowed the unions.

None of the £54,700 covered by Court orders to three unions to return to the Registrar funds withdrawn from banks in contravention of the National Emergency Coal Strike Act has been paid. Writs against the property of the Miners’ Federation and the Iron-workers’ Association may be issued during the week-end. Reports from miners’ meetings continue to indicate that the miners’ solidarity is cracking, though so far the rift is more noticeable in smaller areas. At Gunnedah a crowd pelted with tomatoes speakers who urged a united front against the Government. The Communist chairman was greeted with hoots and ironical cheers and cries of “Go back to Russia!” Mr J. Comerford, acting general secretary of the Miners’ Federation, met boos and catcalls, and a motion, proposed by Mr R. G. Hamilton, State Labour Parliamentarian, congratulating the Gunnedah miners on a move to end the strike, was carried by an overwhelming majority. Mr Comerford forecast that the miners would leave the Labour Party and would form an Industrial Labour Party which “would be responsible to the miners and not to the Federal and State Labour caucuses.”

In Sydney today Cockatoo Dock i ironworkers, by 300 votes to seven, declared full support for the Federal and State Governments in efforts to end the strike and affirmed strong opposition to the manner in which £25,000 of the ironworkers’ money was withdrawn from banks and hidden. THE OTHER SIDE I The other side of the picture comes from West Wallsend, where the miners, after holding their own meeting, at which they voted 235 to 16 in support of the strike, surged angrily round Australian Labour Party repre- , sentatives speaking in tne main street . and had to be forced back by tne police. The miners jeered at a statement that Communists were behind the strike, and the police had to re- ' strain the crowd when Senator Doni aid Grant declared: “It is impossible for the miners to beat the State, so the Communists are trying to do it by revolution.” 1 Meanwhile, military convoys are ’ quietly moving into the northern coal- ' fields to prepare for the working of , open-cut coal.

The land transport group of unions, with a membership of 70,000, announced today that it would move the coal won from open cuts, and added: “We direct the attention of all trade unionists to this decision, and state unequivocally that attempts to sabotage this plan will be resisted.’’ A.C.T.U. leaders told representatives of the Combined Mining Unions’ Council at a conference today that neither the Federal nor the State Governments would agree to confer with the Council on terms for a settlement of the coal strike unless the miners first went back to work.

At Muswellbrook. open-cut miners were urged to return to work on Monday, but underground miners succeeded in amending this to a decision to hold a meeting during the weekend to “discuss calling of aggregate meetings with a view to ending the strike.”