LONDON’S WORKLESS

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20717, 30 January 1939, Page 14

LONDON’S WORKLESS

VISIT THE RITZ DEMAND FOR TEA POLICE RULING CHALLENGED (Times Air Mail Service) LONDON, Dec. 23. Tea-time at the Ritz, a leading London restaurant was slightly different yesterday, because fifty unemployed walked in from Piccadilly’s slush and rain to ask for tea.

They brushed past the mink and the hothouse roses and the gilt and the blue and gold uniforms, and found themselves in the grill-room.

They did not know that no teas are served in tfye grill-room of the Ritz. Tea was being served upstairs, in the palm court lounge, where the fountain plays beneath the gilt, lifesized statue of a woman and bubbles into a fish-pond where goldfish, and fish the colour of platinum, too, swim* to and fro.

The unemployed buttoned up their shabby jackets and took off old caps and greasy felt hats when they walked on the buoyant carpets down three flights of stairs to the grill-room. The three women among them patted their hair. No on& challenged them. Waited In Rain Their less-daring brethren outs’de in the rain heard what had happened, and shuffled along from the i benches of neighbouring Green Park I to press their noses against the cold j windows of the Ritz, but the cur- j tains, still as discreet as those of j Queen Victoria’s days, hid everything ! from them. There was only one waiter in the grill-room when the unemployed walked in. He was polishing the silver and the glasses. True to the tradition of the Ritz, he went on with his work, raising only a faint eyebrow of surprise. A policeman, followed by two sergeants, followed by more reinforcements from Vine Street, came down to argue with the unemployed and ask them to leave. Upstairs in the lounge, it was really tea-time at the Ritz. The fivepiece hand—piano, ’cello, viola, and two violins—wpnt on playing their j In-a-Persian-Garden sort of music. | The tea trolly was covered with ! sandwiches of smoked salmon, ham, | pate de foie gras, peach and raspberry fluffy pastries, cream sponge ! cakes, brandy snaps, meringues and, | for those who ronld manage them, i hearty- looking fruit cakes. Walterg Nonplussed Downstairs in the grill-room the j unemployed leaders stood on the i grill-room siasre. wondering what to j dc next. Men sitting at the tables

produced to the hotel assistants coppers and shillings, saying: “We can pay for our tea." The waiters explained that at the Ritz tea is never served in the grillroom. * The police explained that these were licensed premises and that the manager cpuld refuse, without giving any reason, to serve any customer.

The unemployed leaders challenged this, and a legal argument began. But it was all very proper. The unemployed seemed to have caught something of the tact of the Ritz waiters who hovered around.

They lef. v . after more than half an hour in the warmth of the grill-room, and filed out again into the slush of Piccadilly. Only when they reached the fresh air did they raise their cry: “We want bread.”