AN EYE-WITNESS OF THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN STRIItE .
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] _ Sin,—In the issue of the Spectator, dated October 6th, 1928, —the latest to reach this city—there appears a paragraph relating to the wharf labourers' strike in Australia, in which it is stated that civil violence, and disturbance " in Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Freemantle has been serious."
During the whole of. the strike I have been in close touch with the situation in Brisbane, and at no time has there been any civil disturbance or violence, with two very small excep- tions. On one occasion the window of a taxi-cab carrying free- labourers was broken by a stone. The person who threw the stone was sentenced to), I think, three months' hard labour. On another occasion, the police broke up a procession of strikers, one of whom assaulted a lorry-driver.
He got a sentence. • Mr. McCormack, the Premier of the State, had a very firm hand, and any exhibition of rioting or violence would have been repressed : but none occurred. During the whole of the Strike the ordinary commercial and civil life of Brisbane went on quite normally ; I was out and about morning, noon, and night, and can vouch for the fact that there was no disturbance whatsoever.—I am, Sir, &c.
A BRISBANE RESIDENT.
Brisbane, November 19th, 1928.
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