Page:The Fremantle Wharf Crisis of 1919.djvu/7

 lumpers with the blame. If, not knowing the facts that history has since proved, the public in 1917 was induced to support the Government of the day, it was not so in 1919, as was so dramatically proved. For in 1919 the lumpers were able to substantiate what they had previously asserted regarding the flour destined for Dutch settlements in 1917, and to refer the public to the statement of the British Prime Minister (Mr. Lloyd George) in the House of Commons, in which that great statesman admitted that flour had found its way into Germany from Dutch sources. In reply to Mr. McPherson, Mr. Lloyd George also admitted that Australian and New Zealand flour had reached Germany during the war.

It has been stated that Mr. Colebatch admitted it was impossible for industrial peace to exist on the wharves whilst two distinct organisations were engaged &mdash; the members of one (the minority) under conditions which humiliated the members of the other (the majority). Mr. Colebatch had good reason for that observation. It is explained in the words of the President of the Lumpers’ Union (Mr. Renton), who, on April 28, inter alia, in a Press interview, said:—
 * "We agreed when we went back to work (i.e., in October, 1917) to give the Nationalists (free labor) preference; that is, the original Nationalist workers. We claim that they are not only getting preference, as given by Judge Higgins in the Arbitration Court, but that they are allowed by the employers in Fremantle to go on to any ship they desire in preference to the old lumpers, and also have the right to refuse to go on any ship to which they object, and the work of that ship is left to the old lumpers. Those ships are flour, phosphate, wheat, and sulphur ships. The only jobs they will take in preference to the old lumpers are those on cargo and coal boats. If while on one boat another full cargo boat comes in, and they want to work it, they can leave the first boat before finishing the job, come to the pick-up place, and get preference over the old lumpers for the fresh job, and the old lumpers have to take the jobs they have just left and finish them. If one, or any, of the old lumpers leaves a job and comes down to the pick-up place they are reported and are stood down from one to twenty days for leaving a job before it was finished."

In addition to this positive assertion of unfair discrimination in so-called preference, which was never contradicted, the President also recounted how the employers deliberately refused to proceed against Nationalists caught in the act of