Kent at odds with it's migrant workers- The Miners Speak

Dover Express and East Kent News August 23rd 1929

The miners speak, continued from here

THE APPLE STEALING CASE
On Saturday the following appeared in the” Daily Mail” stated to have been sent to them by their Canterbury correspondent:-“Mr. John Elks, the miners’ agent for the Kent district said to me:-“In my opinion there is generally a great deal of prejudice against the miners, both in the countryside and in the towns in Kent. It is especially so among what I may call the upper classes, the landowners and the farmers. The shopkeepers treat us reasonably on the whole. We do not agree with the statements that that the damage the farmers are suffering from is wholly due to miners. The miners are blamed because they think there is no one else to blame. The Kent mineworkers association would like some proof from the farmers.

Mr. Elks defended the miners against charges of drunkenness, “I say definitely,” he concluded that the county magistrates are prejudiced against miners.”

Mr. E. Lawther, of Aylesham, the president of the Kent mineworkers association, said:-“I do not think the people generally in East Kent have anything against the miners, it is only among certain classes. If the farmers had put before me any cases where depredations had taken place and they suspected our people , I and other officials of the association would have been only to glad to cooperate with them to stop it”
Mr. Owen Marks, a Snowdon miner, living at Dover, said:-“The Magistrates and the landed gentry in general attempt to treat us like a lot of spendthrifts. If they care to examine the record of mine4s as a whole they will find as upright a class of workers as any in England.


The Express seems reluctant to give the miners the last word, continued here