LONDON -- Thousands of newspaper printers trying to halt the presses at a local daily clashed with police in northwest England early Wednesday, injuring 34 people, police said.
A spokesman at police headquarters in Chester said at least 73 men were arrested, including one carrying a gun. The injured included 22 policemen but the striking workers failed to halt Wednesday's editions of the Stockport Messenger from rolling.
The police spokesman said about 1,000 police and about 4,500 workers ringed the newspaper plant in nearby Warrington, where owner Eddie Shah barricaded himself and his staff inside and produced the newspaper with computers and video display terminals.
Stockport Messenger printers went on strike when negotiations over layoffs broke down, and the conflict spread over the weekend to London's Fleet Street, about 150 miles south of Stockport. Publication of the national and Sunday newspapers was halted.
At 5 a.m. Wednesday, a newspaper van was able to leave the plant with the Messenger's latest edition, police said.
The pickets, members of the National Graphical Association, arrived by buses from all over England Tuesday night and converged on the plant 20 miles southwest of Manchester starting at 10 p.m. local time.
In London, the employment committee of the Trade Unions Congress issued a statement on the dispute early Wednesday, expressing qualified support for the NGA, calling for aid from affiliated unions and urging the TUC General Council to provide the NGA with financial help.
It also called on the government to reconsider its tough new trade-union law that bans 'secondary picketing' -- union action against related firms not directly involved in a dispute -- such as the two-day walkout that stopped publication of Britain's national newspapers from Saturday until Tuesday.
Four court-appointed commissioners seized $262,500 from NGA's funds Tuesday to cover two fines imposed on the union for contempt in defying orders to refrain from secondary picketing.
Home Secretary Leon Brittan, speaking to a noisy session of Parliament Tuesday, said the law must be upheld, and pickets would get no immunity from prosecution 'if they indulge in violence, intimidation or obstruction.'
