The State Response to 1911 - Sam Davies, Liverpool John Moores University.

(Work in progress Not to be quoted without authors permission) The wave of strikes of 1911 in Britain posed a serious threat of civil strife and public disorder to the government of the day. The crisis reached its height in August of that year with the railwaymens strike and associated industrial action precipitating riots across the country. In the hottest British August since 1873, police action in supporting attempts to sustain the movement of goods on and from the railways, and suppression of crowds of strikers and demonstrations, was widespread. Bloody Sunday of 13 August in Liverpool is the best-known example of this, but in fact similar events took place in Birkenhead, Lincoln, Derby, Birmingham, Stafford,. Chesterfield, Llanelli, and many other towns and cities. 1 Huge numbers of people were injured in the disturbances, and many others arrested and imprisoned. It was the use of the military to back up the police action, however, that made 1911 unique. An unprecedented mobilisation of military force by the government to back up the overstretched police forces available was authorised by Winston Churchill and the Home Office. 58,000 troops were mobilised across the country and despatched to the various trouble spots, while the navy sent four warships and eight other naval vessels to guard ports, including Liverpool, London and Hull.2 In the week following Bloody Sunday, the British army opened fire on civilians on several occasions, with two fatalities directly resulting in both Liverpool and Llanelli, and four others being killed indirectly in the disturbances in the latter. A subsequent trade union demonstration from the East India Dock in Poplar, London, carried a black-lined banner reading: In memory of and sympathy with our comrades in Liverpool and Llanelli, killed in the interests of capitalism. Workers remember Trafalgar-square, 1877; Mitchelstown, 1887; Featherstone, 1893; Belfast 1907; and now Liverpool and Llanelli, 1911. 3 This paper will analyse one aspect of this state response, looking at the effects of police and military actions in terms of casualties and arrests, with a specific focus on the events in Liverpool around Bloody Sunday. In doing so, it will raise questions as to how much Britain was near to revolution in 1911. Analysis of the wider motivations for, and responses to, the state response over the whole of the summer, and across the whole country, will form part of a much larger ongoing study that is in progress. * * * **

For an indication of the scale and spread of the unrest at its height, see Employment of Military during Railway Strike, Cd. 323, 22 Nov. 1911; Manchester Guardian, 19 Aug. 1911, pp. 6-9; Observer, 20 August, pp. 7-8. 2 P.S. Bagwell, The Railwaymen: The History of the National Union of Railwaymen, (London, 1963), p. 295; HO 212470/365; ships were also stationed at Barrow and Douglas, Isle of Man. 3 Times, 4 Sep. 1911.

Figure 1 Part of the 80,000 crowd on the Plateau, 13 August 1911. The main event to be considered in this paper is Bloody Sunday itself. This took place as a result of a mass demonstration on the Plateau in the centre of Liverpool on Sunday 13 August. Estimates were that at least 80,000 attended on an exceptionally hot day the hottest day in Liverpool on record since 22 August 1873. 4 A remarkable socialist stonemason and poet, Fred Bower, described the atmosphere surrounding the event. This is what he reported from his wagon, facing the great St Georges Hall: On this Sunday as the gaily decked banners, carried aloft by brawny arms, led each contingent of workers from the outskirts of the city, with their union buttons up and headed by their local officials with music, it seemed good to be alive From Orange Garston, Everton and Toxteth Park, from Roman Catholic Bootle and the Scotland Road area, they came. Forgotten were their religious feuds, disregarded the dictum of some of their clericals on both sides who affirmed the strike was an atheist stunt. The Garston band had walked five miles and their drum-major proudly whirled his sceptre twined with orange and green ribbons as he led his contingent band, half out of the Roman Catholic, half out of the local Orange band What matter to them that all the railway stations in the town showed boarded up gates? What matter to them, that from the windows and roof of St Georges Hall opposite, could now and again be seen the caps of a British Tommy? Never in the history of this or any other country had the majority and might of the humble toiler been so displayed. A wonderful spirit of humour and friendliness permeated the atmosphere. It was glorious weather All was going well, no signs of trouble, when a well organized mass ranged round the Plateau and surrounding approaches, all in their Sunday best, and many of them with their women folk with them, were set upon and brutally battered.5
4

Unless otherwise indicated, all references here to Bloody Sunday are taken from the Liverpool Daily Post and the Liverpool Echo, 14 Aug. 1911. 5 F. Bower, Rolling Stonemason, p.

Figure 2 Crowd scene on Bloody Sunday Another observer, J.A. Seddon (ex-MP for Newton-le-Willows) reported: I had been addressing the meeting at platform No. 2 I never addressed a more orderly crowd In consequence of the noise of the increasing uproar at the scene of the disturbance I turned my eyes to Lord Nelson-street, and I saw one of the demonstrators in some sort of elevation addressing a crowd. His words seemed to be exercising a pacifying effect, and while he was so engaged the police, on foot came down and made a sudden baton charge, striking at men, women and children they unmercifully used their batons upon the audience standing near to any platform. The police even went the length of striking a woman who had already been injured I have never seen a more unprovoked and brutal attack made upon a meeting. The exact cause of the outbreak of violence cannot be identified, various conflicting accounts being given in the press reports. Fred Bower eye-witness account is all the more important as it shows how police brutality and overreaction to what had been planned as a peaceful protest was brushed under the carpet by deliberate censorship and excision of records: At one end of the Plateau during the meeting the Pathe picture people had set up a machine and the operator was busy taking a moving picture of the monster demonstration. When the police started the bother and the crowd were hurrying to escape the batons, the operator kept on working. When the crowd dispersed he got away with his negatives. Had they been publicly exposed there would have been an outcry of indignation throughout the land at the brutality displayed. The Plateau resembled a battlefield, disabled and wounded men, women and children, lying singly and in heaps over a vast area. The picture was privately shown to a few of the prominent Labour leaders and speakers but the Liverpool authorities and the Government warned the Pathe people that they were not to show the picture in public, or else.6 What is clear is that the first baton charges by local police took place just after half-past-three. Contingents of Leeds and Birmingham police who had been concealed inside St. Georges Hall
6

Bower, Rolling Stomemason, p.

were unleashed later they emerged from the building with batons drawn and charged. Mounted police were also called into action, and at half-past-four, when the Plateau had been cleared, a fully-armed contingent of the Warwickshire Regiment appeared on the scene, supplemented later by troops of the Scots Greys. A correspondent of the Liverpool Daily Post described the scene as one which reminded one of the turbulent times in Paris when the revolution was at its height. This was far from the end of the trouble, however. The Riot act was now read at the Plateau, but the Stipendiary Magistrate was then called to nearby Christian Street to repeat the proclamation there, as rioting spread into one of the poorest working-class districts of the city. Clashes between police and gangs of rowdies continued for some hours later. Rioting spread further up along Scotland Road, at 9.50 disturbances were reported in Fox Street and Soho Street, and at 10.20 in Hunter Street. Finally, about midnight violence spread as far as Great Homer Street. It was reported in the press that this last phase was a sectarian clash between Protestant and Catholic factions, Great Homer Street being seen as the unofficial dividing line between the two communities, but whether this was truly the case remains unclear, as both sides turned on the police and attacked them with stones bottles and iron bars. It is apposite to remember the writings of George Rud and Edward Thompson on the crowd in history what was ostensibly a sectarian or patriotic riot in the eighteenth century could reflect an underlying logic of latent class conflict, so attacks would become focussed on the propertied and prosperous, whatever the initial spark that ignited the violence. 7 Similarly in 1911, the crowds in Scotland Road and elsewhere concentrated their attacks on public houses, but specifically those owned by the Cains and Walkers breweries, both of which were commonly known to have close links with the local Conservative party. In the last act of Bloody Sunday, police reinforcements and then mounted police were rushed to Great Homer Street, followed by a company of the 2 nd Warwickshire Regiment, who with shouldered rifles eventually cleared the streets. It is impossible to know how many people were injured in this calamitous day. Four doctors were called to Lime Street station to treat the injured on the spot, and were fully engaged for over an hour, with the station presenting a terrible appearance, blood lying in pools in all directions. Some of the injured were eventually conveyed to hospital, but many of them were able to go home after having had a rest. 8 Many of those injured in the later riots in Christian Street and elsewhere may not have gone to hospital, some because they were arrested instead it was reported of those who appeared in court the following day that many appeared in the dock with their heads swathed in bandages. Popular memory of the event also attests that it was rumoured that police were waiting at the hospitals and arresting anyone who arrived with obvious injuries even if this allegation was untrue, it is likely that it dissuaded some people with less serious injuries from going to the hospital. 9 The 186 people who were recorded as being 4ispatched4d as a result of the unrest are therefore a serious under-estimate of the real casualty toll. We can find out something about these 186 hospitalised cases, however. They were listed by name in the local press, many with their ages, home addresses, occupations and injuries included. Where some details were missing, it was possible to recover some of them by searching the 1911 census returns using a family history website. Hospital records may also provide further evidence, but they are not available until January 2012 due to a 100-year rule on privacy. 10
7

G. Rud, The Crowd in History, ; E.P. Thompson, Eighteenth-century English society: Class struggle without Class?, Social History, vol. 3, no.2, (1978), and Patrician society, plebeian culture, Journal of Social History, Vol. 7, no. 4, (1974). 8 Times, 14 Aug. 1911. 9 A member of the audience for a lecture on 1911 given by the author in April 2011 recounted that her grandmother had told her of these rumours. 10 The hospital records will be consulted by the author when possible. The search of the census would have been logistically impossible in the past when only the original hard-copy or microfilm versions were available. The digitised records accessible now offer a new and potentially valuable resource for historians. The site used was: findmypast.co.uk

Of the 5ispatched5d, 166 were civilians, and 20 were policemen. Concentrating on the civilians, their gender has been identified in 127 cases, cross-matched with their age in 90 cases, as shown in Table 1:
Table 1 Age and sex of civilians 5ispatched5d after 13 August 61 and Sex Age 0-13 Age 14-19 Age 20-30 Age 31-40 Age 41-50 Age 51-60 over Unknown Total Male 6 1 22 26 15 8 4 37 119 Female 3 1 1 2 1 0 0 0 8 All 9 2 23 28 16 8 4 37 127

What this confirms is that the injuries were dealt out to men, women and children, as J.A. Seddon and many other contemporary accounts alleged. The visual images available show a predominantly male crowd (see Figures 1 and 2 above), but eight of the 127 injured were women, including three children. Of the 90 whose ages have been identified, nine were under the age of 14, including five 8-year olds, a 7-year old, a 2-year old and a 1-year old. Aside from the children, the crowd was predominantly young, with 20- and 30-year olds most preponderant, but there were also a significant number aged over 40, and four in their 60s. One other feature which stands out is the dearth of youths of teen-age years, only two aged between fourteen and nineteen being 5ispatched5d. Analysis of the occupations of the injured gives further insight into the composition of the crowd. The occupations of 80 of the male, adult civilians have been identified, as shown in Table 2 below.
Table 2 Occupations of male civilians 5ispatched5d after 13 August Occupation No. Occupation No. Labourer 22 Glassworker 1 Dock labourer 15 Greengrocer 1 Carter 9 Joiner 1 Porter 2 Machinist 1 Seaman 2 Mill hand 1 Ship scraper 2 Moulder 1 Railway porter 2 Oilcake worker 1 Baker 1 Plumber 1 Billiard marker 1 Railway carriage cleaner 1 Boilermaker 1 Storekeeper 1 Bricklayer 1 Striker 1 Clerk 1 Tailor 1 Cotton broker 1 Tanner 1 Dog fancier 1 Timber carrier 1 Driver 1 Wardrobe Dealer 1 Electricians labourer 1 Warehouseman 1 Engineer 1 Total 80

What this shows is that the mostly casually-employed trades typical of the Liverpool workingclass predominated. Of the three main categories, twenty-two of them, more than a quarter of the total, were classified as labourers, many of whom might have worked at least some of the time on the docks or ships, a further fifteen were dock labourers, and nine were carters. Many of these would have been involved in the strikes and lockouts that occurred over that summer, both before and after Bloody Sunday. The rest represented a fair range of working-class occupations, and some white-collar and even bourgeois positions. Thus there were skilled men such as joiners, engineers, boilermakers and plumbers, but also a clerk, a green grocer and even a cotton broker. This confirms what the visual evidence suggests. In the crowd pictured in Figure 2, the

distinctively working-class flat-cap was most evident, but there was also a fair sprinkling of boaters and bowler-hats. Perhaps surprisingly, given that the demonstration was in support of the railwaymen, there were relatively few workers connected with the railways amongst the injured, with only two railway porters and a carriage cleaner showing up. Another revealing aspect of the data collected is the home addresses of the injured. The addresses of 114 of the civilians have been identified, and although precise mapping of these has not been done yet,11 an impressionistic view is that they are by no means confined to the citycentre and north-end areas where the disturbances took place. The injured came from all parts of the city, including the predominantly Catholic areas of the Vauxhall Road/Scotland Road district in the north and the Brunswick district in the south, but also from the mainly Protestant areas of the Netherfield/St. Domingo district in the north and the Dingle in the south. Other areas represented, more suburban in nature but less easily defined in sectarian terms, included Wavertree, Edge Hill, Walton and Toxteth Park. Some came from outside the city altogether, from the adjoining boroughs of Bootle to the north, St. Helens to the east, and, across the river, from Birkenhead and Wallasey. There was even one labourer from Kendal in the Lake District, and a railway porter from London. The final aspect of the data on hospitalisations worth considering is the nature of the injuries sustained, the details of which have been collected for 114 of the hospitalised, as shown in Table 3.
Table Three Injuries of civilians 6ispatched6d after 13 August SubInjury Detail Total Total Injury Detail Head Cut head 76 85 Arm Crushed finger Cut face 2 Cut wrist Broken nose 1 Bruised forearm Bruised head 1 Bruised wrist Crushed forehead 1 Cut hand Cut ear 1 Injured wrist Cut eye 1 Splinter in finger Fractured skull 1 Sprained finger Serious head wound 1 Sprained thumb Leg Bruised leg 3 13 Sprained wrist Bruised foot 2 Torso Bruised rib Cut Leg 2 Fractured ribs Sprained ankle 2 Injured shoulder UnspeBruised thigh 1 cified Kicked Crushed foot 1 Total Cut foot 1 Leg injury 1 SubTotal Total 2 12 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 114

As can be seen, 85 of the 114, or 75%, were suffering from head injuries, which gives some idea of the police tactics on the day. As a number of contemporary accounts averred, the police attacked the crowd with their batons unmercifully, striking at the heads of the unarmed civilians, and this was reflected very clearly in the type of injuries sustained.

11

The author intends to map the addresses at a future date.

Figure 3 Police make an arrest during the 1911 unrest Turning now to the arrests on the day, 95 people faced charges at a special sitting at the First Court, City Police Courts, Dale Street, before the Stipendiary Magistrate on the following morning. It was a scene of so much intense excitement and the court was almost crowded out by the police officers who were to give evidence in the various cases, and there was room for only a handful of the general public. Details of the charges were listed in the local press, and there are also court records available which give further information, and the 1911 census returns have also been consulted to fill in some of the gaps. The court records give the site of arrest for 87 of the 95 people charged, and these are listed by street in Table 4 below, and plotted on a map of the city centre in Figure 4.

Table 4 Site of arrests in 13 August disturbances Street No. Street Clare St. 9 Plateau Soho St. 8 St. Ann St. Christian St. 6 Athol St. Gerard St. 5 Burgess St. Hunter St. 5 Burlington St. Islington 5 Derby Rd. Lime St. 5 Everton Brow Wm. Brown St. 5 Gt. Crosshall St. Fox St. 4 Gt. Richmond St. Scotland Rd 4 Prince Edwin St. Comus St. 3 Redmond Pl. Springfield St. 3 Rose Pl. Bk. Strickland St. 2 Russell St. Dale St. 2 Travers St. London Rd. 2 Wilton St. Penton St. 2 Total

No. 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 87

Figure 4 Site of arrests in 13 August disturbances

As can be seen, the majority of those who had been detained were arrested in the disturbances on the residential streets of the working-class district adjoining the city centre, rather than at the site of the baton charges on the Plateau earlier in the day. Five people were arrested on Lime Street, five on William Brown Street, and two on the Plateau itself, but the rest were picked up further afield, mostly in a small area 10ispatc on Christian Street, Hunter Street, Clare Street, Soho Street and Gerard Street. By contrast, however, the addresses of those arrested were scattered much more widely across the city and beyond. These could only be traced through the census returns, thus referring to the arrestees addresses four months earlier, of which 46 were identified. They are plotted on the map below in Figure 5. Figure 5 Home addresses of people arrested on 13 August 1911

It can be seen that, as with the people hospitalised, the arrested came from various parts of the city, rather than being concentrated in the immediate vicinity of the trouble. This finding is of some significance, because much comment was made by the police and others implying that the disorder was caused by a particular stratum of Liverpool society that was especially prone to rioting, and confined to a particular part of the city. The Head Constable, Leonard Dunning, for instance, in a letter to the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, stated: The disorder quickly spread to the adjoining Irish quarter, and a fierce attack upon the police began During the night there was much disturbance, both in the Irish quarter and in the border district, between the Protestants and Roman Catholics, where disturbances of the peace may be described as chronic. In a later telegram to Churchill, he said: You need not attach any very great importance to the rioting of last night. It took place in an area where disorder is a chronic feature, ready to break out when any abnormal excitement is in force. 12 A report in the Manchester Guardian talked of the lawless streets near to Scotland Road, and quoted a local policeman saying: The people of these parts are not Englishmen, they are savages. 13 Of course it is true that riots, including sectarian strife, had been a common feature of Liverpool history, and only two years previously there had been a widespread outbreak of sectarian strife over the summer of 1909. 14 Yet the fact that the arrested came from across the city suggests that the rioters were not just the immediate inhabitants of the Christian Street area, or the Irish quarter, as Dunning put it, but drawn from across the sectarian divide and representing a cross-section of the Liverpool working-class. The occupations of the arrested reinforce this impression, as shown below in Table 5.
Table 5 Occupations of male civilians arrested after 13 August Occupation No. Occupation No. Dock Labourer 10 Hall keeper 1 Carter 4 Hawker fish 1 Labourer 4 House driver 1 Oil mill Lab 2 House painter 1 Painters Lab 2 Musician 1 Ass. Agent 1 Plumber 1 Coal Office clerk 1 Railwayman 1 Collier 1 Sawyer 1 Confectioner 1 Ships carpenter 1 Cooper 1 Shopkeeper 1 Dray lad 1 Teacher 1 Errand boy 1 Timber Labourer 1 Total 41

As with the hospital statistics, dock labourers, labourers and carters were to the fore, but skilled men such as plumbers, coopers and sawyers were also arrested, and even a collier who must have come from some distance away in the Lancashire coalfield. The presence of an assurance agent, coal office clerk, a shopkeeper, a teacher and a musician suggests even more strongly that the rioters were not solely drawn from the Irish residuum that the police and the press condescendingly singled out for blame. The age and sex of the arrested, shown below in Table 6, presents a similar picture to the hospitalised in most regards, with nine out of 95 being women, and a concentration of people in
12 13

Employment of Military, pp. 6 and 7. Manchester Guardian, 17 Aug. 1911. 14 See A. Shallice, Orange and green and militancy: sectarianism and working class politics in Liverpool, 1900-1914, in Bulletin of the North West Labour History Society, no. 6, (1979-80); also J. Bohstedt, More than one working class: Protestant and Catholic riots in Edwardian Liverpool, and A. Bryson, Riotous Liverpool, 1815-60, both in J. Belchem (ed.), Popular Politics, Riot and Labour: Essays in Liverpool History 1790-1940, (Liverpool, 1992).

their 20s and 30s, but with a number also over 50. There were, however, and as one would expect, no children arrested, but the other significant difference in these figures is that there were a considerable number of teenaged youths, nineteen in all, as opposed to very few amongst the injured. This may reflect the fact that the high spirits of youth may have been a motivating factor in the crowd, but it may also suggest that the youngsters could run fastest from the baton-charges on the Plateau.
Table 6 Age and sex of civilians prosecuted after 13 August Sex Age 0-13 Age 14-19 Age 20-30 Age 31-40 Age 41-50 Age 51-60 61 and over Unknown Total Male 0 17 29 19 8 3 1 9 86 Female 0 2 1 1 2 1 0 2 9 All 0 19 30 20 10 4 1 11 95

We may finally consider the charges the arrested faced, and the sentences they received, as shown in Table 7.
Charges and sentences in prosecutions after 13 August Charge* No. Sentence* No. Assaulting a police officer 49 6 months 1 Throwing Missiles 22 4 months 3 Drunk and disorderly 12 3 months + 14 days 1 Insulting behaviour 5 3 months 13 Wounding 3 2 months 10 Stealing 4 7 weeks 1 Disorderly conduct 2 6 weeks 1 Obstruction 2 1 month + 14 days 1 Possession of an offensive weapon 2 1 month 29 Total 101 4 weeks 2 * Some faced more than one charge 3 weeks 1 2 weeks 22 2 years probation 1 Bound over 4 Remanded 3 Discharged 2 Total 95 * 41 of the convicted were offered the option of fines instead of a custodial sentence, ranging from 10s. to 7.

It is interesting to note first of all that many of the defendants were initially charged that they did riotously and tumultuously assemble together to the disturbance of the public peace this was hand-written in the court ledger. 15 A line was drawn through all of these, however, and alternative charges were written in, presumably because it was realized when they came to court that the evidence was not sufficient to gain a conviction. Most of these cases were instead charged with assaulting a police constable in the execution of his duty. In fact this was by far the most common charge, followed by throwing missiles, being drunk and disorderly, and insulting behaviour. It was reported that only one or two of the prisoners were legally represented, and in spite of the unprecedented length of the charge-list, the business was got through with efficiency, smoothness and despatch. This certainly must have been the case it is not clear how long the proceedings took, but even if the court had sat from 9 in the morning until 9 at night without a break, the average time spent on each case would only have been 7-8
15

Liverpool Record Office, First Court, City Police Courts, Dale Street, 14 Aug, 1911, 347/MAG/2/27.

minutes. Only two defendants were acquitted, and some of the younger defendants were treated lightly, being bound over to keep the peace, and in one case being put on probation. Three were also remanded to a later date, but 85 were sentenced to terms of imprisonment varying from 2 weeks to 6 months, with 41 of these being given the option of paying a fine plus costs instead if they could muster the funds. Only two of the defendants were clearly identified with the strike, John Wilson, convicted of obstructing a Midland Railway engine with a lorry, and John Woods, a rail striker, trying to hold up goods under convoy. The magistrate claimed that the great mass of trouble on the previous day was caused by people who were not strikers. More typical cases were Thomas Devine and John Evans, both in their twenties and both with their head swathed in bandages, charged with throwing bottles from a roof in Clare Street, both sentenced to 3 months, or 31 year-old carter Charles Langley, who allegedly had been throwing stones, sticks and bottles at Scots Greys, swinging a hammer shouting I got this given to me to use, also sentenced to 3 months. The oldest defendant, 65 year-old dock labourer James Rooney, described as an elderly man whose head had been badly injured, had apparently wounded a policeman so severely that he could not attend court. Rooney was remanded in custody, and sentenced to 3 months at a later sitting. The heaviest sentence of 6 months was handed down to 42 year-old fruit hawker, Ellen Grant. She had been recorded in the census four months previously as in bridewell, so presumably had previous convictions, and was convicted on two charges of assaulting a policeman and one of being drunk and disorderly. Some of the women and youths were charged with looting, including Mary Healy, a nineteen year-old domestic servant, accused of throwing a bottle through a confectioners window and found in possession of a box of chocolates (20s. Or 1 month), 54 year-old Elizabeth White, accused of stealing flour (20s. Or 14 days), 17 year-old William Fearon, a sawyer, accused of sealing a tin of salmon (28 days), and 16-year-old Edward Travers, also accused of stealing flour, but one of the few acquitted.

Figure 6 More arrests The treatment in court of those arrested on Monday 14 August and in the following few days was in itself regarded by many in Liverpool as an outrage, and it was a source of bitterness

and anger that directly contributed to the subsequent bloody events. Letters and petitions to the Home Secretary reflected this feeling. The Liverpool branch of the United Irish League, for instance, sent the following motion: That as we believe a number of persons were prosecuted and sent to prison for their connection with the recent strike disturbances in the city, whose characters under normal circumstances are those of law-abiding citizens, this Committee respectfully and earnestly appeals to the Home Secretary to order as an act of grace their release from prison 16 This was followed up by a letter from Mr. S. Raymond, chairman of Sandhills ward Liberal Association, stating: Now as a Liberal Worker, I beg to [associate?] myself with the N.I.L. in their appeal to you for an amnesty to the unfortunate people who were batoned by the police on that terrible Sunday, and then arrested, and it is the feeling in the city that the [sentences?] by Mr Stuart Deacon, the Stipendiary, was almost appalling in their [sic] severity. It is the general opinion in the clubs that he lost his head, and consequently people were sentenced to terms of imprisonment that was [sic] simply outrageous. Hoping that you will do your best to send back to their homes many of these poor people. 17 A further petition read: people were severely beaten and prostrated by the Batons of the Police and it appeared that some of these persons after bleeding freely and suffering severely were unequal to taking advantage from loss of memory, loss of blood and otherwise of any point which might have been available for their defence and were brought before the Magistrate and dealt with forthwith summarily receiving long terms of imprisonment The fact of such persons having been punished by the Police by their use of their batons does not seem to have been regarded as any extenuation or mitigation of their offence although according to the practice of Magistrates generally it has been usual to regard punishments inflicted by the Police as a reason that the Magistrate should at least be less severe in dealing with offenders upon the plea that a man should not be twice punished for one offence. 18 All of these appeals were rejected, the last with the hand-written comment: This is an Irish Petition, and is characterised by Irish vagueness and largeness of heart I suggest it might be treated with Anglo-Saxon phlegm and laid by. In the margin someone else (perhaps Churchill himself) has written: It reads like a joke! ***** Only a briefer look at the injured and, in two cases, killed in the following few days of unrest after Bloody Sunday can be addressed here. With over 3,500 armed troops patrolling the streets, tension was high, with convoys of goods being escorted through the city with military support. Renewed rioting broke out in the Christian Street area on the Monday morning, and again in the evening in various parts of the city, including the south end for the first time. The rioting went on until 3 in the morning, and for the first time the military opened fire on the crowd. The press reports the next day were silent on this issue, only claiming that a [civilian] man fired a revolver in Edinburgh-street four times, but the Head Constable later stated that troops fired a few shots officers revolver shots I think at the house tops whence the stones came. He later revised this to say that seven revolver shots and five rifle shots had been fired. 19 More arrests were made, but there were no reports of injuries from the gunfire.
HO 212470/377 HO 212470/394 18 HO 212470/398. 19 Employment of Military, pp. 6 and 7.
16 17

The following day the military violence escalated, with tragic consequences. That evening, a convoy of vans, containing prisoners who had been arrested on Bloody Sunday, was 15ispatched to Walton Gaol. It was accompanied by thirty-two soldiers of the 18 th Hussars, on horseback and fully armed with rifles (loaded with live ammunition), bayonets, pistols and sabres, as well as a magistrate carrying a copy of the Riot Act, and a number of mounted police. A disturbance occurred on Vauxhall Road and stones and other missiles were thrown at the convoy, no doubt reflecting the widespread anger at what had happened over the previous two days. Before the Riot Act had even been read, the troops opened fire, shooting five civilians, two fatally. A further ten others were injured, with injuries including bayonet wounds. John W. Sutcliffe, a twenty year old Catholic carter, was shot twice in the head virtually on his own doorstep, on the corner of Hopwood Street. Michael Prendergast, a twenty-nine year old Catholic docker, was shot twice in the chest a short time later, on the corner of Lamb Street. This might aptly be described as Liverpools Bloody Tuesday.20 Five days later, on Saturday 19 th August, two more unarmed civilians were shot by troops in Llanelli, and four others were killed in an explosion during the night of unrest that followed the shootings. As with the events of Bloody Sunday, there was a determined effort by Churchill and the government to whitewash these events. No public enquiry was held, despite widespread calls for one from people in Liverpool and Llanelli, and from the TUC and the wider labour movement. Parliament adjourned on 22 August, despite the protests of Labour MPs, so further questions could not be raised there while the events were still fresh in everyones mind. Churchill himself personally ensured, as Home Office files reveal, that minimum publicity was given to the courtmartial of one soldier in Llanelli who had refused to shoot to kill on the civilian crowd and had deserted on the spot: his opinion was that it would be contrary to the public interest to make a cause celebre of the incident and have a sensational court-martial, which would only invest the incident with quite unnecessary and extremely undesirable importance; and he hopes, therefore, that that course will be adopted which will most effectively avoid publicity. His views prevailed over that of the War Office, the court-martial being held almost a month later, with a lenient sentence of two weeks in prison being imposed, buried away in a tiny report in the Times.21 Very little attention has been given since to these outrageous state-sponsored killings in Llanelli and Liverpool, the last occasion on which British troops have killed civilians on the streets of mainland Britain.22 *****

20

On the events of August 15, 1911, see Liverpool Daily Post, Manchester Guardian and Times, 16 Aug., 1911; 1 Sep., 1911. 21 HO 212470/352; Times, 26 Sep., 1911. 22 One of the aims of the centenary events in Liverpool is to redress this injustice. The events in Llanelli have recently been highlighted there, and in Liverpool a commemoration of the fatal shootings, sponsored by the North-West TUC, was held on 15 August, 2011. See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-14529243

The site of John Sutcliffes shooting on 15 August 1911, corner of Hopwood Street and Vauxhall Road, the morning afterwards

Gravestone of Michael Prendergast, also shot on Vauxhall Road on 15 August 1911 - Ford Catholic cemetery, Liverpool.

In conclusion, I want to argue very briefly that the state response to the 1911 strikes was at crisis point in the week following Bloody Sunday. The government had committed itself to keeping the railway system running, claiming a neutrality between the railway employers and unions which neither side recognised. In reality, the unions saw the government as supporting the employers, with the excessive use of military and police force only confirming that impression, while the employers did little to refute that suggestion, with a manager of one firm stating: The government ... have undertaken to put at the service of the railway companies every available soldier in the country ... the Government and the railway companies are necessarily working together.23 Yet the ability of the government to keep the system running was seriously in doubt, while the consequences of the military intervention in terms of riot and unrest were growing increasingly dangerous. There was ample evidence that the military and police were already stretched to breaking point by the end of this critical week. Despite government denials, much of the railway system in the Midlands, the North and South Wales, key areas of industrial, and especially coal, production was severely hit sporadic passenger services were maintained, but the transport of goods was almost completely halted in large parts of these areas.24 The dependence of the economy in 1911 on rail transport was of course, huge, and the inability to move coal was crucial, let alone food and other essential supplies. Without coal, much of industry would rapidly close down, while there were limits to how much coal could be stockpiled at pits, so widespread laying-off of workers would occur across industry.25 In turn, if coal ran out, then the railways would be even more crippled, even in areas such as the south where the strike appeared to be less general. On top of this, other groups of workers were coming out on strike, including dockers and seamen, so that the ports of Liverpool and Bristol were closed, further restricting the movement of goods, and carters in many towns, so even if goods could be transported by rail, they could not then be moved within cities and towns, necessitating the armed military convoys that sparked off much of the urban unrest. More workers were also threatening to come out, with both the Scottish railwaymen and the London dockers (who only went back to work after a separate dispute of their own on August 20) reported to be meeting in the following week to consider sympathetic action. It should be realized as well that the railway strike was only declared official on a national basis on Thursday 17 August, even though unofficial action by railwaymen had taken place as early as 23 July, and the strike in Liverpool that effectively sparked off the main dispute had started on Saturday 5 August.26 The strike had spread on an unofficial basis over the next twelve days, but it was only on the late afternoon of Thursday the 17th, after the abortive meeting with Asquith, that a telegram signed by all four general secretaries of the unions involved was sent out to 2,000 centres.27 On a national basis, therefore, the strike was still in its early stages, and still spreading, by the end of this week. Meanwhile, as unrest spread, it was hard for the police and military to cover all the trouble-spots. Police that had been redeployed from towns initially seen as being calm to areas of greater unrest were now needed back home. Birmingham constables who had been despatched to Birkenhead and Liverpool, for instance, were urgently required to return home as unrest grew there. With a restricted train service, however, it was difficult to get them
23 24

P.S. Bagwell, The Railwaymen: The History of the National Union of Railwaymen, (London, 1963), p. 292 See Manchester Guardian, 19 Aug. 1911, pp. 6-9; Observer, 20 August, pp. 7-8. 25 P.S. Bagwell, The triple industrial alliance, 1913-1922, in Briggs, A. and Saville, J., Essays in Labour History 1886-1923, (London, 1971), p. 98. 26 Bagwell, The Railwaymen, pp. 290-93. 27 Bagwell, The Railwaymen, p. 293.

back, and they were delayed. 28 A general order went out to the Home Office authorising the recruitment of special constables, and many volunteers were found in some towns, but this was only a sign of the strain on the regular forces, and was not calculated to dampen down unrest, but rather might further inflame tempers. 29 The movement of troops was also hindered by the lack of rail services. In Birmingham, for instance, when troops of the Royal Munster Fusiliers arrived on August 18, they were immediately made to march through the town to quell disturbances, even though they were exhausted, as they had been forced to make a fortymile route-march to get to a train that could take them to their destination. 30 Moreover, the desertion of one soldier at Llanelli might have been the forerunner of others if the crisis had developed any further. Only the week before, the famous Dont Shoot leaflet, urging British soldiers not to fire on their fellow workers, for which Tom Mann was imprisoned in the following year, had been published. When the state cannot be certain that its armed wing will always obey orders, then its authority is weakened. It was the sheer force and scale of the military intervention that was potentially so dangerous, and the fatalities that occurred and the brutal treatment of rioters only heightened the sense of crisis. Many believed that aspects of the military campaign were illegal. On August 19 the Home Office sent a telegram to all localities stating that the requirement that military forces could only be employed at the request of the civil authorities was suspended, and General Officers Commanding ... are instructed to use their own discretion. There were also rumours that the troops were instructed to shoot to kill, difficult to deny after the fatalities. Subsequent questioning of troops at the inquests into the dead men did little to allay these fears, with evasive and equivocal answers being given. 31 On both these issues it was alleged that the government had flouted the legal limitations on the use of military in industrial disputes, which it was believed had been defined by the report into the Featherstone shootings of 1893.32 In the parliamentary debate on August 22, Keir Hardie and other Labour MPs advanced these charges, and Hardie also later put them in writing in his pamphlet Killing No Murder!33 It is extremely likely that if the rail strike had gone on into the following week, the crisis could only have worsened, with what consequences we will never know. If the revolutionary potential of a historical situation depends on the balance of strength between the established state and oppositional forces, then one side of the equation at this conjuncture in 1911 points to a state that was blundering into a crisis that weakened its power. Whether the oppositional forces on the other side constituted a genuine revolutionary threat is open to question, notwithstanding arguments for the proto-syndicalism of 1911.34 But history shows that sometimes revolutionary potential develops surprisingly quickly under the pressure of circumstance. Little wonder then that the government did a complete volte-face, and called the employers in to urge them to meet with the union leaders, which they had previously resolutely refused to do, and which could be presented by the unions as major coup. With Lloyd Georges appeal to the national interest over the Agadir crisis in their ears, both sides came to a settlement based on the outcome of a rapid enquiry. Little wonder as well that 1 am on August 20, Churchill sent a telegram to every Mayor and Chief Constable, reading:

28 29

Employment of Military, p. 34. Ibid, p. 39-40. 30 Ibid, p. 34. 31 See Liverpool Daily Post, 1 Sep. 1911. 32 Featherstone Enquiry, 1893, C.-7234, pp. 9-11. 33 HO 212470/438. 34 See B. Holton, Syndicalism and labour on Merseyside, 1906-14, in H.R. Hikins (ed.), Building the Union: Studies on the Growth of the Workers Movement: Merseyside, 1756-1967, (Liverpool, 1973), pp. 121-150.

Railway Strike settled by unanimous agreement. Publish the fact that peace is made, and be specially careful to avoid collisions with those who do not know this yet.35

35

Employment of Military, p. 40.