Political Assimilation of the UK Police: A Third Reich Model?

People always jump whenever I draw parallels between any state at the moment and that of Nazi Germany. To some degree everyone tends to simply think about Nazi Germany as it was by 1944: a state at war carrying out extermination of millions of people. Obviously, that is an important aspect to remember, but the obsession with that phase means that people overlook very important lessons from earlier in the Nazi regime, for example 1933-6 before the state moved to a war setting and the authoritarian period that preceded it, 1930-3. It is unlikely that the UK or any other European state will ever return to the kind of behaviour of Nazi Germany in the mid-1940s (though the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s showed how easy it can be) but it is far more possible that states will take the first few steps towards an authoritarian or totalitarian regime and it is those steps, those policies being put into place that people looking at democracies in the 2010s need to be aware of.

With that caveat, you might wonder what issue has attracted my attention that I see parallels between the UK today and Germany in the 1930s. The issue is the apparent seizing of control over the (London) Metropolitan police service by the Deputy Mayor of London, Kit Malthouse. Malthouse is an elected member of the Greater London Authority (GLA) and was given the position of deputy mayor for policing by the directly-elected Mayor, Boris Johnson. Malthouse was formerly Deputy Leader of Westminster Council responsible for the council's finances, 1998-2003.

It became clear earlier this year that Johnson and his team wanted greater control over the Metropolitan police service. Unlike all other constabularies in the UK the Metropolitan Police is not headed by a Chief Constable, but by the Home Secretary, who, however appoints a Commissioner as operational head. To some degree all of this goes back to the role the Metropolitan Police played historically as I have highlighted in my articles on the Great Upheaval of 1910-11. Being the largest force they often supplied officers across the country to bolster local forces in times of trouble. They were often called in to investigate serious crimes particularly murders, in various parts of the country, often far from London. Thus, whilst not being a national police force they used to often play that role though it is one that has declined greatly in the post-war era.

Thus, a contest over who controls the Metropolitan police is really a battle between Conservative-run Greater London Authority and the Labour government with the police service as the 'football' between them. Ironically this turns on its head the similar tension between the Labour-run Greater London Council (GLC) under Ken Livingstone and the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher which led to the abolition of the GLC in 1986. London was without a central authority until the creation of the GLA in 2000 and ironically the last leader of the GLC, Ken Livingstone was elected the first Mayor and head of the GLA. Trying to run London without central authority caused immense difficulties as anyone who lived or drove through London witnessed in that period (roadworks were not co-ordinated between different boroughs and in London with population so high you cross borough lines every few minutes at that time often from one set of roadworks to another).

The first steps to greater GLA control came with the resignation of Sir Ian Blair, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in October 2008, citing lack of support from Johnson who had been elected five months earlier. To a great degree it was believed that Blair was resistant to Johnson's wish for greater political control of the London police and so was pressured to leave. Things, this month, have taken a step further with Malthouse, saying he and Johnson now 'have our hands on the tiller' of the Metropolitan police and have an electoral mandate to influence what it does. Furthermore he said that they had had 'elbowed the Home Office out of the picture' and would not simply comply with Metropolitan Police proposals: 'We do not want to be a passenger on the Met cruise' he said. Despite his ineffectual nature and the corruption of many of his deputies, it is clear that Johnson relishes power. However, it has become quickly apparent that Johnson is the pioneer for further steps of this nature.

David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party who seems absolutely confident that he will become prime minister in 2010, has outlined the policy of having elected heads of all constabularies. This is sold on the basis that it will reduce Home Office bureaucracy and allow greater accountability to the local community (or certainly to those who are not marginalised and can make a fuss). Of course, you will find quite strict controls over the electoral process as Cameron would not want an active Muslim as the new head of the West Midlands or the Greater Manchester constabularies as might be the case in a free election.

Unsurprisingly, these steps have attracted resistance from the police. Ian Johnston, President of the Police Superintendants' Association (superintendants and chief superintendants run local police and detective units; they can be considered middle management in the police structure) has portrayed the approach as risking the world renown of the UK police service for 'short-term political dogma'. Now, people on the left like me, see the police as a very conservative force in society anyway and their response to the G20 protests this year which resulted in the police murdering a passerby as well as the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes by police in 2005, just heightens that sense. So, if they feel that a right-wing Conservative policy is going too far, then you know it must be pretty extreme. Back in the early 1990s I remember talking to liberal police officers (they do exist, there are police who do still see themselves as having a role in guarding rather than repressing society) who were worried by what they saw as the politicisation of the service back then and we have gone much further since.

So, what has any of this to do with the Third Reich? Germany in the 1930s had a police system very similar to the UK model, i.e. decentralised. This in part had come about because the German state was a federation of various other states which retained their own police forces. There was an imbalance as after 1866 Prussia constituted two-thirds of Germany so Prussian police forces covered a great deal, if not all of the country. As in the UK, detectives from the capital, Berlin in Prussia, would be called into to tackle serious murder cases in other German states.

When the Nazis came to power in January 1933, they obviously were keen to take full control of the police system. They created a rival body in the SA (Sturmabteilung), their paramilitary group which almost immediately set up their own illegal prisons and the first concentration camps. However, step-by-step 1933-6 the Nazis began to bring the police forces of Germany under political control. In March 1933, Heinrich Himmler became Police President of the Munich police and Commander of the political police (these units had existed in a number of German states since the late 19th century and were responsible for monitoring revolutionaries and reactionaries and anyone who threatened the political status quo) across the whole of Bavaria, the largest of the German states outside Prussia. In September 1933 Himmler became head of the political police in all German states except Prussia. In Prussia he became Head of the Prussian Police and its political division (the 'Gestapo' from GEheim STAats POlizei, i.e. secret state police) though in theory he was under Hermann Goering who had been Minister of the Interior for Prussia since January 1933. It was not until 17th June 1936, three-and-a-half years after the Nazis had come to power that Himmler became head of all police forces across Germany. He merged the detective units, the so-called Kripo (KRIminalPOlizei) with the Gestapo to create the Sipo (SIcherheitsPOlizei - security police). The Orpo (ORdnungspolizei - order police), the uniformed sections remained separate but still under Himmler.

Himmler already headed the SS and had created the SD (Sicherheitsdienst - security service) as an intelligence organisation to monitor Nazi party members though it turned into a counter-espionage unit. The final stage of politicisation of the German police came in 1939 when the RHSA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt - Reich Security Central Office) merged the SD and Sipo effectively making the police an arm of the Nazi party.

Now, I am not saying that David Cameron intends that by 2015, the UK police will be an arm of the Conservative Party, but what is important to note are the steps that led up to Himmler taking control in 1936. Cameron would contest that he would weaken the Home Office and reduce centralisation. However, given the people likely to be elected to run the different constabularies, it is likely that they will get guidance from the Conservative government, and recognising that they need to maintain their position by popular vote are going to press policies that they know the public are sympathetic to. We all know that in a referendum the UK would be compelled to leave the EU, the death penalty would be re-introduced, paedophiles castrated and all people from ethnic minorities would be expelled from the country. Thus, the likely step is that we see more radical policies aimed at those that people that the 'silent majority' despise and are whipped up to hate by the tabloid media. What would be interesting is, if in some areas of the country where left-wing radicalism lives on a truly liberal head of police was elected and police policies such as use of the over-use of sus laws against ethnic minority men and the blocking of protestors from reaching sites would be challenged. I could imagine that happening in Liverpool and Glasgow. Presumably in that situation, the Cameron government would find some excuse to take direct control away from that particular elected head. Do not be deluded that election of heads of police means no central control, it will just be a different approach to a more explicit control.

To some degree I do not know why Cameron feels he has to grab this control of the police. They basically follow a very conservative line anyway. Individual chief constables may not follow the Conservative Party manifesto to the letter, but as we saw with the G20 protests they are more than happy to intervene forcefully against and perceived threat to the status quo. The police have not balked at imposing the anti-terrorism legislation though it has effectively brought house arrest to people who have not been convicted of anything; similarly they have no trouble tracking 'escaped' asylum seekers from places like Campsfield House. To some degree because Tony Blair took a number of steps towards an authoritarian state and Gordon Brown has not reversed these, to appear more conservative, Cameron has to go further. Perhaps he genuinely believes in democracy, but I am increasingly feeling he sees it as a faulty system that gives too much of a voice to those people he feels should not have a voice because they only make foolish decisions.

The UK will not become the Third Reich reborn, but there are lessons from German history about how a decentralised police service can be centralised and politicised step-by-step that are useful for us to bear in mind at a stage when Boris Johnson begins to assert political control over the largest police force in the UK, not that different from what Hermann Goering did in Berlin in 1933.

Beating and Killing by Police Returns to the UK

People have been talking recently about the legacy of the Miners' Strike of 1984-5 and one aspect that we have been reminded of in the past fortnight is how it made it seem permissible that the police behave as if they were putting down a peasants' revolt when suppressing legitimate protest. Though we have moved on 25 years the attitude seems to have reawoken. The police have better surveillance equipment and a whole host of weaponry to suppress protests but they do not seem to have learned how to keep their tempers any better than they did in the 1980s.

Perhaps it is the new generation who feel they missed out on the exciting riots of the 1980s. It is always incredible when you talk to the children of police officers or immigration officers thinking of following their parents into the force at how already they are inculcated with the bigoted attitudes. I suppose we all learn from our parents, but never have I been so startled at how ingrained negative, violent attitudes are in these people. There is no reference to serving the public or protecting society, just to the chance to suppress people. In other contexts, such as those moving to football hooliganism it is condemned, but somehow violent police are exempt from such censure.

Commentators used to speak of how the television series, 'The Sweeney' (1975-8) encouraged police to drive fast and smoke and drink heavily and 'The Bill' (since 1983) police series has tried to encourage more responsible policing as you know every police officer and his/her family watch it religiously. However, it is clear that a culture is still running deep with in the police service which sees any protest no matter how peaceful as illegitimate and in need of being put down violently. If there is no violence present, the police try to provoke it, if they fail in doing that they simply wade in and beat people.

We have a new legitimacy for attacking protestors which was given to the world by the USA following the 11th September 2001 terrorist attacks in that country. The Bush government built up an attitude that we are in constant and sustained danger which permits them to do anything (as anyone who has had their suitcase opened when it was being loaded on to an aircraft out of the USA knows, they leave a nice slip of smiley people saying how necessary it was to break into your luggage and how you must understand this), notably abductions and torture. Such attitudes foisted repeatedly on the UK by its US ally which often feels we are not sufficiently paranoid, spread widely throughout society. In the USA people were even beaten up attending the celebrations are around Barack Obama's inaugural ceremony, because despite the change at the top, the hostile attitudes lower down the hierarchy have not changed an iota yet. In this kind of attitude, the UK police, feel as they have not done since the 1980s, that they have a green light to be violent and that they will get away with it.

In the weeks leading up to the G20 protests we were told how they were going to be violent and the police would have to act forcefully. As it turned out, of course, the violence came from the police, frustrated that they had not got the battle their bosses had promised. Of course the knock-on effect and presumably the one desired by broader government was to scare off legitimate peaceful protestors from doing anything of this kind again. Stamping on legal protest is accelerating very quickly in the UK. Yesterday 114 people were arrested before they even began protesting and were 16 Km away from the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. They were said to represent a 'serious threat' to the power station. Anyone who, like me, has been inside power stations, knows they are not that easy either to get into (certainly beyond the reception) or to damage. If they were that vulnerable to protest, surely the security should be look at.

What these police do not understand is that real terrorists, not the part-time protestors they try to portray as terrorists, real terrorists would be in there and blowing up the place while the police were mucking around arresting middle-aged protestors many kilometres away. Real terrorists would not be as ineffectual as these protestors and it is alarming that the police do not recognise this. Of course, their real agenda is not really that bothered about protecting power stations, it is more about fostering a society in which there is no protest and we meekly accept all that the government and big private companies tell us, no matter how damaging it is to us and the wider world. Police officers and their families are just as prone to suffering from the consequences of global warming, the collapse of banks that have behave recklessly, GM crops, nuclear weapons and so on, as the rest of us.

The stepping up of the suppression of protesting in the UK has come in the past fortnight. As the days pass more and more evidence has come to light of how violent the police were at the G20 summit protests. Despite their predictions the most virulent assault by protestors was on a branch of the RBS bank which was broken into and ransacked. However, only a few out of the 124 people arrested were associated with that incident and it looks like charges will not be pressed against the rest. So why did the police go on the hunt around the different protestor encampments on 1st April and simply beating up people who had generally stopped their protests by the time the police had arrived?

I know the police like football hooligans get very excitable and are looking for 'action'. They had been telling protestors this throughout the day, clearly in a desire to raise the tension and hoping to provoke a reaction which of course did not come. As no full-scale riot had manifested despite what their seniors had promised, they had to work out their desire for beating people with truncheons. Certain units were even throwing people men and women through the air. At least 120 people have made complaints about the violence by the police. The units were involved were from the Metropolitan Police (which covers almost all of London), the City of London police (which is a weird tiny unit that only covers the financial district of London) and the British Transport Police (a new departure for them, they are not usually known for such violence but clearly wanted to get a look in at how to break arms with truncheons).

The police tried to keep journalists away and even detained six press photographers. What they forgot is that these days all of us have cameras and so there is stacks of footage and stills of the police brutality. This almost immediately showed how the police were lying about the murder of Ian Tomlinson. They said he had collapsed from a heart attack and that medics were prevented by people throwing bottles from attending to him. In fact video evidence shows he was clubbed and thrown to the ground by police and lay at their feet while he died. There is photographic evidence of a whole series of truncheon wounds and police dog bites. Ironically it is likely to be the legal system and its tariff of compensation for such injuries that is going to rein in police behaviour or at least bring them to account. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is moving very slowly on these cases but at least the officer who murdered Ian Tomlinson has been suspended.

While I have been speaking on and off about the creeping authoritarian state in the UK, I remain an eternal optimist that these things are isolated, that people will realise they have gone too far and will rein back in their or their officers' behaviour. However, we keep seeing incidents like the ones outlined here which show how quickly civil liberties are decaying. It is ironic when the media of China, so renowned for its suppression of civil liberties and any protest, starts reporting our behaviour in that direction. How can we complain of Chinese government behaviour when they can simply turn round and say 'well, we are only behaving as you did at the G20 summit'. Such behaviour as we are seeing from the British police has an impact far beyond the UK and leads to suffering not just of British citizens. Of course the bulk of police officers, feeling empowered in their bigotry by the paranoia around Islamist terrorists, have no concern for 'foreign types'.

We must only hope that the police involved in the violence of 1st April are suspended and their constabularies have to pay out again and again compensation for the injuries and the murder that their officers inflicted. Of course, I fear more likely that simply police will investigate police and will come back with 'no case to answer'. Whatever happens, the police and those others who want to choke off any protest will have won a great victory. In the future most protestors no matter how mild their protest is going to be, will think twice before setting off to make a legal protest for fear that they will be beaten, thrown about like a rugby ball or beaten to death by British police officers. Democracy in the UK suffered a terrible blow on 1st April 2009 from which it is unlikely to recover in the short term.


P.P. 19/04/2009 - Other things are coming to light connected with these two incidents that highlight further worrying trends. Ian Tomlinson was not a protestor, he was a newspaper seller who worked in the area of the demonstration and happened to have his hands in his pockets while walking home. This apparently was a defiant gesture sufficient in the minds of the police to warrant him being clubbed to death. You do not have to be a protestor to be killed by the British police, just happen to be going about your business when the police are in a mood to carry out a killing. Employers should withdraw all employees from areas where such activity is going on, they have a moral obligation to keep their workers safe. I am pleased to hear that the policeman who murdered Ian Tomlinson may be charged with manslaughter. I do not use the word 'murder' lightly, it was clear that there was predmeditation, the police went out to kill someone and so are little different to an American teenager driving through town shooting at people. I accept that they did not target Ian Tomlinson until the last murder, but they had a 'mind to murder' from the start.

We must watch this carefully to see he is brought to court. I feel we are at a real crossroads. If this incident is swept under the carpet then the police will feel they have a green light to do this sort of thing again; protests will be choked off because people will fear being killed by the police at them. If the police are at least called to order then hopefully they will think twice before going on the rampage as they clearly did at the start of this month.

The other alarming development is around the power station protest arrests. The 114 people were arrested over a period of 36 hours. This sounds very much like a Gestapo round up of the 1930s or 1940s. Again, I do not use the word 'Gestapo' lightly. The sweeping down on people, handcuffing, forcing them to face the wall and bringing no charges against them is very like the behaviour of an authoritarian police force. Interestingly one of the people arrested was asked if they were 'proud to be a terrorist'. Clearly the definition of terrorism has now become a catch-all term and can be used in any way people choose to define those they seek to eliminate. This is very like what Adolf Hitler said, 'I decide who is a Jew', i.e. that there was no set criteria, he could simply define a person as someone he wanted removed. It is clear that the police now feel in that position too. Of course we have long seen this at airports where anyone who makes a complaint is deemed to be acting in a manner like a terrorist. This suppression of complaint and protest is clearly now being widened throughout society. As I have noted, in this atmosphere, all of us have been empowered to cause trouble for neighbours who annoy us by simply reporting them as 'hoarding' chemicals such as common garden products or rotting kidney beans, that could be used as a bomb or biological weapon. There is an easy equation: 'people we do not like = terrorist'.

I have no sympathy with the Conservative Party at all but agree that the arrest of Shadow Home Affairs Spokesperson, Damian Green was again very authoritarian. What complicates the matter is that Boris Johnson, Mayor of London was trying to tip off Green about his imminent arrest anyway, because of knowledge Johnson had got through overseeing the Metropolitan Police. I suppose it is not surprise that as the state moves further and further away from accountability and democracy that people will increasingly use influence and corruption to protect themselves from state power, so exacerbating the spiral of the collapse of a healthy civil society until it becomes a 'gangster-style' society. This term is often applied to corrupt military regimes such as that of Chiang Kai-Shek in China before the Second World War. The Blarite party fostered nepotism and favouritism so helping to create a structure which is now coming to fruition.

We are at a crossroads and I just hope UK society takes the correct road.

Return to Victorian Policing for the UK?

I was intrigued to read that the so-called 'think-tank' group, Reform is advising that the UK move back towards the police structure that Britain had in the Victorian era, well, really up to 1942 Defence (Amalgamation of Police Forces) Regulations for southern England and the 1946 Police Act for most of the rest of the UK, though not really completed until the 1964 Police Act. If we go back to the date for which I have best figures, coming from my work on the Great Unrest we find that in 1908 there were 197 police forces in England and Wales (plus 48 in Scotland where mergers began in 1930), primarily because many towns had separate forces to those of the counties around them. For example as well as the Kent County Constabulary there were separate forces, until 1942 in Dover, Folkstone, Maidstone, Margate, Ramsgate and Tunbridge Wells. Thus, a criminal could skip across seven jurisdictions without leaving the county. Back in 2006 the government attempted to take the 1942/6 and 1964 developments a stage further and combine the current 43 constabularies in England and Wales (Scotland now has 8 constabularies; Northern Ireland has always had only one) into 17 so-called 'super-forces' though this initiative failed primarily as people felt they would be too far from the central organisation of their police units.

Forming large regional groupings was trying to go into the opposite direction to what most trends in Britain have been doing certainly since the 1995-8 with the establishment of local government unitary authorities which fragmented a county like Berkshire into four pieces and the recreation of the tiny county of Rutland in 1997 which has only two small towns Oakham and Uppingham. I have often noted how the British cling to outdated, often impractical, elements because they have no pride in anything contemporary. This is why it is taking so long for imperial measurement to die out, despite the fact that nothing else has been taught in British state schools for over 35 years. The British like the quaint and the old fashioned in favour of anything larger or more efficient. Interestingly Reform argues that smaller forces are more efficient and wants to introduce an additional 52 constabularies, raising the number to 95, a figure not seen since the 1940s. They argue that senior police officers effectively form an oligarchy, so I think they imagine that having an additional 52 chief constables would widen the intake a bit.

Another interesting thing is their reference to the Metropolitan Constabulary as being de facto the national police force and rather than the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) formed in 2006, that the Metropolitan force should take on formal responsibility for tackling such things. Again this is no different really to the pattern of the early 20th century in which detection of serious crimes such as murder was often handled by someone sent down from Scotland Yard and for dealing with riots Metropolitan police were often sent in as the only other alternative was the Army.

I suggest Reform look back to the experiences of having numerous constabularies. One key problem was the small size of these forces. In 1911, some towns such as Tonypandy in Wales would only have eight policemen all told and Hull despite being a port and a large city only had 5 mounted police. Given that we are seeing cutbacks in constabularies in an effort to cut costs. The rural county of Dorset is shedding 50 police; next door Hampshire which contains the port cities of Portsmouth and Southampton is dropping 100, more suburban Surrey is reducing by 144, 80 from Gwent in Wales and 120 from County Durham. This follows on from the fact that 19 constabularies cut police numbers in 2008. Now, if you increase the number of forces by 120% then each force will have 45% of the police they had before. I know they will have smaller areas to police and I hope that Reform has divided up the country on a rational rather than nostalgic basis, but it would mean a lot of fragmentation. In addition, each new force will need a Chief Constable and deputies and all the staff associated with those roles, so the smaller forces will actually lead to fewer frontline police officers.

So, as in 1911 we will see a plethora of small forces and a return to the dependence on London to supply detectives and probably riot police too (which given police predictions of civil unrest this Summer in the wake of the recession, this is an issue to consider). In 1911 local forces were overwhelmed. Some were able to draw on deals they had made with other constabularies, such as Liverpool bringing in police from Leeds and Birmingham, but this leads to a very complex pattern of command. I have noted the reluctance of the British population to see their local forces merged with those of neighbouring areas, back in 1911, for example in Cardiff, middle class people turned out to assault Metropolitan police brought in to help control the rioting as though they were not involved in the strikes occurring at the time, they had a violent hostility to 'foreign' police being used in their city. It became typical for 'imported' police to remove their insignia that showed which constabulary they belonged to. I did wonder during the 1984-5 Miners' Strike if officers not wishing to be the focus of complaint was only part of the reason for them concealing their insignia or whether deep in police forces there was still this guidance about revealing the origin of imported police, as, during that strike, police were bussed in from all over the UK to strike areas.

I would be intrigued to see on what basis Reform feels smaller forces are more efficient. I would suggest that they pay at least some attention to the history of the forces in the UK before making these sweeping statements, which whilst in line with recent tendencies in this country towards parochialisation could cause real problems especially as we might be heading towards a period of unrest not unlike that of the 1910s and certainly resembling that of 1981-5.

The Great Unrest 1910-11. Part 3: Government Policy on Reacting to Strikes and Riots

This section looks at how before 1910 the government had established its policy on reacting to serious strikes and to riots. This policy was harsh and saw the use of military and naval forces as a natural response. Partly this was due to the very fragmented nature of the British police force at the time. Particular directions to the military about opening fire on the front row of crowds to disperse them could easily have led to massacres during large demonstrations. Fortunately this policy was put into effect on the ground by Major-General Nevil Macready who was given command over all military and (controversially) police forces in the areas of the country facing greatest unrest. His experience of policing in Egypt and South Africa meant he adopted a calm and measured approach which sought to stop riots and emphasise their illegality, whilst not causing casualties. If many other men had been appointed to this role, the UK would have seen far greater loss of life in this period.

In this section I particularly challenge historians like Anthony Mor O'Brien, Roger Geary and Jane Morgan who see a radical shift in government policy in 1911 towards actions they see at least trying to suppress 'peaceful' industrial protest and at worst as being illegal. I show how in fact the policy that had been set down in 1908 was carried out consistently right throughout this period. The government was not aiming to suppress the strikes, just to minimise the harm to individuals and property caused by the riots occurring at the same time. Owing to the lack of police at a local level the central government was compelled to intervene. Their actions were often supported by local strikers as a great deal of the unrest was actually caused by people unconnected to the particular strike. The anger Geary and Morgan felt at the Thatcher regime's real suppression of generally peaceful protest during the 1984-5 Miners' Strike led them to take a distorted view of the events of 1910-11. In fact their books show the difficulty in trying to sustain this story that there was an abrupt change in policy in 1911, something that has been picked up by subsequent historians, notably Barbara Weinberger and David Powell.


Government Policy: Establishing the Response to Disturbances
The continuity of governmental response over the preceding decades was emphasised by the Select Committee on Employment of Military in Cases of Disturbances reporting in July 1908, just two years before the Tonypandy riots which mark the start of the greatest unrest. It followed the shooting of two people, not strikers, during the 1907 Belfast dock strike. The committee considered civil authority powers in securing military aid and the responsibilities of military officers so engaged. The government was, in fact, in a potentially strong, but certainly unclear, position. Given the reluctance in the preceding decades to codify the government's powers, any action carried out to suppress unrest was ‘legal’ if it could be subsequently proven in court not to be inconsistent with civil law. Naturally, however, soldiers were apprehensive to act in such an uncertain environment, especially given the likely attitude of the community to certain actions.[1]

Policy had been established by the Inter-Departmental Committee on Riots in 1894 which followed the fatal shooting of two people during the 1893 Featherstone riot. The procedure was that a mayor or a magistrate, co-ordinating with the appropriate chief constable, applied to the nearest Army base for an appropriate force. Commanding officers reported to the War Office which could dispatch additional troops and involve the Admiralty, if required.[2]

The 1908 committee recommended little change.  It re-emphasised that troops were the last resort. It did give greater weight to the discretion of chief and head constables, and commanding officers on the spot, in terms of what action should be taken, such as firing. During the unrest of the 1910s, chief constables resented the fact that, though the troops were supposed to be aiding local police, they remained under the control of their commanding officers. However, this was an important matter, as demonstrated during the St. George’s Plateau riot in Liverpool in 1911, when the officer on the spot refused demands that he oppose the rioters with his troops, knowing that such action could lead to a massacre. Though the committee advised that more alerts be given before firing than had happened previously, the approach of reading the Riot Act and firing soon after, continued. Following the report, a circular went to chief and head constables in April 1909, reminding them of the procedures.[3]

Troops had been used in strikes on a regular basis: 24 times in 39 years. However, firing had only occurred twice, both times resulting in deaths. Between 1895-1902 the Army had been used in incidents as diverse as the Cornish fishing riots, the Bridgwater bricklayers’ strike, the 1898 South Wales coal strike, the Taff Vale Railway strike, the Grimsby fishermen’s lock-out and the Penrhyn Quarry dispute. Naval gunboats were used in Cornwall and at Grimsby. During unrest in August 1911, a cruiser, H.M.S. ‘Attentive’ was stationed to guard the Hull dock gates; a couple of warships sat off Liverpool and torpedo boats patrolled the River Thames.[4]

The committee decried the fact that only 57 of England and Wales’s 197 police forces had mutual aid agreements, often with forces from similar areas to their own, so liable to be affected by the same strikes. The weakness of such agreements was revealed during unrest in Hull in 1911. The city had agreements with the neighbouring constabularies of Bradford, the East Riding of Yorkshire, Leeds, Scarborough and York. However, when called upon, only the East Riding and York were in a position to supply any police to Hull. Despite this difficulty, government policy stated that troops could ‘only act in support of an adequate Police force’.[5] Yet, as the incidents of 1911 proved, they often had to substitute for the inadequate numbers of police available. Cavalry were seen as most effective in a riot, able to break a crowd without recourse to weapons. Consequently the 1908 committee wanted more mounted police, but recognised the consequent financial burden.[6]

Government Policy: The Use of Macready and Askwith
The application of government policy towards industrial unrest was aided by its use of two clear-headed men able to minimise the potential unrest through counteracting the hot temperaments of employers, local authorities, strikers and the public. They achieved this through using the right of law and common sense.

In 1910, the well-decorated Nevil Macready became a major-general and Director of Personal Services at the War Office. He had experience with the military police in Egypt, and in occupying South Africa.[7] Free from a divisional command, Macready oversaw the assortment of forces sent to tackle unrest across the UK. As Jane Morgan notes, this gave him ‘[u]nity of command of civil and military forces’ under ‘the direct authority of the Home Office, as a supposedly impartial force in the dispute.’[8] Charles Townsend characterises such this approach as ‘the colonial technique’ putting control into the hands of a few chosen men.[9]

Macready was certainly more impartial than the local magistrates and police tied into parochial networks of employers and lacking any ‘idea of detachment’.[10] However, Anthony Mor O’Brien sees a ‘hidden agenda’ in the use of Macready, feeling he was sent to reduce the power of local magistrates. In fact, however, there were important practical reasons for Macready commanding ‘imported’ police, as seen in the Army’s 1912 pamphlet Duties in Aid of Civil Power. Soldiers arrived with their own tents, food supply and medical staff. The imported police even lacked their own blankets and were dependent on local provision.[11]

In addition to J.P. Moylan, who acted as Churchill’s confidential agent in the Welsh coal miners' strike and two Welsh-speaking detectives supplied by Scotland Yard, Macready arranged for his own officers to check rumours and supply accurate intelligence. Subsequently his approach was included in the Army’s guidance: ‘information received from the local police and civilian population is often very much exaggerated, and must be discounted accordingly.’. During the South Wales miners’ strike, in what we would now see as public relations work, Macready provided 'The Times' journalist Lionel James with official messages. Though this angered local journalists, James provided sober reporting that calmed tensions. Despite his competence, Macready was as biased as any British general of his time, later writing that he ‘never for a moment believed that the British working man would sink to the level of Irishmen or foreigners...’. However, he did believe in the right to strike.[12]

Macready had to emphasise that despite what local employers sought, he could not ‘flood the valleys with troops’ and that they would only intervene when all police efforts to maintain law and order failed. He refused social invitations from local employers and had officers of the same rank, attached both to the strikers and to the employers. He insisted on strict adherence to the law, thus limiting pickets to six strikers. On 21 November 1911, when his troops were involved in clearing stone throwers, Macready instructed them to jab offenders with bayonets only in their backsides to minimise casualties.  As Captain Wyndham Childs, one of Macready's intelligence officers, noted accurately, ‘no rifle was ever used during any disturbance in which Sir Nevil was concerned.’, elsewhere it was different. It is likely that other British Army commanders would have adopted less measured approaches than Macready, resulting in further rioting and deaths. Macready was exasperated by the attempt to attack blacklegs on 21 November 1910, and Barbara Weinberger notes that as a result he subsequently adopted a ‘zero tolerance’ policy towards strikers. However, his emphasis on impartial policing meant that, by December 1910, rioting in South Wales had ceased and he moved on. Taking over, Lieutenant-Colonel George Freeth did not vary from the balanced approach Macready had established. Macready himself was used in Salford in July 1911 and oversaw the military response to the national rail and miners’ strikes.[13]

In the 1910s the United Kingdom lacked a ministry of labour and the Board of Trade dealt with industrial matters. Its key labour official was George Askwith, a former lawyer who, between 1911-19, was Chief Industrial Commissioner, effectively a roving arbitrator. Believing in the ‘futility of conciliation by a committee’ he acted in person bringing agreement by force of personality. His greatest success was in July 1911 in Manchester when he tackled representatives from twenty different professions on strike and their employers, whilst police and troops gathered in the area. Six days of solid negotiation engineered by Askwith ended the dispute.[14]

Like Macready, Askwith was ready to travel almost immediately to where he was needed. He saw economic motives behind most disputes and believed that many could be prevented through clarifying established agreements. He gained a deserved international reputation settling strikes in 1910-13 as diverse as among metal workers, dockers, coal miners, lightermen and confectionary workers. Ultimately, Askwith’s standing meant that just sending him to a locality could end a dispute. Neither Macready nor Askwith banished rioting or industrial disputes, but without them such situations would have lasted longer and been more damaging.[15]

Government Policy: A Change in 1911?
Anthony Mor O’Brien comments on the ‘remarkable change of policy’ which came in August 1911 in regard to handling the riots. He contrasts Churchill’s replacement of the troops requested by magistrates with police during the Tonypandy unrest with the policy adopted the following year when troops were used with ‘alacrity’.[16] Similarly Roger Geary contrasts the proactive approach to the national rail strike with the reactive one adopted in South Wales in 1910 and again during the national coal mining strike of 1912. In August 1911, troops were despatched to strategic locations across the country before the strike had started.[17] The national rail strike encompassed upheaval already underway in South Wales, Liverpool and Hull. Such widespread unrest threatened national paralysis at a time when tension with Germany was at a height over the Agadir Crisis.

The government felt obliged to aid railway companies in maintaining a service and though its response was swift and wide-reaching, it took a sober view of incoming reports. The action had two objectives: protecting railway property and rail workers who defied the call to strike. Whilst this can be seen as serving as a protection force for the interests of the companies, it also meant safeguarding the infrastructure of the country, at a time when most troop movements were by railway. The extent of the commitment was highlighted by Childs, now Macready’s staff officer, when he wrote ‘[w]e had got every soldier we could secure out on duty with the police. ... Literally there was not a man left in barracks.’[18] On 16 August 1911, Churchill removed the need for local authorities to requisition troops and sent them to twenty-seven locations himself. Whilst this shows the approach Geary, Morgan and O’Brien condemn, it was the only practical approach given the extent of the unrest and the difficulty of communication. Typically, a couple of battalions, usually including cavalry, were sent to thirty-five towns across the seven strike regions, with London retaining the largest force.[19]

As seen above, the strike’s origins were in Liverpool, already suffering a city-wide general strike. Railway workers resented that most railway companies had failed to recognise trade unions. Though the government intervened to promote negotiations, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith’s emphasis on not permitting a national paralysis angered workers sparking the national strike on 18 August 1911.[20] David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, citing Britain’s weak position dealing with Germany, was able to restart negotiations, meaning that the patchy strike ended on 21 August.

Despite the brevity of the strike there was widespread rioting and an extensive government reaction. Strike areas, under a senior military officer, were established in industrial central and northern England as well as London. Freeth’s area in South Wales was also retained. Searle argues that Churchill’s manner, of ‘childish delight’ and ‘Napoleonic moods and gestures’, with which he carried out the response to the unrest, almost as much as these actions, prejudiced the labour movement against him. One of Churchill’s under-secretaries, Charles Masterman, noted how ‘wildly excited’ he was, mapping the country and directing troops. Masterman felt Churchill ‘did it right’ but ‘in an amazingly wrong way’ by issuing ‘disastrous bulletins’.[21]

O’Brien feels that Churchill ‘shared the widespread conviction’ that ‘revolution was at hand, and therefore centralist tendencies were necessary’. In contrast, Barbara Weinberger notes that, in fact, the government faced criticism for not moving towards a centralised police force.[22] Whilst fears of revolution were widespread throughout the country, government circles retained a more sober attitude. Protecting railway property was harder than it is today. Different railway companies each had their own stations in the towns they served and often separate goods and passenger stations. In addition, there were numerous signal boxes, often in isolated locations. Churchill was angered by the companies’ concern for profitable passenger services and commanders were advised, instead, that each train carrying vital cargo like food and mail, and in Lancashire, raw cotton, should be accompanied by 6-10 soldiers. Further guidance encouraged commanders to select officers for ‘their tact and firmness in what may be difficult situations’. None of this suggests ministers who had lost their heads nor were seeking to bring down legitimate protest.[23] In fact, as Weinberger notes, the central intervention by Churchill was most designed to reduce local demands for a military response. Similarly, David Powell observes that Churchill’s reactions were more restraining than warlike.[24]

O’Brien, Geary and Morgan have also overlooked the different nature of the industries on strike in the period so requiring different types of response. Coal mining is restricted to specific areas and tight communities, whereas railway work, crucially, crosses constabulary boundaries. Railway company police of the 1910s, like transport police today, were not confined to a small geographical area, thus, the forces used by the government to assist them also had to be able to cover wherever railways went.[25] Hence, 1911 saw the location of forces at transport nodes across the country. It was often in comparatively small towns such as Chesterfield, Earlsdown, Lincoln and Tredegar, that there was the greatest unrest and military forces contributed the most to quelling the situation.[26] Coupled with this, unlike during other disputes of the time, in August 1911 the 20,000-strong Metropolitan Police force was too busy in London itself, to supply its officers to other cities. There was no way that a railway strike could be handled in the same way as miners’ strike, even a national one. It could only be handled centrally, and, given the fact that the very form of transport that the military used to reach riot areas, trains, was being affected, effective policing of the unrest could only be done by having the forces ready in place.

A key complaint that historians have against the government’s behaviour in August 1911 is this necessarily national, as opposed to local, control of forces which they see as being undemocratic. Geary, in fact, sees any use of soldiers in industrial action as a repressive governmental policy. Both Geary and Morgan perceive a ‘radical change’ and feel that because troops were dispatched on national government initiative there was a ‘resulting lack of local or national answerability’. Morgan argues this power should have remained with local authorities with their ‘inherent accountability’. This attitude ignores the fact that national government was accountable to the electorate, parliament and effectively the King. Her own evidence shows that, as Home Secretary, Churchill was regularly questioned in Parliament on the use of troops and imported police. O’Brien talks of the Home Office’s ‘mission’ to centralise the police force. Barbara Weinberger, strongly challenges this view of centralisation and comments on how the government always tended to give up its co-ordinating role once the crisis had passed. She says that anyway, any temporary centralisation tended to be restricted to Churchill’s period as Home Secretary.[27] This is unsurprising as it was during his term in the office that new levels of unrest, which threw local authorities into panic and calls for extreme responses, attained a peak. Whilst Weinberger counters the perspective of a centralising approach being part of an ongoing policy, she, like Geary, Morgan and O’Brien overlooks important practical reasons why soldiers had to be used in industrial action in the 1910s and, thus, why the responses to unrest had to be done by central rather than local government.

Morgan condemns the centralist approach, despite recognising how outnumbered local police were and how difficult it was to ‘import’ additional officers.[28] By 1908, the 197 police forces of England and Wales covered 60 counties and over a hundred boroughs. Lincolnshire had three forces under one chief constable and another for Lincoln city. Kent had a county force and six separate town forces.[29] Many of these forces were small. Weinberger notes the average was 1 officer per 500 citizens in cities and per 1000 citizens in rural areas, and of course, only a fraction were available on any one shift. In times of unrest this meant they were thinly stretched. In July 1911 Hull had only 6 mounted policemen to deal with thousands of strikers and Derby had 130 police compared to 15,000 rail workers.[30]

As Sires notes, a Home Secretary dealing with such unrest ‘... could hardly have escaped criticism’, from labour that the steps taken were repressive and from capital that they were insufficient. Generally the Home Office managed to tread the fine line between sending sufficient force to handle incidents without provoking unnecessary hostility. Churchill emphasised that peaceful picketing did not involve rioting and, whilst he did not countenance the kind of repression mine and ship owners were calling for, he did press for the prosecution of rioters.[31] He underlined that the police and military were there to guard public safety and protect property whilst maintaining an impartial stance in disputes. This differed from the attitude of many mine owners, who, as magistrates, had seen the local police as their private force. Despite the care taken by Churchill and Macready, they were unable to prevent the view that that police and military forces were suppressing legitimate protest.[32]

Whilst the response to the 1911 rioting attracts most attention, as Critchley notes, the government’s approach to serious unrest remained consistent. As Home Secretary, Reginald McKenna lacked Churchill’s talents; he felt himself isolated and historians note his antagonism with Haldane who remained War Secretary. Fletcher sees McKenna as being more cautious than Churchill and unwilling to give Haldane a ‘free hand’. Yet, McKenna did not alter the established policy, he simply did not face the same challenges as Churchill. Like Churchill he emphasised that the maintenance of the peace was the responsibility of local authorities and assistance would only be sent when serious disturbances were in progress. McKenna’s complaint about the despatch of soldiers to two mines in April 1912, only differs from Churchill’s initial response to the Tonypandy situation in the fact that McKenna did not intervene directly, and that may be explained by Haldane now being in better health.[33] Thus, policy remained consistent right through the period, though its application adjusted to particular circumstances.

Leaving the summoning of troops to local bodies was dangerous. As Morgan herself notes, ‘the local authorities were, naturally, preoccupied with their own areas’. Local magistrates and watch committees were often drawn from among local employers. Of the magistrates covering the Rhondda Valley, only one, the newest, Edmund Stonelake, came from a working class background, of the other five, two were lords and a third would later become a peer. It was only in 1911 that the power to appoint magistrates was removed from the county lord lieutenants and magistrates from a wider social background began to appear.

O’Brien believes that in such situations the local magistrates’ power should have been supreme. He portrays the Chief Constable of Glamorgan, Captain Lionel Lindsay as taking ‘autocratic powers’ in importing police to Tonypandy. He argues that the local magistrates’ and councillors’ reluctance to pay for the police used demonstrated their dislike of this approach.[34] However, nothing Lindsay did went against local magistrates’ wishes, nor did he vary from the established procedure highlighted above.

As Weinberger notes, local authorities, in contrast to central government, ‘tended to favour calling in the military since this cost them nothing in financial terms’, whereas overtime for their own police, and the wages of imported officers came from the rates. She shows that Newport council had preferred to risk damage claims from companies for loss of trade than pay for the importation of police to protect blackleg labour. After the Tonypandy riots, the local authority refused to pay the £33,800 [worth £2.1 million now] charged for the supply of Metropolitan police on the grounds they had requested the military, and the Treasury ultimately had to foot the bill. This bore out what local employers had noted earlier, that calling on the military rather than police was much cheaper. Consequently, in future disputes the Home Office ruled that it would not supply police until the council concerned had agreed to pay for them. Following the unrest in Hull, the council was praised for its adherence to procedure, but it was shocked at the bill for the Metropolitan police who had been imported. After four days’ service they had had to provide the officers' normal pay as well as special duty pay, a total of £1 5d [equivalent to £63 now] per constable per day. Though the total bill for Hull council was £1330 [£82,500 at present day values] it, in fact, had got off lightly. A Home Office minute of September 1911 noted that ultimately Hull council had not had to contribute to the ordinary pay and pensions of the imported police. For Salford council for which the ‘usual procedure’ was adopted, this element of the cost of importing police had alone been £442 [now equivalent to £27,400] for the use of 253 Metropolitan police officers and 49 horses.[35]

Magistrates’ views of the level of force required increased the pressure for soldiers to be sent. Local officials’ language could approach hysteria and their demands exceeded what experienced officers considered sufficient. The Mayor of Birkenhead’s telegrams to the Home Office in August 1911 sounded like war reports: ‘Please send more troops at once. It is urgent: I cannot see my way to preserve life and property...’.[36] As Morgan notes, even the experienced Lindsay requested 3500 infantry and 500 cavalry to deal with the 1912 miners’ strike in Glamorganshire. In fact, the 646 troops sent did not even face rioters. Weinberger observes that the coal owners were able to requisition the troops and police they felt they needed to intimidate strikers, not only at the time of the Tonypandy riot, but again in March, June and July 1911, because they, via Lindsay, had been so successful in portraying striking miners as dangerous. However, the Home Office tended to view such concerns from other parts of the country with much greater scepticism.[37] Whilst their fears may have been exaggerated it is unsurprising that local authorities readily sought central government assistance as the small local police forces were outnumbered.  They presumably also welcomed the intimidating effect on strikers of soldiers appearing in a district.

Both local and central government saw an obligation to try to sustain normal life in the face of severe unrest. Geary argues, however, that for the government to insist that trains should run, as it did in 1911, involved them in disputes which were none of their concern. He feels such action encouraged brutality by the police and military. However, forces from outside riot areas were only introduced once violence had occurred. The only alternative to this approach was to stand by whilst the attacks and damage continued. At the time, the railway was the main way in which troops were moved and the production of coal and its transportation was a vital part of sustaining the British economy as well as its military and naval forces. Such a hands-off approach would be unsustainable for any democratic government, especially one without a majority.[38] As a result of the fact that there had been a reluctance among government law officers from the 1880s into the 1910s to codify the powers to maintain order, the government was unable to declare a national emergency as it could after 1920, but, given the grave reports it received, it could not have ignored the situation.[39]

Powell counters Geary’s attitude, instead portraying the government as ‘more concerned with maintenance of order’ than any attempt to ‘suppress industrial unrest’. Steve Peak sees the response as highlighting the inadequacy of the Liberal Government in attempting to maintain order in that it could not handle a limited rail strike without shooting people. His view is that the strikers showed they could defeat the government but needed to find a way of doing it without loss of life.[40]

Despite allegations of martial law, the government’s actions in the 1910s remained within the prevailing civil and criminal law. In addition, Morgan argues that troops could effectively be used as blackleg labour, but notes that they were not. It is true that in April 1912 the Attorney-General, Sir Rufus Isaacs, told parliament that troops could be used to work as replacement labour. However, the government constantly refused requests for troops to do other people’s work. This attitude persisted until 1964 and troops did not act as replacement labour until the 1970s.[41] Demands from the Lord Mayor of Liverpool in August 1911 that the Admiralty take over the closed docks and that navy stokers be used to run the power station were refused, with Churchill replying that this would be ‘extremely objectionable’: Royal Navy sailors could protect workers, but not substitute for them. The Lord Mayor of Bristol received a similar response on requesting troops to replace cold store workers. The only time the military replaced strikers was unloading mailbags at Devonport in August 1911, as the Royal Mail had a different status to other kinds of work and this was the only occasion that the military came close to acting as replacement labour.[42]

Despite a number of historians seeing the government's response to the 1911 unrest as an aberration and stepping beyond established norms to impose and illegal, unwarranted, centralised and militarised approach, the evidence for this is missing.  The approach adopted was in line with the established laws and government procedures.  The particular nature of the strikes in 1911, especially the rail strike, meant that a purely localised response would have been inadequate.  Central government did not seek to usurp local authorities, but it did seek to rein in assumptions that police and soldiers were there simply to protect the interests of particular employers, rather a wider-reaching role in safeguarding law and order was the objective.  The reason why the government actions in 1911 appear exceptional stems from the fact that the industrial action and the riots which followed in its wake, was of a new level and one spread so far across the country.  Having left dealing with these situations to local magistrates and small local police forces would have resulted in extensive damage and more deaths.  This, more than anything, would have completely undermined the claim of the government to running the country.

References
[1] Charles Townsend, Making the Peace. Public Order and Public Security in Modern Britain, (Oxford, 1993, pp. 48-9.
[2] ‘Report of the Select Committee on Employment of Military in Cases of Disturbances”, 16 July 1908, Parliamentary Paper 236, collected in Reports from Committees. Session 29 January - 21 December 1908. Vol. 7 (2), , p. iv.
[3] Select Committee, pp. iii-iv; National Archives, [henceforward NA], WO 32/8466, ‘Employment of the Military in aid of the Police’, 15 April 1909.
[4] NA, HO 144/1022, ‘Military Aid to the Civil Power. Abstract of Home Office Papers since 1895’, undated [1902?]; HO 45/10655/212470, sub-file 182, Mayor of Barrow-in-Furness to Under Secretary of State, Home Office, 21 August 1911; sub-file 218, T. Holmes-Gore (Clerk to Justices, Avonmouth) to Under Secretary of State, Home Office, 19 August 1911; Mr. Lake (Barry Railway Company) to Prime Minister, 19 August 1911; HO 45/10656/212470, Sir Edward Troup to Secretary, Admiralty, 24 August 1911; sub-file 365, ‘Warships on Special Duty in Connection with the Strike’, 5 September 1911; Townsend, p. 42.
[5] Barbara Weinberger, Keeping the Peace? Policing Strikes in Britain 1906-1926, (Oxford, 1991), p. 72; Anthony Babington, Military Intervention in Britain from the Gordon Riots to the Gibraltar Incident, (London, 1990), p. 133. Babington notes that with the creation of the Territorial Army in 1907, the local militia and yeomanry units had been relieved of their policing role.
[6] Select Committee, pp. viii [reference to the number of occasions military had been called out was removed from the final version of the report], pp. ix, 4. NA, HO 45/10649/210615, sub-file 130, Under Secretary of State, Home Office to Lord Mayor of Cardiff, 15 August 1911; HO 144/1022, [Sir] E.R. Henry to Under Secretary of State, Home Office, 5 January 1909.
[7] Anthony Mor O’ Brien, ‘Churchill and the Tonypandy Riots’, Welsh History Review, vol. 17 (1994), p. 72. Captain Lionel Lindsay, Chief Constable of Glamorgan had also served in the Egyptian gendarmerie.
[8] Who Was Who 1941-50, (London, 1967), pp. 747-8; Jane Morgan, Conflict and Order. The Police and Labour Disputes in England and Wales, 1900-1939, (Oxford, 1987), pp. 45-6.
[9] Townsend, p. 42.
[10] Roger Geary, Policing Industrial Disputes, 1893 to 1985, (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 35-7; Townsend, p. 43; Sir Nevil Macready, Annals of an Active Life, (London, 1924), p. 137.
[11] O’Brien, p. 80; NA, WO 279/467, War Office, Duties in Aid of the Civil Power, [February 1912?], Appendix II. This even details how many red and blue pencils a unit should take.
[12] Weinberger, pp. 51, 66; Wyndham Childs, Episodes and Reflections, (London, 1930), pp. 82-4, 96.
[13] Macready, pp. 138, 144, 146, 149-50, 152, 160, 163, 165; Weinberger, pp. 59-61.
[14] Who Was Who 1941-50, (London, 1967), p. 37; Askwith, pp. 152, 210.
[15] Childs, p. 96; Lord George Askwith, Industrial Problems and Disputes, (London, 1920), pp. 172, 191, 219-220, 236-7, 244, 252.
[16] O’ Brien, p.67.
[17] Geary, pp. 25, 38.
[18] Childs, p. 98.
[19] NA, HO 45/10655/212470 sub-file 164a, ‘Strike Areas’, 19 August 1911, ‘Dispositions of Troops’, War Office, 19 August 1911; Peak, p. 30.
[20] George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England, (New York, 1961), pp. 217-219; Philip Bagwell, ‘The New Unionism in Britain: the Railway Industry’ in Wolfgang J. Mommsen & Hans-Gerhard Husung, ed., The Development of Trade Unionism in Great Britain and Germany, 1880-1914, (Boston, 1985), p. 197; Askwith, p. 166.
[21] Lucy Masterman, C.F.G. Masterman, (London, 1968), pp.205-6.
[22] O’ Brien, p. 97; Weinberger, p. 114.
[23] Masterman, p. 207; NA, HO 45/10655/212470 sub-file 162, ‘Circular Memorandum’, 19 August 1911; sub-file 165, ‘Birmingham’, A.S.W., 19 August 1911; telegram to Officers Commanding Strike Areas, 19 August 1911; HO 45/10658, ‘No. 10 War Office Memorandum - Army Recruiting During the Strike’, 23 October 1911. Fascinatingly, recruitment into the Army during August 1911 was a third higher than normal for an August.
[24] Weinberger, p. 113; David Powell, The Edwardian Crisis: Britain 1901-1914, (Basingstoke, 1996), p. 126.
[25] NA, HO 45/10657/212479, sub-file 381, W.P. Byrne (Home Office) to G.R. Shepherd, 9 September 1911, this point was noted at the time.
[26] NA, HO 45/10658/212470 ‘No. 9 Memorandum on the Effect of the Presence of Troops on Rioters’.
[27] O’Brien, p. 75; Weinberger, p. 112-113.
[28] Geary, p. 36; Morgan, pp. 41-43.
[29] NA, HO 45/10655/212470 sub-file 152, ‘List of Separate Police Forces’, 1 October 1905.
[30] Weinberger, p. 4; NA, HO 45/10648/210615 sub-file 5, Letter to Mr. Blackwell, 28 June 1911; HO 45/10657 Chief Constable of Derby to Home Office, 16 August 1911.
[31] Ronald V. Sires, ‘Labour Unrest in England 1910-1914’, in Journal of Economic History, vol. XV, no. 3 (1955), p.260; O‘Brien, p. 91.
[32] Sires, pp. 258-9; Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge, UK, CHAR 12/6/34-35, W.S. Churchill to D. Lloyd George, 13 November 1910.
[33] Michael Bentley, Politics without Democracy, 1815-1914, (London, 1996), p. 336; T.A. Critchley, The Conquest of Violence. Order and Liberty in Britain, (London, 1970), pp. 169, 172; Ian Christopher Fletcher, ‘”Prosecutions ... are Always Risky Business”: Labor, Liberals and the 1912 “Don’t Shoot” Prosecutions’, Albion, vol. 28, pp. 259, 266.
[34] O’Brien, pp. 72-3; Gregory D. Phillips, The Diehards. Aristocratic Society and Politics in Edwardian England, (London, 1979), p. 65.
[35] Weinberger, pp. 4, 25, 46, 62; NA, HO 45/10648/210615 sub-file 137a, Minute, 26 September 1911; sub-file 21, Letter to Mayor of Hull, undated [July 1911]; Mayor of Hull to Under Secretary of State, Home Office, 1 July 1911; sub-file 14, Home Secretary to Mayor of Hull, 30 June 1911; Parliamentary Debates. Commons. 5th Series, 1911, vol. 37, June 19 - July 7, 3 July 1911, cols. 791-2.
[36] NA, HO 45/10657/212470, A.W. Willmer, Mayor of Birkenhead to Home Office, 19 August 1911.
[37] Morgan, pp. 60-1, 63-4; Weinberger, p. 66.
[38] Morgan, p.64; Geary pp. 46.
[39] Sires, p. 264; Babington, p. 142; Townsend, pp. 45-9.
[40] David Powell, The Edwardian Crisis: Britain 1901-1914, (Basingstoke, 1996), p. 126; Steve Peak, Troops in Strikes. Military Intervention in Industrial Disputes, (London, 1984), p. 31.
[41] Parliamentary Debates. Commons. 5th Series, 1911, vol. 36, Mar. 25 - Apr. 12, 10 April 1912, cols. 1326-1333; Keith Jeffery and Peter Hennessy, States of Emergency, (London, 1983), pp. 242-3.
[42] NA, HO 45/10658/212470, Lord Mayor of Liverpool to Home Office, 17 August 1911, 12.50pm; Lord Mayor of Liverpool to Home Secretary, 17 August 1911, 1.05pm; Home Secretary to Lord Mayor of Liverpool, 17 August 1911, 2.40pm; Home Secretary to Lord Mayor of Liverpool, 17 August 1911, 5pm; Lord Mayor of Liverpool to Home Secretary, 17 August 1911, 6pm; sub-file 156, telegram to General Officer Commanding Coast Defences, Devonport, 19 August 1911; HO 45/10657/212470, ‘Diary of Events as Reported at the War Office’, 23 August 1911. In 1955 the Army were again used to move mail, but barred from any other labour - Daily Telegraph, 30 May 1955, ‘Army Lorries and Planes To Carry Mail’.