As regular readers know I have done a lot of research into the Great Unrest of 1911: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/11/great-unrest-1910-11-part-1.html I have been in contact with people involved in commemorating this period of strikes and rioting, notably in Liverpool which experienced effectively a general strike. It is ironic that precisely 100 years on we are seeing much the same kind of riotous activity. As I have noted that, in contrast to the early 2000s when people on history discussion boards discussed any reference to the Great Unrest as a fantasy or a counter-factual, elements of it are even appearing in prime time television, such as reference to the shootings during a riot in Llanelli in 1911 on 'The One Show' on BBC1.
What then are the similarities and the differences between what we are seeing now and what was witnessed in 1911? The basis is very different. The unrest in 1910/11 had its roots in strikes by coal miners, railway workers and merchant sailors. In 2011 there are no such strikes going on. The coal industry has been all but destroyed in the UK and our coal, where needed still, is imported. A lot of freight that arrives in the UK is carried by foreign vessels, whereas in 1911, the UK was the dominant country for sea freight. The railways were as fragmented as they were in 1911 since the privatisation of the 1990s. However, at present railway workers seem not to have any reason to strike. Consequently, unlike in 1911, there is not an established pattern of unrest on which the riots can be based. A lot of this stems from the hammering of the trade unions during the 1980s under Thatcher and the loss of any collective identity among workers. Thatcher's greatest success in weakening the unions was not the legislation restricting their behaviour, much of which Labour tried to introduce in the past anyway, it was her success in getting us simply to think of 'me first'.
Another factor that is different to 1911 is the lack of radical rhetoric. In 1911 Labour MPs notably Keir Hardie went around not only supporting the riots as an expression of legitimate working class unrest which they generally were not, but publicly calling on soldiers to mutiny if their commanders ordered them to fire on rioting working class people. In contrast this time we have supposedly left-wing Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney one of the most deprived areas of London calling for a London-wide curfew, something that was not even imposed (outside Liverpool) even in 1911 and would appear as if we were under foreign occupation. No-one in the Labour Party will even try to squeeze out some reference to this unrest being a representation of the anger of the public over a mixture of issues, notably continued police mistreatment of ordinary people, especially from ethnic minorities and youth unemployment at a level higher even than the worst days of the 1980s. Without channelling there is a danger that the unrest will turn to racial violence as it did in South Wales in 1911 and could easily do in many parts of London. This may not be black/white violence but as happened in Cardiff a century ago, targeted at people seen as taking jobs, so aimed at Poles and other EU citizens who have settled in London and who we know the CBI favours as employees over UK young people. This seems to be an unforeseen danger that needs to be addressed now.
Another difference to 1911 is the fact that the weather is not as hot. The summer of 1911 was exceptionally hot and this always provides a context for rioting. However, neither is it raining heavily, so the weather may not provoke rioting but it is not discouraging it either at the moment.
Rioting in 1911 was generally carried out by people unconnected to the strikes going on at the time and it focused on much the same things as this time: attacking the police (especially those brought in from outside the area) and looting. Looting is especially popular at times of economic hardship and conspicuous consumption that we are experiencing at the moment. The largest similarity between 1911 and 2011 is the economic context. It is noted that in 1911 a lot of anger stemmed from the fact that real wages were falling but consumption by the wealthy especially of very visible luxuries was increasing. We are in a very similar position now. Real pay has been declining for forty years now and even those people in graduate professions cannot afford a fraction of what their parents in such jobs could have done.
Everyone is suffering from the inexorable rise in petrol costs, utility prices and housing both in terms of buying houses and, in particular, rent, which seems to have had a new burst of climb since the recession started. The disruption to household incomes by redundancy and unemployment further impinges on disposable income as well as income used to pay for the essentials. I have been unlucky, but my circumstances are probably not atypical, with over half my monthly income paying for somewhere to live, to light and heat it, to fuel my car and to eat. I do not go on holiday, my car is 15 years old, I do not eat in restaurants and do not go to the cinema. You can put up with a dull life and battling for every penny, but after a while it impacts on you. I am lucky, there are millions of people in the UK far worse off than me, but if I am disgruntled can imagine how many of them/you feel? Whilst most ordinary people struggle we still keep seeing the obscene salaries and consumption of the privileged. Bankers pay continues to be high and yet we are still suffering the consequences of their failed greedy gambles and will be for decades to come especially in terms of lost social care and local facilities such as libraries being closed down. As in 1911 the obvious greed of the wealthy is painful and pricks us, made easier by the constant flow of information to us through every medium available. Whilst the trains may be slower and less frequent than they were in 1911, information travels far faster these days to people in all walks of life and all ages.
There are a number of other similarities to 1911 not just the conspicuous consumption in a time of hardship. The drafting in of police to cities is just like in 1911. There are promised to be 16,000 police on the streets of London tonight; 10,000 of these brought from outside the capital; nine constabularies are sending officers to London. In some ways this is a reverse of 1911 when the Metropolitan Police provided officers to other parts of the country, but that was only because London remained quiet and the unrest was located in other cities. However, it seems likely that cities will draw on constabularies in neighbouring more rural counties. The UK has far fewer constabularies than in 1911, but we still have a very decentralised system. I wonder if cities in the North East will bid to buy in police from the Cleveland Constabulary given that their former Chief Constable and Deputy Chief Constable, arrested this week for corruption, seem happy to sell their officers to the highest bidder.
The call from the local authorities for troops to be on the streets of Croydon is just like the hysteria of 1911. Fortunately local magistrates are no longer in a position simply to summon a local unit as they were 100 years ago. Given how many people whine about Winston Churchill as Home Secretary centralising the despatch of troops in 1911 to tackle unrest, that is more the system we have now. The issue, ironically, is unlike in 1911, Britain is currently fighting in two wars. Whilst we no longer have imperial possessions to defend and the commitment in Ireland is far from what it was in 1911, the British Army would be pretty stretched if it was mobilised to police the streets. In 1911 the Territorial Army was not trusted to oppose rioters, but in 2011 given class fragmentation and the dependence the UK has on its part-time soldiers, they may, in fact be called up to combat unrest. However, I would imagine even now they would be sent to areas outside those in which they were recruited to avoid any questions about opening fire on family members for individual soldiers. Of course, these days the odd tank or armoured car can achieve what a squadron of hussars would have been needed to do in 1911, so they could be spread thinner. They are also no longer dependent on the railway system to reach the scenes of unrest. However, experiences with civil unrest in Northern Ireland in the 1970s show the hazards of such action.
I am more familiar with the King's Regulations of 1908 than I am with the current Queen's Regulations, and I would be interested to hear what the procedure is for the military called on to deal with unrest. I cannot believe it is to simply fire into the front row of rioters but with the power of modern rifles and sidearms, even firing over their heads would cause a hazard. Of course, the British police, since the 1980s have possessed anti-riot equipment pretty much undreamt of in 1911. There would be no need for police to fall back on furled raincoats, instead they have baton rounds, tear gas, shields of different types and in some locales, water cannon. Cameron ought to be alert to coming down too hard on the rioters if he wants to secure his political legacy. Misremembered accusations that Churchill had striking miners shot were to haunt him politically even forty years after the event.
Whilst it is clear that 2011 is not a re-run of 1911, there are similarities which furthermore makes me ask why no-one in power was ready for the unrest which broke out this month. As I have noted before, I believe that they probably did foresee and are happy for it to run its course. Cameron is clearly enjoying sounding off as the authoritarian leader in the media and no doubt taking steps to further reduce liberty in the UK. Perhaps, I am simply giving him credit for foresight that is undeserved and he is simply even more incompetent than I believed.
Showing posts with label The Great Unrest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Great Unrest. Show all posts
Tuesday, 9 August 2011
Saturday, 8 November 2008
The Great Unrest 1910-11. Part 7: Consequences of the Unrest
This section looks at some of the policies which were adopted following the Great Unrest including extensive plans to defend London from riots, especially in wartime. It also considers the extent to which the First World War quelled the unrest which had been so virulent in 1910-11.
Consequences of the Great Unrest
The riots of 1911 alerted government to the potential burden that strikes could place on police forces nationwide. On 17 August 1911, Sir Edward Troup, Under Secretary of State at the Home Office reminded police and local authorities that they should recruit special constables to augment their forces. Many forces felt no need for special constables and in Llanelly and Manchester such steps were seen as dangerously provocative. The Glamorgan and Hull forces felt no volunteer was suitable. Of the 9,000 volunteers, 2,500 were sworn in, over half in Liverpool. Though only around 300 insisted on being paid, this cost central government over £500 [equivalent to £31,000 at today’s values].[1]
In 1911 the Army Act was amended to permit Army Council-appointed inspectors recording all the horses, motor vehicles and boats which could be ‘impressed’ into service in case of ‘emergency’ or war. Keen motorists, among them politicians, wrote to the newspapers and the Home Office suggesting a national register of those among the 120,000 car owners in Britain who were willing to lend their vehicles to the government in time of crisis feeling this would mean ‘any railway strike would be shorn of many of its terrors’. The idea floundered as motorists and the government recognised volunteer drivers would be at the risk of attack. In such suggestions one sees attitude that would find fruition in the volunteer action during the 1926 General Strike.[2]
As early as 1909, officials anticipated a European war and there was concern over unrest breaking out in wartime. In February 1909, Director of Military Training, Major-General Murray warned of the problems facing wartime London ‘with vast numbers of ignorant, underfed and discontented unemployed, together with the alien and criminal population...’.[3] Though Churchill felt such concerns were exaggerated, in March 1911, he, Haldane and Murray met with the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir William Nicholson and Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Edward Henry to develop plans for combating unrest in London. Later Murray believed the strikes of 1911 had brought the Home Office around to the War Office’s way of thinking.[4] Given the experience of the general transport strike in Liverpool which had cut food supplies to that city and had result in looting and food riots, it is unsurprising that when the London dock strike broke out in August 1911, Asquith assured the King that there were 20,000 troops ready to intervene if the dispute was prolonged and particularly if rioting broke out. The dockers’ leader, Tillett saw this as intimidation towards strikers. However, given the potential chaos, the government was obliged to be ready to cope with such problems provoked by a strike.[5]
By January 1913 the ‘Suppression of Civil Disturbances in London’ guidance had been printed. It argued that to protect the listed range of locations, including the royal palaces, 250 vulnerable points necessary for public service and 160 locations of military importance in London needed over 13,500 troops. The allocation of forces was given in immense detail with London divided into five zones stretching up to 15 miles from the centre. The ‘armed guards’ protecting the vulnerable points would be ‘given definite orders to fire to protect the premises they are watching or to prevent crime or riot.’, i.e. very similar to the incidents which had occurred in rioting 1910-11. The plan came into force on 2 August 1914 and steps of this kind were implemented during the Metropolitan police strike of 1918.[6]
In November 1914, a survey was conducted of the forces around London which could combat disturbances; the total was around 15,000 the same as had been in London during the 1911 rail strike. Despite Henry’s disdain and counter to standing guidance, an intelligence network, under Sir Schomberg McDonnell, was established in all five zones.[7]
The Home Office opposed militarisation of the police even in wartime. Henry who resisted the formation of two Metropolitan Police Territorial Army battalions. Once war had broken out, he had only 2,500 officers on any shift. London had a population of 7.25 million and only about 5,000 of the 29,000 German and Austrian males of military age in Britain had been interned. Henry feared that the police were stretched even without ‘imposing upon them duties of a quasi military nature’. However, he did permit 5,000 M.E. Mark II carbines to be stored in the Tower of London, plus 500,000 rounds of ammunition and 5,000 fifty-round bandoliers for police use. Henry personally issued 1,000 Scott-Webley automatic pistols to police.[8]
The remaining period of peace saw only sporadic strike-related disturbances, the most serious being in Dublin in August-December 1913 which witnessed riots leading to two deaths. Though the strike disturbances had waned, unrest associated with female suffrage and Irish Home Rule struggles continued.[9]
One commonly asked question is whether the Asquith government was encouraged to declare war in the belief that rousing patriotism would counter domestic unrest. To some extent the war had this effect as ‘[d]isputes melted away as fast as the hours of the day...’. Paul Johnson believes that ‘in a state approaching revolution - only our submersion in a general European catastrophe averted a crisis ... [o]ur parliamentary democracy was, perhaps, saved in the mud of Flanders.’.[10] In addition reports to the Cabinet Committee on Industrial Unrest predicted large scale strikes in Autumn 1914 and that Lloyd George held such concerns.[11]
The concept of declaring war to calm domestic unrest was applied to Imperial Germany by Hans-Ulrich Wehler as the ‘Flucht nach vorn’ - escape forwards. He sees German élites as using war to counter the rise of the socialists. Wehler feels that British élites were more adaptable than their German counterparts, but in the 1910s were becoming equally as ‘inflexible and irresponsible’ and Britain faced greater actual unrest than Germany.[12] No government could have articulated such a reason for declaring war and it is clear there was little forethought among ministers until days before the declaration. Whilst as Peter Rowland shows Grey’s anti-German stance was challenged in 1911, generally Grey’s foreign policy had been secretive from even the Cabinet, and the distractions of Ireland had meant little attention had been paid to developments in the Balkans. It was assumed that many ministers would resign rather than support going to war, though ultimately only two did. These different factors suggest, that in contrast to the Kaiser’s circle, the British government had no strategy to use war this way.[13]
Though reducing the number of strikes, the outbreak of war did not end unrest and wartime rioting resembled that seen in 1910-13.[14] As David Englander shows, the motives of those involved in anti-German riots in 1915, largely were often economic and looting was seen as justified. In addition, he notes that over half of these rioters were women. However, despite the parallels to the pre-war unrest, in contrast to the riots of 1910-13 the labour movement condemned these wartime disturbances as disrupting the work of shops.[15]
Following government attempts from the mid-1900s to encourage the creation of police reserves, there were 150,000 by the end of 1914, however, it remained difficult to suppress rioting. Troops were used against riots in South Shields, Gravesend and Southend. In 1917 anti-Semitic riots in Leeds and London aimed at the 30,000 Jewish refugees from Russia seen as shirking military service. Despite the war and ultimately rising living standards on the home front, violent unrest could still break out.[16]
Conclusion
Owing to shifts within classes; a fall in real wages and trade union developments, Britain in the early 1910s witnessed new heights of industrial unrest. Violence stemmed from these disputes, but usually with different, often more parochial, motives. Working and middle class people became involved in destruction that normally they would never had considered. This rioting occurred against a background of a new form of industrial action, virulent rhetoric and novel types of protest linked to the issues of Ireland and female suffrage that appeared to legitimise outrageous behaviour, that as Meacham notes, even contemporaries saw as distinct to nineteenth-century popular unrest.[17] The government’s response showed continuity, augmented to cope with the extent of disturbances and its greater involvement in industrial conciliation.
The first line of defence, local police forces, were too weak and fragmented to counter the riots’ scale and ferocity. Only the military, directly controlled on a national basis by the government could tackle them effectively, even then this proved challenging. At full mobilisation in August 1911 British forces would have found it impossible to deal with rioting occurring in more than a few towns. That experience prompted government plans to counter subsequent similar action. The deaths during the riots were avoidable, but with different approaches or commanding officers far greater bloodshed would have been witnessed. As Churchill noted, more people were killed by the rioters than by soldiers’ bullets.[18] Though the government had to maintain law and order, and this was unpopular with sectors of the population, the successful suppression of unrest meant it never approached the civil war many anticipated.
References
[1] National Archives [henceforward NA], HO 45/10659/212708 sub-file 114a, Sir E. Troup, circular, 17 August 1911; ‘Special Constables’, 23 August 1911; sub-file 190, ‘Hull’, 23 August 1911; sub-file 238, Letter to Accounting Officer, Treasury, 15 March 1912.
[2] NA, HO 45/10659/212856, pamphlet, ‘The Impression of Horses in Time of National Emergency’, 1912; The Times, 23 August 1911, Lord Montagu to the Editor, ‘Road Transport During Strikes’; A.W. Gamage to the Editor, 25 August 1911; The Daily Telegraph, 1 September 1911, ‘Our Food Supply’; The Autocar, 2 September 1911, ‘Notes’; NA, HO 45/10571/176569, sub-file 3, W. Joynson-Hicks, M.P. to Home Secretary 29 August 1911; sub-file 4a, undated memorandum on visit of Mr. Stenson. Michael Bentley, Politics without Democracy, 1815-1914, (London, 1996), p. 327, states there were 140,000 cars in Britain by 1914.
[3] NA, WO 32/5270, A.J. Murray, 11 February 1909.
[4] NA, WO 32/5270, Memorandum of Conference at the Home Office, 6 March 1911; Major-General A.J. Murray to C.I.G.S. [Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Nicholson], 22 September 1911.
[5] Barbara Weinberger, Keeping the Peace? Policing Strikes in Britain 1906-1926, (Oxford, 1991), p. 105.
[6] NA, HO 144/1650/179897, sub-file 16, ‘Suppression of Civil Disturbances in London’; WO 32/5270, map; letter to G.O.C. London District [Lloyd], 2 August 1914; Weinberger, p. 146.
[7] NA, WO 32/5270, B.B. Cubitt to G.O.C. London District, 6 November 1914; Major-General Sir Francis Lloyd to War Secretary, 17 September 1914; HO 144/1650/179987, sub-file 15, Sir E. Troup to Secretary, War Office, 10 March 1915; sub-file 16, Sir E. Henry to Sir E. Troup, 5 May 1915, unaware that the intelligence network was already in place, Henry dismissed even the idea as ‘childish’.
[8] NA, WO 32/5270, Major-General A.J. Murray to C.I.G.S., 22 September 1911; HO 144/1650/179987 sub-file 12, E.R. Henry to General Sir J. Wolfe Murray, 21 November 1914.
[9] George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England, (London, 1966), pp. 257-8, 260, 264.
[10] Lord George Askwith, Industrial Problems and Disputes, (London, 1920), p. 359; Paul Johnson, ‘Preface’ in Dangerfield, p. 10.
[11] David Powell, The Edwardian Crisis: Britain 1901-1914, (Basingstoke, 1996), p. 128.
[12] Hans-Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire 1871-1918, (Leamington Spa, 1985), pp. 192, 198.
[13] Bentley, pp. 345, 361; Kenneth O. Morgan, The Age of Lloyd George. The Liberal Party and British Politics, 1890-1929, (London, 1971), pp. 53-4; Peter Rowland, The Last Liberal Governments: Unfinished Business, 1911-1914, (London, 1971), p. 362.
[14] Weinberger, p. 124.
[15] David Englander, ‘Police and Public Order in Britain in Britain 1914-1918’ in Clive Emsley & Barbara Weinberger, ed., Policing Western Europe. Politics, Professionalism and Public Order, 1850-1940, (New York, 1991), pp. 106-107, 116; Weinberger, p. 125.
[16] Englander, pp. 93, 109-110, 113-114; Whiteside in Turner, pp. 86-7; Weinberger, pp. 125-6, notes that concerns over the rising cost of living and dissent over excessive profits motivated most industrial unrest, as before the war.
[17] Standish Meacham, ‘“The Sense of an Impending Clash”: English Working-Class Unrest before the First World War’, American Historical Review, Vol 77, no. 4 (1972), p. 1346.
[18] The Times, 23 August 1911, ‘The Labour Unrest’.
Consequences of the Great Unrest
The riots of 1911 alerted government to the potential burden that strikes could place on police forces nationwide. On 17 August 1911, Sir Edward Troup, Under Secretary of State at the Home Office reminded police and local authorities that they should recruit special constables to augment their forces. Many forces felt no need for special constables and in Llanelly and Manchester such steps were seen as dangerously provocative. The Glamorgan and Hull forces felt no volunteer was suitable. Of the 9,000 volunteers, 2,500 were sworn in, over half in Liverpool. Though only around 300 insisted on being paid, this cost central government over £500 [equivalent to £31,000 at today’s values].[1]
In 1911 the Army Act was amended to permit Army Council-appointed inspectors recording all the horses, motor vehicles and boats which could be ‘impressed’ into service in case of ‘emergency’ or war. Keen motorists, among them politicians, wrote to the newspapers and the Home Office suggesting a national register of those among the 120,000 car owners in Britain who were willing to lend their vehicles to the government in time of crisis feeling this would mean ‘any railway strike would be shorn of many of its terrors’. The idea floundered as motorists and the government recognised volunteer drivers would be at the risk of attack. In such suggestions one sees attitude that would find fruition in the volunteer action during the 1926 General Strike.[2]
As early as 1909, officials anticipated a European war and there was concern over unrest breaking out in wartime. In February 1909, Director of Military Training, Major-General Murray warned of the problems facing wartime London ‘with vast numbers of ignorant, underfed and discontented unemployed, together with the alien and criminal population...’.[3] Though Churchill felt such concerns were exaggerated, in March 1911, he, Haldane and Murray met with the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir William Nicholson and Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Edward Henry to develop plans for combating unrest in London. Later Murray believed the strikes of 1911 had brought the Home Office around to the War Office’s way of thinking.[4] Given the experience of the general transport strike in Liverpool which had cut food supplies to that city and had result in looting and food riots, it is unsurprising that when the London dock strike broke out in August 1911, Asquith assured the King that there were 20,000 troops ready to intervene if the dispute was prolonged and particularly if rioting broke out. The dockers’ leader, Tillett saw this as intimidation towards strikers. However, given the potential chaos, the government was obliged to be ready to cope with such problems provoked by a strike.[5]
By January 1913 the ‘Suppression of Civil Disturbances in London’ guidance had been printed. It argued that to protect the listed range of locations, including the royal palaces, 250 vulnerable points necessary for public service and 160 locations of military importance in London needed over 13,500 troops. The allocation of forces was given in immense detail with London divided into five zones stretching up to 15 miles from the centre. The ‘armed guards’ protecting the vulnerable points would be ‘given definite orders to fire to protect the premises they are watching or to prevent crime or riot.’, i.e. very similar to the incidents which had occurred in rioting 1910-11. The plan came into force on 2 August 1914 and steps of this kind were implemented during the Metropolitan police strike of 1918.[6]
In November 1914, a survey was conducted of the forces around London which could combat disturbances; the total was around 15,000 the same as had been in London during the 1911 rail strike. Despite Henry’s disdain and counter to standing guidance, an intelligence network, under Sir Schomberg McDonnell, was established in all five zones.[7]
The Home Office opposed militarisation of the police even in wartime. Henry who resisted the formation of two Metropolitan Police Territorial Army battalions. Once war had broken out, he had only 2,500 officers on any shift. London had a population of 7.25 million and only about 5,000 of the 29,000 German and Austrian males of military age in Britain had been interned. Henry feared that the police were stretched even without ‘imposing upon them duties of a quasi military nature’. However, he did permit 5,000 M.E. Mark II carbines to be stored in the Tower of London, plus 500,000 rounds of ammunition and 5,000 fifty-round bandoliers for police use. Henry personally issued 1,000 Scott-Webley automatic pistols to police.[8]
The remaining period of peace saw only sporadic strike-related disturbances, the most serious being in Dublin in August-December 1913 which witnessed riots leading to two deaths. Though the strike disturbances had waned, unrest associated with female suffrage and Irish Home Rule struggles continued.[9]
One commonly asked question is whether the Asquith government was encouraged to declare war in the belief that rousing patriotism would counter domestic unrest. To some extent the war had this effect as ‘[d]isputes melted away as fast as the hours of the day...’. Paul Johnson believes that ‘in a state approaching revolution - only our submersion in a general European catastrophe averted a crisis ... [o]ur parliamentary democracy was, perhaps, saved in the mud of Flanders.’.[10] In addition reports to the Cabinet Committee on Industrial Unrest predicted large scale strikes in Autumn 1914 and that Lloyd George held such concerns.[11]
The concept of declaring war to calm domestic unrest was applied to Imperial Germany by Hans-Ulrich Wehler as the ‘Flucht nach vorn’ - escape forwards. He sees German élites as using war to counter the rise of the socialists. Wehler feels that British élites were more adaptable than their German counterparts, but in the 1910s were becoming equally as ‘inflexible and irresponsible’ and Britain faced greater actual unrest than Germany.[12] No government could have articulated such a reason for declaring war and it is clear there was little forethought among ministers until days before the declaration. Whilst as Peter Rowland shows Grey’s anti-German stance was challenged in 1911, generally Grey’s foreign policy had been secretive from even the Cabinet, and the distractions of Ireland had meant little attention had been paid to developments in the Balkans. It was assumed that many ministers would resign rather than support going to war, though ultimately only two did. These different factors suggest, that in contrast to the Kaiser’s circle, the British government had no strategy to use war this way.[13]
Though reducing the number of strikes, the outbreak of war did not end unrest and wartime rioting resembled that seen in 1910-13.[14] As David Englander shows, the motives of those involved in anti-German riots in 1915, largely were often economic and looting was seen as justified. In addition, he notes that over half of these rioters were women. However, despite the parallels to the pre-war unrest, in contrast to the riots of 1910-13 the labour movement condemned these wartime disturbances as disrupting the work of shops.[15]
Following government attempts from the mid-1900s to encourage the creation of police reserves, there were 150,000 by the end of 1914, however, it remained difficult to suppress rioting. Troops were used against riots in South Shields, Gravesend and Southend. In 1917 anti-Semitic riots in Leeds and London aimed at the 30,000 Jewish refugees from Russia seen as shirking military service. Despite the war and ultimately rising living standards on the home front, violent unrest could still break out.[16]
Conclusion
Owing to shifts within classes; a fall in real wages and trade union developments, Britain in the early 1910s witnessed new heights of industrial unrest. Violence stemmed from these disputes, but usually with different, often more parochial, motives. Working and middle class people became involved in destruction that normally they would never had considered. This rioting occurred against a background of a new form of industrial action, virulent rhetoric and novel types of protest linked to the issues of Ireland and female suffrage that appeared to legitimise outrageous behaviour, that as Meacham notes, even contemporaries saw as distinct to nineteenth-century popular unrest.[17] The government’s response showed continuity, augmented to cope with the extent of disturbances and its greater involvement in industrial conciliation.
The first line of defence, local police forces, were too weak and fragmented to counter the riots’ scale and ferocity. Only the military, directly controlled on a national basis by the government could tackle them effectively, even then this proved challenging. At full mobilisation in August 1911 British forces would have found it impossible to deal with rioting occurring in more than a few towns. That experience prompted government plans to counter subsequent similar action. The deaths during the riots were avoidable, but with different approaches or commanding officers far greater bloodshed would have been witnessed. As Churchill noted, more people were killed by the rioters than by soldiers’ bullets.[18] Though the government had to maintain law and order, and this was unpopular with sectors of the population, the successful suppression of unrest meant it never approached the civil war many anticipated.
References
[1] National Archives [henceforward NA], HO 45/10659/212708 sub-file 114a, Sir E. Troup, circular, 17 August 1911; ‘Special Constables’, 23 August 1911; sub-file 190, ‘Hull’, 23 August 1911; sub-file 238, Letter to Accounting Officer, Treasury, 15 March 1912.
[2] NA, HO 45/10659/212856, pamphlet, ‘The Impression of Horses in Time of National Emergency’, 1912; The Times, 23 August 1911, Lord Montagu to the Editor, ‘Road Transport During Strikes’; A.W. Gamage to the Editor, 25 August 1911; The Daily Telegraph, 1 September 1911, ‘Our Food Supply’; The Autocar, 2 September 1911, ‘Notes’; NA, HO 45/10571/176569, sub-file 3, W. Joynson-Hicks, M.P. to Home Secretary 29 August 1911; sub-file 4a, undated memorandum on visit of Mr. Stenson. Michael Bentley, Politics without Democracy, 1815-1914, (London, 1996), p. 327, states there were 140,000 cars in Britain by 1914.
[3] NA, WO 32/5270, A.J. Murray, 11 February 1909.
[4] NA, WO 32/5270, Memorandum of Conference at the Home Office, 6 March 1911; Major-General A.J. Murray to C.I.G.S. [Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Nicholson], 22 September 1911.
[5] Barbara Weinberger, Keeping the Peace? Policing Strikes in Britain 1906-1926, (Oxford, 1991), p. 105.
[6] NA, HO 144/1650/179897, sub-file 16, ‘Suppression of Civil Disturbances in London’; WO 32/5270, map; letter to G.O.C. London District [Lloyd], 2 August 1914; Weinberger, p. 146.
[7] NA, WO 32/5270, B.B. Cubitt to G.O.C. London District, 6 November 1914; Major-General Sir Francis Lloyd to War Secretary, 17 September 1914; HO 144/1650/179987, sub-file 15, Sir E. Troup to Secretary, War Office, 10 March 1915; sub-file 16, Sir E. Henry to Sir E. Troup, 5 May 1915, unaware that the intelligence network was already in place, Henry dismissed even the idea as ‘childish’.
[8] NA, WO 32/5270, Major-General A.J. Murray to C.I.G.S., 22 September 1911; HO 144/1650/179987 sub-file 12, E.R. Henry to General Sir J. Wolfe Murray, 21 November 1914.
[9] George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England, (London, 1966), pp. 257-8, 260, 264.
[10] Lord George Askwith, Industrial Problems and Disputes, (London, 1920), p. 359; Paul Johnson, ‘Preface’ in Dangerfield, p. 10.
[11] David Powell, The Edwardian Crisis: Britain 1901-1914, (Basingstoke, 1996), p. 128.
[12] Hans-Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire 1871-1918, (Leamington Spa, 1985), pp. 192, 198.
[13] Bentley, pp. 345, 361; Kenneth O. Morgan, The Age of Lloyd George. The Liberal Party and British Politics, 1890-1929, (London, 1971), pp. 53-4; Peter Rowland, The Last Liberal Governments: Unfinished Business, 1911-1914, (London, 1971), p. 362.
[14] Weinberger, p. 124.
[15] David Englander, ‘Police and Public Order in Britain in Britain 1914-1918’ in Clive Emsley & Barbara Weinberger, ed., Policing Western Europe. Politics, Professionalism and Public Order, 1850-1940, (New York, 1991), pp. 106-107, 116; Weinberger, p. 125.
[16] Englander, pp. 93, 109-110, 113-114; Whiteside in Turner, pp. 86-7; Weinberger, pp. 125-6, notes that concerns over the rising cost of living and dissent over excessive profits motivated most industrial unrest, as before the war.
[17] Standish Meacham, ‘“The Sense of an Impending Clash”: English Working-Class Unrest before the First World War’, American Historical Review, Vol 77, no. 4 (1972), p. 1346.
[18] The Times, 23 August 1911, ‘The Labour Unrest’.
The Great Unrest 1910-11. Part 6: The Liverpool General Strike
The most extreme events of the Great Unrest occurred in Liverpool which suffered a local general strike. As a result there was rioting, including bread riots and the largest military presence put on active duty into any city during this period and included two warships being moored in the River Mersey. Sustained rioting led to deaths, but again, cool-headness by commanders on the spot avoided the massacre which could have easily occurred if local politicians had had their way.
Liverpool: a city under siege
Unlike for the rest of Britain, in Liverpool, a major port on the North-West coast of England, rioting was pretty common occurrence. This was founded on the sectarian division between Protestants and Catholics in the city, which had a large Irish population. For example, the March 1911 Bootle by-election which the subsequent Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar Law, won, led to rioting and sectarian attacks. However, the strikes and accompanying unrest in summer 1911 went much further, effectively sealed off the city. A combination of strikes by seamen, dockers, and local railway men as well as numerous sympathetic strikes plunged the city into chaos and helped spark the national rail strike.[1]
The strike began on 5 August 1911, when 1,200 goods porters of the London and Yorkshire Railway Company struck. Within days they had been joined by thousands of other railway workers in Liverpool. This action was to trigger a national rail strike on August 18. Mounted police had been used against disturbances at pickets and food vans had been attacked and looted. On 9 August the council and the police requested military assistance and the following day 400 soldiers from the Warwickshire Regiment arrived. They were joined by two squadrons of Royal Scots Greys, plus a detachment of the Royal Service Corps to supply the supply the troops. In addition police were brought from Leeds and Birmingham and 200 police officers of the Royal Irish Constabulary, a police force equipped with rifles, were also shipped across to Liverpool. A break down of talks between ship owners and dockers led to a lock out of 25,000 dockers on 14 August. Convoys of vehicles carrying food had to be escorted by soldiers as they travelled through the city. On Sunday 13 August a rally on St. George’s Plateau turned into a riot with 200 people being injured. However, the riot which had been sparked by a couple of minor incidents was broken by police, and the infantry and cavalry on standby were only needed to patrol the streets afterwards. In no doubt of the potential carnage of shooting into a packed crowd, the commanding officer refused police demands on the spot to open fire.[2]
Magistrates requested more soldiers, especially lancers to run down crowds. On 14 August, the day a general transport strike was declared in the city, a detachment of the 18th Hussars were sent. Looting continued overnight, and as well as bayonet charges, warning shots were fired by Yorkshire Regiment infantry. The following day 3,000 rioters attacked five prison vans transporting people convicted for their part in earlier unrest. Only thirty-four soldiers and police accompanied the convoy. The hussars escorting the vans were caught out by the situation. Their horses were not equipped with the rubber shoes mounted police used and skidded on the street cobbles. In the panic they fired six shots, killing two and injuring two more. The ensuing rioting led to many injuries and the killing of a police office kicked to death.[3]
Unlike at Llanelly, later that week, the death of rioters did not ultimately calm the situation. The situation deteriorated. With the docks closed and rail services suspended no food was coming into the city. Tramway men struck on August 16, followed by power station workers and refuse collectors. Power in the city began to run short and volunteer workers had to be enlisted. Attacks began on bakeries by people desperate for food. By August 19, Churchill wrote the lord mayor advising him to recruit a special corps of dockers to unload food and fuel ships. He promised he would be ‘prepared to support you by force or otherwise’. With garbage piling up in the streets the city’s health committee noted that the average death rate had almost doubled since the strike had started.[4]
The general strike in Liverpool impacted on the surrounding region of Lancashire, Cheshire and the North Welsh towns dependent on food supplies through the city’s docks. Contact with the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea was also broken, as many steamship services had been curtailed. The Government Secretary on the island could only communicate with the mainland via the H.M.S. ‘Warrior’ berthed at the island.[5]
By the third week in August there were 2,500 soldiers in the city and an additional 4,000 special constables were sworn in to augment the police force. Public houses closed at 2 p.m.. With the national rail strike over, but with unrest continuing in Liverpool, a three-man team was appointed by the Home Office to investigate what was happening. The team consisted of two Liverpool MPs - Thomas O’ Connor, a Liberal and the Conservative, George Kyffin-Taylor along with D.J. Shackleton, the Home Office’s labor advisor. They provided Churchill with a more objective view of the developments in the disputes than the city council or local employers could offer. Despite the settlement of the national rail strike on August 19, the strikes in Liverpool, which had become highly entangled, continued. The complexity of the situation is shown by the example of loyal tramwaymen striking to protest about previously striking tramwaymen being reinstated. Thus the dispute continued until finally all the different grievances could be settled on August 26. [6]
The prompt dispatch of military units to Liverpool shows that by the summer of 1911 the government realised that in certain circumstances they were the only solution. There were lessons to be learnt from Liverpool, particularly from the attack on the prison convoy. Some of these would be integrated into the Army's 1912 pamphlet on action in civil disturbances. It would have been difficult to avoid the St. George’s Plateau riot, but the calmness of the military at the scene prevented the incident becoming more severe. In a city where rioting was all too common any authority faced a difficult task of balancing the need to minimize unrest and ensuring law and order.
References
[1] P.J. Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism. A Political and Social History of Liverpool, 1868-1939, (Liverpool, 1981), pp. 249-50.
[2] National Archives [henceforward NA], HO 45/10658, sub-file 452, ‘Disturbances’, undated. This gives a day-by-day account of the unrest; T.A. Critchley, The Conquest of Violence. Order and Liberty in Britain, (London, 1970), p. 170.
[3] Anthony Babington, Military Intervention in Britain from the Gordon Riots to the Gibraltar Incident, (London, 1990), p.141; Waller, p.255.
[4] Liverpool Daily Post & Mercury, 18 August 1911, ‘The Unscavenged City’. [Scavenging was the term given to rubbish collection]. The death rate had risen from 13.3/1000 the previous August to 24.5/1000.
[5] NA HO 45/10655/212470 sub-file 176, Home Secretary to Lord Mayor, 19 August, 1911.; sub-file 179, Government Secretary, Isle of Man to Under Secretary of State, Home Office, 19 August 1911.
[6] Waller, p. 256; NA, HO 45/1065/212470, sub-file 356, T.P. O’Connor, G. Kyffin-Taylor, D.J. Shackleton to Home Secretary, 20 August 1911, 1 am and 11pm; 21 August 1911, 3 telegrams; 22 August 1911, 3 telegrams; Lord George Askwith, Industrial Problems and Disputes, (London, 1920), p. 172.
Liverpool: a city under siege
Unlike for the rest of Britain, in Liverpool, a major port on the North-West coast of England, rioting was pretty common occurrence. This was founded on the sectarian division between Protestants and Catholics in the city, which had a large Irish population. For example, the March 1911 Bootle by-election which the subsequent Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar Law, won, led to rioting and sectarian attacks. However, the strikes and accompanying unrest in summer 1911 went much further, effectively sealed off the city. A combination of strikes by seamen, dockers, and local railway men as well as numerous sympathetic strikes plunged the city into chaos and helped spark the national rail strike.[1]
The strike began on 5 August 1911, when 1,200 goods porters of the London and Yorkshire Railway Company struck. Within days they had been joined by thousands of other railway workers in Liverpool. This action was to trigger a national rail strike on August 18. Mounted police had been used against disturbances at pickets and food vans had been attacked and looted. On 9 August the council and the police requested military assistance and the following day 400 soldiers from the Warwickshire Regiment arrived. They were joined by two squadrons of Royal Scots Greys, plus a detachment of the Royal Service Corps to supply the supply the troops. In addition police were brought from Leeds and Birmingham and 200 police officers of the Royal Irish Constabulary, a police force equipped with rifles, were also shipped across to Liverpool. A break down of talks between ship owners and dockers led to a lock out of 25,000 dockers on 14 August. Convoys of vehicles carrying food had to be escorted by soldiers as they travelled through the city. On Sunday 13 August a rally on St. George’s Plateau turned into a riot with 200 people being injured. However, the riot which had been sparked by a couple of minor incidents was broken by police, and the infantry and cavalry on standby were only needed to patrol the streets afterwards. In no doubt of the potential carnage of shooting into a packed crowd, the commanding officer refused police demands on the spot to open fire.[2]
Magistrates requested more soldiers, especially lancers to run down crowds. On 14 August, the day a general transport strike was declared in the city, a detachment of the 18th Hussars were sent. Looting continued overnight, and as well as bayonet charges, warning shots were fired by Yorkshire Regiment infantry. The following day 3,000 rioters attacked five prison vans transporting people convicted for their part in earlier unrest. Only thirty-four soldiers and police accompanied the convoy. The hussars escorting the vans were caught out by the situation. Their horses were not equipped with the rubber shoes mounted police used and skidded on the street cobbles. In the panic they fired six shots, killing two and injuring two more. The ensuing rioting led to many injuries and the killing of a police office kicked to death.[3]
Unlike at Llanelly, later that week, the death of rioters did not ultimately calm the situation. The situation deteriorated. With the docks closed and rail services suspended no food was coming into the city. Tramway men struck on August 16, followed by power station workers and refuse collectors. Power in the city began to run short and volunteer workers had to be enlisted. Attacks began on bakeries by people desperate for food. By August 19, Churchill wrote the lord mayor advising him to recruit a special corps of dockers to unload food and fuel ships. He promised he would be ‘prepared to support you by force or otherwise’. With garbage piling up in the streets the city’s health committee noted that the average death rate had almost doubled since the strike had started.[4]
The general strike in Liverpool impacted on the surrounding region of Lancashire, Cheshire and the North Welsh towns dependent on food supplies through the city’s docks. Contact with the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea was also broken, as many steamship services had been curtailed. The Government Secretary on the island could only communicate with the mainland via the H.M.S. ‘Warrior’ berthed at the island.[5]
By the third week in August there were 2,500 soldiers in the city and an additional 4,000 special constables were sworn in to augment the police force. Public houses closed at 2 p.m.. With the national rail strike over, but with unrest continuing in Liverpool, a three-man team was appointed by the Home Office to investigate what was happening. The team consisted of two Liverpool MPs - Thomas O’ Connor, a Liberal and the Conservative, George Kyffin-Taylor along with D.J. Shackleton, the Home Office’s labor advisor. They provided Churchill with a more objective view of the developments in the disputes than the city council or local employers could offer. Despite the settlement of the national rail strike on August 19, the strikes in Liverpool, which had become highly entangled, continued. The complexity of the situation is shown by the example of loyal tramwaymen striking to protest about previously striking tramwaymen being reinstated. Thus the dispute continued until finally all the different grievances could be settled on August 26. [6]
The prompt dispatch of military units to Liverpool shows that by the summer of 1911 the government realised that in certain circumstances they were the only solution. There were lessons to be learnt from Liverpool, particularly from the attack on the prison convoy. Some of these would be integrated into the Army's 1912 pamphlet on action in civil disturbances. It would have been difficult to avoid the St. George’s Plateau riot, but the calmness of the military at the scene prevented the incident becoming more severe. In a city where rioting was all too common any authority faced a difficult task of balancing the need to minimize unrest and ensuring law and order.
References
[1] P.J. Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism. A Political and Social History of Liverpool, 1868-1939, (Liverpool, 1981), pp. 249-50.
[2] National Archives [henceforward NA], HO 45/10658, sub-file 452, ‘Disturbances’, undated. This gives a day-by-day account of the unrest; T.A. Critchley, The Conquest of Violence. Order and Liberty in Britain, (London, 1970), p. 170.
[3] Anthony Babington, Military Intervention in Britain from the Gordon Riots to the Gibraltar Incident, (London, 1990), p.141; Waller, p.255.
[4] Liverpool Daily Post & Mercury, 18 August 1911, ‘The Unscavenged City’. [Scavenging was the term given to rubbish collection]. The death rate had risen from 13.3/1000 the previous August to 24.5/1000.
[5] NA HO 45/10655/212470 sub-file 176, Home Secretary to Lord Mayor, 19 August, 1911.; sub-file 179, Government Secretary, Isle of Man to Under Secretary of State, Home Office, 19 August 1911.
[6] Waller, p. 256; NA, HO 45/1065/212470, sub-file 356, T.P. O’Connor, G. Kyffin-Taylor, D.J. Shackleton to Home Secretary, 20 August 1911, 1 am and 11pm; 21 August 1911, 3 telegrams; 22 August 1911, 3 telegrams; Lord George Askwith, Industrial Problems and Disputes, (London, 1920), p. 172.
The Great Unrest 1910-11. Part 5: Hull
Hull
Hull, on the North-East coast of England with docks that could be accessed at any tide, was the third largest port in Britain. Much of its trade was with Northern Europe, but had it increasing links with the rest of Europe and South America. However, the focus on trade with the ice-bound ports of the Baltic Sea made much work in the city seasonal. The local North-Eastern Railway Company had already recognized the trade union, however, this was not to prevent the city suffering unrest through the summer of 1911. Between them the North Eastern and the Hull and Barnsley railway companies owned the extensive docks. Most of the work in the city was related to the docks or industries processing imports, directly or indirectly for the merchant shipping trade.[1]
Housing was cramped and over-crowded. Public health in Hull was poorer and infant mortality higher than the national averages. Despite the city’s deprivation unrest had been uncommon until a series of strikes from the spring of 1911. Even in July when strikes had broken out among dockers on the south coast and at neighbouring Goole local dock trade union leaders were reluctant to call a strike, but on June 20 yielded to rank-and-file pressure. As was becoming common once the dockers struck other unions followed in sympathy. When Askwith, who was well known in Hull because of his work dealing with fishermen’s strikes there, arrived, local carters and railway men had also come out. Unlike the dockers though, these other workers did not have clear demands, thus making settlement of the dispute that much harder. Despite brokering a deal among the different sides of the dispute this was rejected by a crowd of 15,000 many of whom were women, that rioted in opposition to the settlement.[2]
The Home Office maintained that the Hull local authorities were responsible for dealing with unrest, but by the last week in June, this was proving to be beyond their capabilities. The Mayor of Hull, J.S. Taylor, faced pressure from ship owners wanting their perishable cargoes unloaded. They went over his head, straight to the Home Office. Meanwhile the Norwegian vice-consul and the Russian consul were also bringing pressure over ships that could not be unloaded owing to the dispute.[3]
Taylor faced the problem that even if they could be unloaded strikes in other trades prevented goods being taken from the docks. Food supplies in the town were beginning to run short and prices were rising. Given the international pressure which was soon exerted on the Foreign Office too, the government had to intervene. Despite thousands of rioters in the streets and with the town paralysed through strikes, procedure was adhered to. The chief constable of Hull applied to Leeds for twelve mounted police, to triple his mounted force. On the evening of June 29, it was clear that strikers were resentful of Askwith’s deal. Rumours that blackleg workers would start unloading a ship sparked a riot by about 2,000 strikers. Offices belonging to shipping companies, and depots belonging to the British Free Labour Federation were wrecked and many shops were looted. Seventeen people were hospitalised but there were no arrests. Police repeatedly baton charged the crowds which finally brought to an end eight hours of rioting. The mayor requested Metropolitan police. Five hundred were in Hull by the following morning. [4]
Combined with police from other constabularies the number imported into Hull soon reached a total of thirteen hundred. The insignia showing they were not Hull police was removed, but they were far better received than they were to be in towns like Cardiff and Liverpool. Askwith gave a gloomy report on the situation. He saw the mayor as ‘stupid and wobbling’ and feared that if an acceptable deal could not be found the town might ‘see such a revolution as it has nerve done before. The Chief Constable remained wary and following procedure contacted the Northern Command of the Army at York. This was forwarded to Macready for assessments. Two squadrons of cavalry, up to 400 soldiers, were held on standby in York, only ninety minutes by train from Hull.[5] However, these were not needed and on July 4 most strikers accepted the original settlement rejected the previous week and returned to work. The Metropolitans left immediately though other imported police stayed on until June 17. Like other leading northern towns, Hull received troops, two battalions of infantry, in August 1911 to deal with the rail strike. Drawing on the experience of June and July a cruiser H.M.S. ‘Attentive’ sailed to Hull to guard the dock gates from interference. It stayed until August 24.[6]
It was estimated that £300,000 worth of cargo [equivalent to £16.5 million today] had been delayed, some of which had naturally rotted beyond use. Churchill praised the mayor’s action in requesting help, but the council was shocked at the bill for the Metropolitans. After four days Hull had had to foot their normal pay as well as the special duty money. The ordinary pay per day for a police constable was 8s 5d and the special pay 12s [total per day is equivalent to £60 now]; police inspectors received twice as much. There had already been problems with local authorities in Glamorgan not paying for police sent to the area the previous November. Hull’s position attracted similar attention. It could be argued that such large bills for importing police encouraged other mayors to call for troops, who were funded by central government, rather than police on the first occasion. [7]
References
[1] Keith Brooker, The Hull Strikes of 1911, (Beverley, Yorkshire, 1979), pp. 1, 4, 6, 9.
[2] Brooker, p. 10; Lord George Askwith, Industrial Problems and Disputes, (London, 1920), pp. 148-150.
[3] National Archives [henceforward NA], HO 45/10649/210615, sub-file 5, Under Secretary of State, Home Office [Sir Edward Troup] to Mayor of Hull, undated [28 June 1911?]; sub-file 10, General Shipowners’ Society to Home Secretary, 29 June 1911; sub-file 4, Under Secretary of State, Home Office to Mayor Hull, undated [27 June 1911?]; sub-file 24, J.S. Taylor to Under Secretary of State, Home Office, 1 July 1 1911.
[4] NA, HO 45/10648/210615 sub-file 13, Russian Embassy to Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs [in French; diplomatic correspondence at this time was often carried out in French and as a result it is often difficult to find English language versions of treaties that the UK signed], 30 June 1911, sub-file 5, Letter to Mr. Blackwell, 28 June 1911, sub-file 9, Mayor of Hull to Home Secretary, 29 June 1911; Brooker pp. 20, 22.
[5] NA, HO 45/210615, sub-file 19, S.W.H. to Home Secretary, June 30, 1911; sub-file 12, Memorandum [handwritten], I.R.W., June 30, 1911; sub-file 26a, G.R. Askwith to President of the Board of Trade, 2 July 1912 [sic, should be 1911].
[6] Brooker pp. 21-22; NA, HO 45/10655/212470, sub-file 158, ‘Hull, 19 August 1911; Home Secretary to Mayor of Hull, undated [19 August 1911]; Admiralty to Home Office, 19 August, 1911; NA HO 45/10656, Sir Edward Troup to Secretary, Admiralty, 24 August 1911.
[7] NA, HO 45/10648/210615 sub-file 21, Letter to Mayor of Hull, undated [July 1911]; Mayor of Hull to Under Secretary of State, Home Office, July 1, 1911; sub-file 14, Home Secretary to Mayor of Hull, 30 June , 1911; Parliamentary Debates. Commons. 5th Series, 1911, vol. XXXVII, June 19 - July 7, 3 July 1911, cols. 791-2.
Hull, on the North-East coast of England with docks that could be accessed at any tide, was the third largest port in Britain. Much of its trade was with Northern Europe, but had it increasing links with the rest of Europe and South America. However, the focus on trade with the ice-bound ports of the Baltic Sea made much work in the city seasonal. The local North-Eastern Railway Company had already recognized the trade union, however, this was not to prevent the city suffering unrest through the summer of 1911. Between them the North Eastern and the Hull and Barnsley railway companies owned the extensive docks. Most of the work in the city was related to the docks or industries processing imports, directly or indirectly for the merchant shipping trade.[1]
Housing was cramped and over-crowded. Public health in Hull was poorer and infant mortality higher than the national averages. Despite the city’s deprivation unrest had been uncommon until a series of strikes from the spring of 1911. Even in July when strikes had broken out among dockers on the south coast and at neighbouring Goole local dock trade union leaders were reluctant to call a strike, but on June 20 yielded to rank-and-file pressure. As was becoming common once the dockers struck other unions followed in sympathy. When Askwith, who was well known in Hull because of his work dealing with fishermen’s strikes there, arrived, local carters and railway men had also come out. Unlike the dockers though, these other workers did not have clear demands, thus making settlement of the dispute that much harder. Despite brokering a deal among the different sides of the dispute this was rejected by a crowd of 15,000 many of whom were women, that rioted in opposition to the settlement.[2]
The Home Office maintained that the Hull local authorities were responsible for dealing with unrest, but by the last week in June, this was proving to be beyond their capabilities. The Mayor of Hull, J.S. Taylor, faced pressure from ship owners wanting their perishable cargoes unloaded. They went over his head, straight to the Home Office. Meanwhile the Norwegian vice-consul and the Russian consul were also bringing pressure over ships that could not be unloaded owing to the dispute.[3]
Taylor faced the problem that even if they could be unloaded strikes in other trades prevented goods being taken from the docks. Food supplies in the town were beginning to run short and prices were rising. Given the international pressure which was soon exerted on the Foreign Office too, the government had to intervene. Despite thousands of rioters in the streets and with the town paralysed through strikes, procedure was adhered to. The chief constable of Hull applied to Leeds for twelve mounted police, to triple his mounted force. On the evening of June 29, it was clear that strikers were resentful of Askwith’s deal. Rumours that blackleg workers would start unloading a ship sparked a riot by about 2,000 strikers. Offices belonging to shipping companies, and depots belonging to the British Free Labour Federation were wrecked and many shops were looted. Seventeen people were hospitalised but there were no arrests. Police repeatedly baton charged the crowds which finally brought to an end eight hours of rioting. The mayor requested Metropolitan police. Five hundred were in Hull by the following morning. [4]
Combined with police from other constabularies the number imported into Hull soon reached a total of thirteen hundred. The insignia showing they were not Hull police was removed, but they were far better received than they were to be in towns like Cardiff and Liverpool. Askwith gave a gloomy report on the situation. He saw the mayor as ‘stupid and wobbling’ and feared that if an acceptable deal could not be found the town might ‘see such a revolution as it has nerve done before. The Chief Constable remained wary and following procedure contacted the Northern Command of the Army at York. This was forwarded to Macready for assessments. Two squadrons of cavalry, up to 400 soldiers, were held on standby in York, only ninety minutes by train from Hull.[5] However, these were not needed and on July 4 most strikers accepted the original settlement rejected the previous week and returned to work. The Metropolitans left immediately though other imported police stayed on until June 17. Like other leading northern towns, Hull received troops, two battalions of infantry, in August 1911 to deal with the rail strike. Drawing on the experience of June and July a cruiser H.M.S. ‘Attentive’ sailed to Hull to guard the dock gates from interference. It stayed until August 24.[6]
It was estimated that £300,000 worth of cargo [equivalent to £16.5 million today] had been delayed, some of which had naturally rotted beyond use. Churchill praised the mayor’s action in requesting help, but the council was shocked at the bill for the Metropolitans. After four days Hull had had to foot their normal pay as well as the special duty money. The ordinary pay per day for a police constable was 8s 5d and the special pay 12s [total per day is equivalent to £60 now]; police inspectors received twice as much. There had already been problems with local authorities in Glamorgan not paying for police sent to the area the previous November. Hull’s position attracted similar attention. It could be argued that such large bills for importing police encouraged other mayors to call for troops, who were funded by central government, rather than police on the first occasion. [7]
References
[1] Keith Brooker, The Hull Strikes of 1911, (Beverley, Yorkshire, 1979), pp. 1, 4, 6, 9.
[2] Brooker, p. 10; Lord George Askwith, Industrial Problems and Disputes, (London, 1920), pp. 148-150.
[3] National Archives [henceforward NA], HO 45/10649/210615, sub-file 5, Under Secretary of State, Home Office [Sir Edward Troup] to Mayor of Hull, undated [28 June 1911?]; sub-file 10, General Shipowners’ Society to Home Secretary, 29 June 1911; sub-file 4, Under Secretary of State, Home Office to Mayor Hull, undated [27 June 1911?]; sub-file 24, J.S. Taylor to Under Secretary of State, Home Office, 1 July 1 1911.
[4] NA, HO 45/10648/210615 sub-file 13, Russian Embassy to Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs [in French; diplomatic correspondence at this time was often carried out in French and as a result it is often difficult to find English language versions of treaties that the UK signed], 30 June 1911, sub-file 5, Letter to Mr. Blackwell, 28 June 1911, sub-file 9, Mayor of Hull to Home Secretary, 29 June 1911; Brooker pp. 20, 22.
[5] NA, HO 45/210615, sub-file 19, S.W.H. to Home Secretary, June 30, 1911; sub-file 12, Memorandum [handwritten], I.R.W., June 30, 1911; sub-file 26a, G.R. Askwith to President of the Board of Trade, 2 July 1912 [sic, should be 1911].
[6] Brooker pp. 21-22; NA, HO 45/10655/212470, sub-file 158, ‘Hull, 19 August 1911; Home Secretary to Mayor of Hull, undated [19 August 1911]; Admiralty to Home Office, 19 August, 1911; NA HO 45/10656, Sir Edward Troup to Secretary, Admiralty, 24 August 1911.
[7] NA, HO 45/10648/210615 sub-file 21, Letter to Mayor of Hull, undated [July 1911]; Mayor of Hull to Under Secretary of State, Home Office, July 1, 1911; sub-file 14, Home Secretary to Mayor of Hull, 30 June , 1911; Parliamentary Debates. Commons. 5th Series, 1911, vol. XXXVII, June 19 - July 7, 3 July 1911, cols. 791-2.
The Great Unrest 1910-11. Part 4: Action in South Wales
South Wales saw the most sustained striking and rioting in this period. During 1910-11 the whole region became a special military district overseen initially by Major-General Nevil Macready and then by Lieutenant-Colonel George Freeth. It saw the widest range of types of unrest with strikes and riots in the mining valleys, at the port of Cardiff and as a result of the national railway strike of August 1911. It also witnessed race riots against citizens of Jewish and Chinese origin, riots by black seamen and by middle class people against police brought into the region. Despite the myth, no-one was shot dead during the riots at Tonypandy, but two rioters (not strikers) were shot dead at Llanelly (now known more commonly as Llanelli) during the railway strike; two others were injured and other rioters died when they set light to a railway carriage containing detonators.
Action and Reaction in South Wales
The incident which is seen as marking the beginning of the period of ‘Great Labour Unrest’ was the riots in Tonypandy, Glamorgan in November 1910. Barbara Weinberger and Anthony Mor O’Brien do highlight the government’s intervention in the Newport dock strike in May 1910. However, as the government was unwilling to intervene to protect blackleg labour, this strike did not see the rioting that subsequent disputes were to witness.
Industrial action erupted in September 1910 across the South Wales mining districts over pay for working awkward seams; the strike became official on 1 November 1910. The rank-and-file miners were militant and were angered by the use of blackleg labour and their perception of the local police as a strike-breaking force. As Weinberger shows, that this was a fair view, particularly as the chief constable of Glamorgan, Captain Lionel Lindsay, openly aligned himself with coal owners’ interests and saw any resistance to their policies as rebellion. In addition, in contrast to other strike locations where the council offered a different focus of power to that of the leading employers, the mine owners had a monopoly of economic and political power in the valleys.[1]
Following established policy, Lindsay imported 142 police from other forces to help face gangs trying to spread the strike. On 8 November, following police attempts to disperse a crowd, substantial rioting broke out in Tonypandy. One man was killed by police during the rioting. The rising tension had already provoked a local magistrate to requisition military force, as had happened during the 1893 and 1898 strikes in the area. O’Brien feels that Lindsay did not call on military forces in Brecon or Cardiff because they may have had local affiliations making them reluctant to oppose strikers. Furthermore, O’Brien believes Lindsay, acting on his own initiative rather than through a magistrate, would have angered the War Secretary, Lord Haldane. Though he adopted a very bullish approach, in fact, Lindsay followed the procedure that Haldane had approved when presenting to the 1908 select committee looking at these issues. Lindsay telegraphed army headquarters in Shrewsbury, Chester and Salisbury Plain, rather than approaching local units. It was up to Army Commands as to the nature of the troops sent.[2]
Possibly, given the way that troops and police had effectively come under the direct control of mine owners in previous disputes in this area and used to carry out provocative action, Winston Churchill, the Home Secretary, intervened and instead sent 270 Metropolitan police, 70 of whom were mounted. As O’Brien notes, Haldane, concurred with the Home Office action, and, being in ill-health, was happy to let Churchill take charge. Though there were no subsequent riots, unrest continued and the police faced up to 7-9000 demonstrators over subsequent weeks.[3] Sustained rioting did lead Churchill to subsequently despatch troops, but these were billeted away from turbulent areas. Fearing clashes between troops and strikers encouraged him to be cautious and to enlist help in finding a resolution.
Importantly, Tonypandy established the characteristics of the coming riots across Britain. An often overlooked precedent is the fact that the Rhondda Valley effectively became a military occupation zone under Major (brevet Lieutenant-Colonel from August 1911) George Freeth, initially under Major-General Sir Nevil Macready, but then in his own right.[4] His troops remained in South Wales until August 1911 and Freeth was well positioned to tackle the subsequent unrest such as the Cardiff dock strike and riots associated with the national rail strike. This model of a designated strike area with an officer able to dispatch forces where necessary, was applied across the country during the rail strike. O’Brien sees Churchill as having become convinced by the experiences of South Wales, to use the Army instead of police all in riot situations.[5] This is not borne out by subsequent events, especially in Hull. The continuing problem continued to be, the relative small number of police available and their expense when imported into a different area. In subsequent unrest, military units continued, as had been determined in 1908, to be the last resort, whatever local magistrates might demand.
It was the riots connected with the mining dispute in the Rhondda Valley of South Wales, which seemed to herald the period of great unrest. For almost a year a strike area, overseen by military forces was retained not only in the mining valleys. but also towns such as Cardiff and Newport. As events turned out, this was a sensible precaution as the region was convulsed by some of the worst rioting of this period. After the Tonypandy riots, the mining districts remained quiet but riots arose the following summer in Cardiff associated with the dock strike, at Llanelly during the railway strike and the apparent anti-Semitic riots at a number of towns following the railway strike.
In July 1911, with Askwith and Macready dealing with the situation in Salford, violence broke out during the Cardiff dock strike. The strike, which started on 14 June 1911, did not show any tendency towards violence until the afternoon of 18 July. Protests arose as non-union labour was being used to unload ships. At the docks, up to a thousand people began attacking warehouses and then the firemen sent to extinguish the blazes which were started. Local police, made up of the city constabulary, but also the separate dock and Cardiff railway company police, were able to clear rioters from around the docks. The local authorities followed procedure and enlisted what help they could with thirty police each coming from the Gloucestershire, Monmouthshire and Methyr Tydfil forces. Other neighbouring constabularies soon had their own problems with which to deal.
Large-scale meetings continued in the following days and 220 Metropolitan police were sent along with troops diverted from the mining districts. The police were being stretched thin, especially to cover areas such as the Barry Docks, away from the city. With Freeth commanding forces inland, he was able to dispatch two battalions of the Lancashire Fusiliers to Cardiff and Barry. However, as he did, rioting again flared up in the mining valleys and units of the Loyal North Lancashire and Somerset Light Infantry regiments were sent to black spots throughout the region.[6]
In the days after 18 July, rioting turned from the dockside to targeting the city’s Chinese community and then, in the most serious riots on 22 July, at the Metropolitan police themselves, now stationed in Cardiff. A Chinese crew was escorted through the town by police on July 19 which provoked attacks on Chinese properties the following day. The strike continued but Askwith could not intervene as no side had asked him to do so. He stood ready to go to Cardiff whilst the situation deteriorated and the city’s strike committee blocked the movement of flour in the city, thus hitting the bread supply.[7]
On 20 July, having attacked various Chinese in the streets, over a thousand rioters surrounded Chinese laundries in the city and stoned them until all the windows were broken. Despite the presence of 220 Metropolitan Police and a battalion of Lancashire Fusiliers in the city to supplement the city police, the rioters were just followed around without intervention as they attacked laundries and Chinese they encountered in the street.
In just a few hours of race riots over £83 worth [£5,000 at today’s values] of clothing was destroyed and insurance claims from Chinese properties attacked, both laundries and boarding houses, topped £710 [nowadays worth £40,000]. It is easy to see where such attitudes came from. Chinese sailors were the only ethnic group of sailors who did not go on strike. They tended to be isolated in their own community; easy to identify and locate for attack. Writing to the Home Secretary and the President of the Board of Trade, Ben Tillett, general secretary of the Dock, Wharf Riverside and General Workers Union, part of the National Transport Workers Federation demanded ‘Chinese and so called Free-labour must go’ and that there was a sound ‘reason for the public to turn the Liberals out of office seeing that they have brought the Chinaman to oust the British worker’. It would be difficult to argue that such attitudes held by a respected trade union leader did not stoke up the racial violence seen in Cardiff.[8] Tillett's racism is ironic given that the Cardiff Chinese population was well established and Chinese sailors had not been brought in to break the strike, they had simply not struck in the first place. Given the union leader's attitude it would have been no surprise that the Chinese sailors were not unionised.
Tensions remained high even after the dock strike had finished with a riot among black British seamen who had been laid off. Having gone for seven to eight weeks without work around 400 surrounded the Board of Trade offices in the city on 16 August. They claimed that, as British subjects, they had more right to be chosen for employment than their Greek, Spanish or Italian counterparts who ships’ officers had begun to favour since the strike. Police broke the demonstration with baton charges, hospitalising seven protestors.[9]
Rioting with a racial aspect was not confined to Cardiff. On Saturday 19 August 1911, the same night as rioting rocked Llanelly farther West in Carmarthenshire, towns across Monmouthshire[10], inland from Cardiff, were hit by rioting which, at least initially, targeted Jewish shops. The Jewish population of South Wales was small, only around 5,000 in 1914. In Tredegar, where the rioting started there were only 150 Jews in 1911, less than 1 percent of the town’s population. The Jews were primarily shopkeepers, though Joseph Cohen, who was blamed by police for provoking the riot through raising rents, was the owner of a mineral water factory as well as housing. Of the eighteen Jewish shops in the town, sixteen were wrecked and looted on the first night. Cohen claimed that police had ignored his warnings, but, in turn, he had refused military protection and had fled to London, where he was granted an interview at the Home Office and appears as a key source of information for the government. [11]
With over 200 rioters, the local police force of nine constables was overwhelmed. Tredegar fell within the broad reach of Lieutenant-Colonel Freeth’s area and so he sent 170 soldiers, a mix of troops from the Somerset Light Infantry and the Worcestershire regiments. As the days passed, rioting continued at Tredegar and spread to Ebbw Vale and to Rhymney which had only two policemen on duty at any one time. A squadron of the 4th Hussars and a further 180 more infantry of the Worcestershire Regiment were brought in. These saw action bayonet charging stone-throwing rioters. Rioters who were arrested had to be kept under military guard, as there were too few police. Despite the extent of the rioting and the involvement of around 500 soldiers, injuries were not severe. After nine months of dealing with sporadic unrest in South Wales, Freeth’s forces were pretty experienced at working in this anti-riot role.[12]
Though members of the Jewish Boards of Deputies and of Guardians in London warned the government that there would be further attacks on Jewish property and some Jewish shops were damaged, as W.D. Rubinstein notes, after the first riot on 19 August, only four more Jewish shops were attacked, a fraction of the Gentile ones which were looted. In addition, eight of the towns where rioting took place on 22 August, such as Cwm, Victoria, and Waunllwyd, had no Jewish residents at all. As was pointed out at the time, no Jewish people were attacked nor was the synagogue in Tredegar. However, there was clearly a fear that anti-Semitic attacks would occur and it was reported that hundreds of Jewish, as well as other residents, left the area.[13]
As Colin Holmes states, it is often noted when looking at unrest that people act when they feel the rules of the ‘moral economy’ have been breached. The riots which wracked South Wales seemed to have stemmed from the fear that the strikes were allowing shopkeepers to push up prices at a time when real wages were declining. Rubinstein notes the hostility to plutocrats in Wales at the time, as had been the case during the Boer War ten years earlier. The riot is a way of demonstrating to traders the parameters of what customers will permit. The rioting partly came from greed, as Victor Bosanquet, the chief constable noted, even ‘respectable’ people stole ‘all they could lay their hand on’. The rioting in Tredegar and the surrounding towns inflicted £16,000 worth of damage [£883,000 at today’s values]. Unusually for Britain of the time, for a brief moment rioting appeared to be acceptable behaviour and racial tensions which had bubbled away previously now broke through to the surface. However, as Rubinstein notes, the actions of a few hundred individuals have to be set against the continuing support the Welsh gave to Jews.[14]
Though the racial elements of the rioting attracted attention, the Head Constable of Cardiff was more shocked at the hostility of the city’s middle classes to the Metropolitan police stationed there. Large numbers of spectators gathered wherever there were disturbances, this occurred at all the riots discussed in this article, but beyond that, imported police were liable to attack whenever they appeared in Cardiff. They were stoned from ‘respectable’ houses. The skating rink where they were billeted in Cardiff was surrounded by 3-4,000 rioters who forced the Metropolitan police officers out. Two closely avoided death when masonry was thrown at them from a roof.
Not only did the imported police have to contend with such attacks, there were a clutch of malicious complaints against them after they had been withdrawn from Cardiff. These included accusations of assaults on bystanders and that the Metropolitan policemen had been drunk. The Home Office investigated the complaints in detail but determined that they had no foundation in fact and felt that the police had been restrained in breaking up what were clearly serious riots. The reason for the hostility towards the police by those not directly involved in the strike can only be speculated upon. Like the Chinese, these offices were an easily identifiable target for the anger of the population of the city. The rioters came from across the social spectrum so the explanation cannot really be found in the ‘them’ and ‘us’ mentality prevalent at the time, bar in the sense of the local community being angered at any outsiders disturbing their freedom to riot, a right that many in the country at the time felt was a legitimate one. As in most places in Britain, by the end of the summer, this sentiment had run its course, never to revive.[15]
It is clear from the violence in Cardiff, as elsewhere, that much of the unrest was only tangentially, or at least only initially related, to the strikes prevailing at the time. Less than a month after the Cardiff riots more violence was seen during and after the national railway strike which fitted this pattern. At Llanelly (known since 1963 as Llanelli) on 19 August 1911 two rioters, neither a railway man, were shot dead. Striking railway men had, in fact, tried to stop the mob, mainly of tinplate workers, from stoning the police and soldiers. None of the four looters, who died later that day in Llanelly, when a wagon containing detonators was set alight, were railway workers.[16] Observation of similar behaviour came from Lieutenant-Colonel Lee based in the South Midland Strike Area who noted the destruction of the Portishead Junction signal box, outside Bristol in the South-West England, was carried out by ‘hooligans’ rather than striking railwaymen.[17]
There seems no reason for the army officers to lie about the membership of the crowds. Studying the unrest between 1910-1913 it becomes clear that, though violence and vandalism were associated with the industrial unrest, and, in cases such as attacks on collieries and docks was carried out as part of the strike, much of the violence was unrelated and done by people not from the striking industry. This is reinforced by Geary who points out that the main target for strikers was preventing blackleg labour from getting to work and not in destroying property or machinery.[18] However, it is clear that there was some additional social trend afoot which led to such a range of people being involved in rioting. The temperature was 124.1°F (51.1°C) in the sunshine in Cardiff on 17 August 1911. The heat, though, cannot simply explain why usually law-abiding people turned to violence, vandalism and arson.[19]
Though farther West than Cardiff and Tonypandy, Llanelly also fell within the South Wales strike area. Dean Hopkin, in his study of the Llanelly incident, shows how the town was a peaceful one and only around half of the 535 local railway men were members of a union. However, pickets started at 1,000 people and rose to a peak of 5,000. Llanelly was an easy target. Unlike other major Welsh stations, it was not on a rise. There were level crossings both sides of the station which made picketing easy. In addition, the route from London to Fishguard, a main port for traffic to Ireland, which passed through Llanelly, was a busy, profitable one. The local police force had lent constables to both Tonypandy and Cardiff to deal with their unrest, leaving only eighteen police officers in the town.[20]
Pickets at the level crossings easily held up trains. Despite the return of all Llanelly police to the town they were clearly outnumbered. Police, and later 120 Loyal North Lancashires, brought from recent duty at Barry Docks, were unable to keep the line open. Macready sent in an additional 250 troops. The picketing fell away and services resumed. It was on the Saturday evening with the public houses having been closed early, that the violence escalated. A train was halted, disabled and its driver beaten, before 80 soldiers of the Worcester regiment were sent in. This force was probably too small to deal with the hundreds of rioters who were above the line which ran through a cutting at this point. The soldiers were stoned by 150-200 rioters.
In line with the 1908 select committee’s views, after the commanding officer had spoken with some of the rioters, a bugle was sounded and the Riot Act read. After a minute’s pause, five shots were fired, killing two men who had been taunting the soldiers and injuring two others. One shot was accidentally discharged. Only five shots were intentionally fired with fifteen seconds delay between each. The two men who were fatally shot were hit in the chest, the second whilst claiming that the round were blank. The use of blanks had been forbidden in riot situations. The third victim was shot through the neck and the fourth in the hand, but both men survived. The fact that five shots fired individually inflicted such casualties indicates the potential accuracy and impact of rifles of the time. As evidence given to the 1908 select committee noted, people could be killed 180 yards from firing and injured up to 400 yards away. The Llanelly incident shows how even a comparatively small number of troops could have decimated the rioters if they had fired volleys into the crowd. This was especially the case as the King’s Regulations advised shooting at the front of a crowd rather than over the heads. This approach was seen as reducing the potential to injure bystanders, but increased the likely casualties among rioters.[21]
One private among the Worcestershires at Llanelly deserted and fled across Wales until he was caught, hungry and exhausted 100 miles away. Rioting and looting continued throughout the night across town. Soldiers had to relieve the police station where the train driver had been taken, from siege by rioters. Warehouses as well as wagons were systematically looted. Ultimately damage totalling £3,742 [worth £205,000 today] was done. The rioters were persistent and were only broken in the early hours of the morning by repeated bayonet charges by Sussex Regiment troops.[22]
Dean Hopkin notes that the looting was blamed on outsiders from neighbouring villages, though, in fact, they were from all the poor districts in and around Llanelly. The ‘railwaymen maintained a low profile in the activities of the picket’, so, as in Cardiff, one sees rioting by a ‘much wider cross-section of the community than was directly involved in the strike.’ Women had been involved in the rioting, as had been the case in Tonypandy and in Cardiff. The parochial anger at being assaulted by the authorities is another similarity to Cardiff. People involved in rioting rather than looting, after the shootings, felt their cause legitimate and continued to call for the indictment of all the magistrates and senior police. As in Tonypandy the previous year, in some cases, looting was focused on particular individuals. Shops and property belonging to magistrates received particular attention as the people blamed them for the incidents, especially bringing troops into the towns. Hopkin writes that the population of the town were ashamed of what had happened. Interestingly, what happened there may have cooled the temper of rioters elsewhere, for example, as noticed by the chief constable of Hull.[23]
References
[1] Barbara Weinberger, Keeping the Peace? Policing Strikes in Britain 1906-1926, (Oxford, 1991), pp. 44-5, 209; Steve Peak, Troops in Strikes. Military Intervention in Industrial Disputes, (London, 1984), pp. 27-8.
[2] Weinberger, pp. 42-3; Anthony Mor O’ Brien, ‘Churchill and the Tonypandy Riots’, Welsh History Review, vol. 17 (1994), p. 74, David Smith, ‘Tonypandy 1910: Definitions of Community’, Past and Present, vol. 87 (1980), p. 159.
[3] Roger Geary, Policing Industrial Disputes, 1893 to 1985, (Cambridge, 1985), p. 118; O’Brien, p. 78; Smith, pp. 163-5, 168, 180.
[4] Who Was Who 1941-50, (London, 1967), p. 411.
[5] O’Brien, p. 92.
[6] National Archives, [henceforward NA], HO 45/10649/2120615, sub-file 134, Police reports to Head Constable, especially Superintendent George Durston’s, 29 July 1911; sub-file 107, Chief Constable [of Glamorgan, i.e. Captain Lionel Lindsay, rather than the head of the Cardiff Constabulary] to Under Secretary of State, Home Office, 29 July 1911.
[7] NA, HO 45/10649/210615 sub-file 90, undated [26 July 1911?], Memorandum to Mr. Churchill; sub-file 81, ‘Diary of Cardiff Strike’, Major Freeth, 23 July 1911.
[8] South Wales Daily News, 9 July 1911, ‘Cardiff Laundry Raids’ [report of court cases against rioters]; Colin Holmes, ‘The Tredegar Riots of 1911: Anti-Jewish Disturbances in South Wales’, Welsh History Review, vol. 11, no. 2, (1982-3), p. 224 also briefly mentions other racial violence in South Wales aside from anti-Semitic attacks; NA, HO 45/10649/210615, sub-file 77, ‘Minute’, undated [23 July 1911?], ‘Stations of Military in South Wales and Bristol Area’, undated [27 July 1911]; sub-file 137 Lew Yuk-lin, Chinese Legation to Sir Edward Grey [Foreign Secretary], 8 September 1911; sub-file 82, Ben Tillett to the Home Secretary and the President of the Board of Trade, ‘Manifesto. Transport Workers’ National Dispute’, 24 July 1911.
[9] The Times, 16 August 1911, ‘Negro Riot at Cardiff’.
[10] At this time, Monmouthshire was considered an English county though it is in what we could consider geographically to be Wales and laws, such as those on licensed premises were described as applying to ‘Wales and Monmouthshire’. Information provided by Association of British Counties.
[11] Geoffrey Alderman, ‘The Anti-Jewish Riots of August 1911 in South Wales’, Welsh History Review, vol. 6, no. 2, (1972-73), p. 191; Holmes, p. 215; NA, HO 144/1160/212987, ‘Diary of Events. South Wales Coal Strike. 21st August 1911’, Lt. Col. Freeth, 21 August 1911; sub-file 3a, ‘Statement of Mr. Joseph Cohen Regarding the Tredegar Riots’, A.S.W.
[12] NA 144/1160/212987, Freeth, ‘Diary. 21st August’; ‘Rioting at Tredegar’; A.S. Tallis (Presiding Magistrate) to W.S. Churchill, 21 August 1911; sub-file 3a, ‘Diary of Events, South Wales Strike Area 23rd August 1911’, 23 August 1911.
[13] NA, HO 144/1160/212987, Jewish Board of Deputies to Home Secretary August 22, 1911; Member of Jewish Board of Guardians to Home Office, 22 August 1911; Rubinstein, pp. 686-7, 692-3; The Times, 23 August 1911, ‘Renewed Riots in South Wales’.
[14] Holmes, p. 219; NA, HO 144/ 1160/212987/ sub-file 13, Victor Bosanquet to Home Secretary, October 25, 1911; Rubinstein pp. 667, 669, 673, 683.
[15] NA, HO 45/10649/210615, sub-file 87, Chief Constable of Glamorgan [based in Cardiff] to Under Secretary of State, Home Office, 23 July 1911; sub-file 86 Superintendent J. Olive to Metropolitan Police Commissioner [Sir E. Henry], 23 July 1911; sub-file 93, Complaint by Christopher W. Thompson, July 25, 1911; ‘Analysis of Complaint - Thompson’, 25 & 29 July 1911; sub-file 116, Analysis of Complaint’ [one for E. Cottle and one for J. Watt], 16 August 1911; Letter to James Parker, M.P., 30 August 1911.
[16] The Times, 30 August 1911, ‘The Llanelly Riots’; NA HO 45/10655/212470 sub-file 206, ‘Diary of Events, South Wales Strike Area. 19th & 20th August 1911’, unsigned [Lieut.-Col. Freeth], 20 August 1911.
[17] NA, HO 45/10655/212470, sub-file 243a, Lieutenant-Colonel Lee to Brigadier-General L.G. Drummond, 21 August 1911.
[18] Roger Geary, Policing Industrial Dispute, 1893 to 1985, (Cambridge, 1985), p.25.
[19] Dean R. Hopkin, ‘The Llanelli Riots’ in Welsh History Review, vol. 11, no. 4 (Dec. 1983), pp.491-2; NA, HO 45/10655/212470, sub-file 171, ‘Diary of Events. South Wales Strike Area’, August 18, 1911; Chief Constable of Carmarthenshire to Home Secretary, 19 August, 1911.
[20] Hopkin, pp. 493-4.
[21] Hopkin, pp. 496-501; PRO, HO 45/10658/212470, sub-file 451, ‘Llanelly Riots. Copy Depositions Taken at Inquest’, undated; sub-file 474, McKenna to Llwellyn Williams, M.P., 5 August 1913. ‘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. 19; Anthony Babington, Military Intervention in Britain from the Gordon Riots to the Gibraltar Incident, (London, 1990), pp. 125, 131, 135. Some in the crowd believed the soldiers were firing blanks, and others that they would not fire. This reinforces Major-General G.F. Browne’s concern of 1908 that it be clear that when a military unit arrived it was effectively saying ‘if we use our firearms it is to kill’ and Lord Haldane’s insistence that no blank rounds be issued.
[22]; The Times, August 25, 1911, ‘Soldier’s Refusal to Shoot a Rioter’; 30 August 1911, ‘The Llanelly Riots’ [which corrects the earlier article]. NA HO 45/10656/212470 sub-file 352, W.S.C. [Churchill] to Sir Edward Troup, 29 August 1911; NA HO 144/1022, ‘Extract from the King’s Regulations and Orders for the Army ...’, undated, especially paragraph 965.
[23] Hopkin, pp. 500, 502-4, 506-7, 510; Smith, p. 168; Babington, pp. 125, 131; NA HO 45/10658/212470 sub-file 294, ‘Hull’, Mr. Butterworth, 23 August 1911; NA, HO 45/10658/212470, sub-file 451, ‘Llanelly Riots. Copy Depositions Taken at Inquest’, undated; sub-file 474, McKenna to Llwellyn Williams, M.P., 5 August 1913; Select Committee, p. 19. Between 1869-1908 troops had fired 17 rounds at rioters killing 4 and wounding 11, the farthest being 400 yards away. In 1908 rounds were noted to be smaller, of higher velocity and more frangible if they hit masonry than had been the case in 1894.
Action and Reaction in South Wales
The incident which is seen as marking the beginning of the period of ‘Great Labour Unrest’ was the riots in Tonypandy, Glamorgan in November 1910. Barbara Weinberger and Anthony Mor O’Brien do highlight the government’s intervention in the Newport dock strike in May 1910. However, as the government was unwilling to intervene to protect blackleg labour, this strike did not see the rioting that subsequent disputes were to witness.
Industrial action erupted in September 1910 across the South Wales mining districts over pay for working awkward seams; the strike became official on 1 November 1910. The rank-and-file miners were militant and were angered by the use of blackleg labour and their perception of the local police as a strike-breaking force. As Weinberger shows, that this was a fair view, particularly as the chief constable of Glamorgan, Captain Lionel Lindsay, openly aligned himself with coal owners’ interests and saw any resistance to their policies as rebellion. In addition, in contrast to other strike locations where the council offered a different focus of power to that of the leading employers, the mine owners had a monopoly of economic and political power in the valleys.[1]
Following established policy, Lindsay imported 142 police from other forces to help face gangs trying to spread the strike. On 8 November, following police attempts to disperse a crowd, substantial rioting broke out in Tonypandy. One man was killed by police during the rioting. The rising tension had already provoked a local magistrate to requisition military force, as had happened during the 1893 and 1898 strikes in the area. O’Brien feels that Lindsay did not call on military forces in Brecon or Cardiff because they may have had local affiliations making them reluctant to oppose strikers. Furthermore, O’Brien believes Lindsay, acting on his own initiative rather than through a magistrate, would have angered the War Secretary, Lord Haldane. Though he adopted a very bullish approach, in fact, Lindsay followed the procedure that Haldane had approved when presenting to the 1908 select committee looking at these issues. Lindsay telegraphed army headquarters in Shrewsbury, Chester and Salisbury Plain, rather than approaching local units. It was up to Army Commands as to the nature of the troops sent.[2]
Possibly, given the way that troops and police had effectively come under the direct control of mine owners in previous disputes in this area and used to carry out provocative action, Winston Churchill, the Home Secretary, intervened and instead sent 270 Metropolitan police, 70 of whom were mounted. As O’Brien notes, Haldane, concurred with the Home Office action, and, being in ill-health, was happy to let Churchill take charge. Though there were no subsequent riots, unrest continued and the police faced up to 7-9000 demonstrators over subsequent weeks.[3] Sustained rioting did lead Churchill to subsequently despatch troops, but these were billeted away from turbulent areas. Fearing clashes between troops and strikers encouraged him to be cautious and to enlist help in finding a resolution.
Importantly, Tonypandy established the characteristics of the coming riots across Britain. An often overlooked precedent is the fact that the Rhondda Valley effectively became a military occupation zone under Major (brevet Lieutenant-Colonel from August 1911) George Freeth, initially under Major-General Sir Nevil Macready, but then in his own right.[4] His troops remained in South Wales until August 1911 and Freeth was well positioned to tackle the subsequent unrest such as the Cardiff dock strike and riots associated with the national rail strike. This model of a designated strike area with an officer able to dispatch forces where necessary, was applied across the country during the rail strike. O’Brien sees Churchill as having become convinced by the experiences of South Wales, to use the Army instead of police all in riot situations.[5] This is not borne out by subsequent events, especially in Hull. The continuing problem continued to be, the relative small number of police available and their expense when imported into a different area. In subsequent unrest, military units continued, as had been determined in 1908, to be the last resort, whatever local magistrates might demand.
It was the riots connected with the mining dispute in the Rhondda Valley of South Wales, which seemed to herald the period of great unrest. For almost a year a strike area, overseen by military forces was retained not only in the mining valleys. but also towns such as Cardiff and Newport. As events turned out, this was a sensible precaution as the region was convulsed by some of the worst rioting of this period. After the Tonypandy riots, the mining districts remained quiet but riots arose the following summer in Cardiff associated with the dock strike, at Llanelly during the railway strike and the apparent anti-Semitic riots at a number of towns following the railway strike.
In July 1911, with Askwith and Macready dealing with the situation in Salford, violence broke out during the Cardiff dock strike. The strike, which started on 14 June 1911, did not show any tendency towards violence until the afternoon of 18 July. Protests arose as non-union labour was being used to unload ships. At the docks, up to a thousand people began attacking warehouses and then the firemen sent to extinguish the blazes which were started. Local police, made up of the city constabulary, but also the separate dock and Cardiff railway company police, were able to clear rioters from around the docks. The local authorities followed procedure and enlisted what help they could with thirty police each coming from the Gloucestershire, Monmouthshire and Methyr Tydfil forces. Other neighbouring constabularies soon had their own problems with which to deal.
Large-scale meetings continued in the following days and 220 Metropolitan police were sent along with troops diverted from the mining districts. The police were being stretched thin, especially to cover areas such as the Barry Docks, away from the city. With Freeth commanding forces inland, he was able to dispatch two battalions of the Lancashire Fusiliers to Cardiff and Barry. However, as he did, rioting again flared up in the mining valleys and units of the Loyal North Lancashire and Somerset Light Infantry regiments were sent to black spots throughout the region.[6]
In the days after 18 July, rioting turned from the dockside to targeting the city’s Chinese community and then, in the most serious riots on 22 July, at the Metropolitan police themselves, now stationed in Cardiff. A Chinese crew was escorted through the town by police on July 19 which provoked attacks on Chinese properties the following day. The strike continued but Askwith could not intervene as no side had asked him to do so. He stood ready to go to Cardiff whilst the situation deteriorated and the city’s strike committee blocked the movement of flour in the city, thus hitting the bread supply.[7]
On 20 July, having attacked various Chinese in the streets, over a thousand rioters surrounded Chinese laundries in the city and stoned them until all the windows were broken. Despite the presence of 220 Metropolitan Police and a battalion of Lancashire Fusiliers in the city to supplement the city police, the rioters were just followed around without intervention as they attacked laundries and Chinese they encountered in the street.
In just a few hours of race riots over £83 worth [£5,000 at today’s values] of clothing was destroyed and insurance claims from Chinese properties attacked, both laundries and boarding houses, topped £710 [nowadays worth £40,000]. It is easy to see where such attitudes came from. Chinese sailors were the only ethnic group of sailors who did not go on strike. They tended to be isolated in their own community; easy to identify and locate for attack. Writing to the Home Secretary and the President of the Board of Trade, Ben Tillett, general secretary of the Dock, Wharf Riverside and General Workers Union, part of the National Transport Workers Federation demanded ‘Chinese and so called Free-labour must go’ and that there was a sound ‘reason for the public to turn the Liberals out of office seeing that they have brought the Chinaman to oust the British worker’. It would be difficult to argue that such attitudes held by a respected trade union leader did not stoke up the racial violence seen in Cardiff.[8] Tillett's racism is ironic given that the Cardiff Chinese population was well established and Chinese sailors had not been brought in to break the strike, they had simply not struck in the first place. Given the union leader's attitude it would have been no surprise that the Chinese sailors were not unionised.
Tensions remained high even after the dock strike had finished with a riot among black British seamen who had been laid off. Having gone for seven to eight weeks without work around 400 surrounded the Board of Trade offices in the city on 16 August. They claimed that, as British subjects, they had more right to be chosen for employment than their Greek, Spanish or Italian counterparts who ships’ officers had begun to favour since the strike. Police broke the demonstration with baton charges, hospitalising seven protestors.[9]
Rioting with a racial aspect was not confined to Cardiff. On Saturday 19 August 1911, the same night as rioting rocked Llanelly farther West in Carmarthenshire, towns across Monmouthshire[10], inland from Cardiff, were hit by rioting which, at least initially, targeted Jewish shops. The Jewish population of South Wales was small, only around 5,000 in 1914. In Tredegar, where the rioting started there were only 150 Jews in 1911, less than 1 percent of the town’s population. The Jews were primarily shopkeepers, though Joseph Cohen, who was blamed by police for provoking the riot through raising rents, was the owner of a mineral water factory as well as housing. Of the eighteen Jewish shops in the town, sixteen were wrecked and looted on the first night. Cohen claimed that police had ignored his warnings, but, in turn, he had refused military protection and had fled to London, where he was granted an interview at the Home Office and appears as a key source of information for the government. [11]
With over 200 rioters, the local police force of nine constables was overwhelmed. Tredegar fell within the broad reach of Lieutenant-Colonel Freeth’s area and so he sent 170 soldiers, a mix of troops from the Somerset Light Infantry and the Worcestershire regiments. As the days passed, rioting continued at Tredegar and spread to Ebbw Vale and to Rhymney which had only two policemen on duty at any one time. A squadron of the 4th Hussars and a further 180 more infantry of the Worcestershire Regiment were brought in. These saw action bayonet charging stone-throwing rioters. Rioters who were arrested had to be kept under military guard, as there were too few police. Despite the extent of the rioting and the involvement of around 500 soldiers, injuries were not severe. After nine months of dealing with sporadic unrest in South Wales, Freeth’s forces were pretty experienced at working in this anti-riot role.[12]
Though members of the Jewish Boards of Deputies and of Guardians in London warned the government that there would be further attacks on Jewish property and some Jewish shops were damaged, as W.D. Rubinstein notes, after the first riot on 19 August, only four more Jewish shops were attacked, a fraction of the Gentile ones which were looted. In addition, eight of the towns where rioting took place on 22 August, such as Cwm, Victoria, and Waunllwyd, had no Jewish residents at all. As was pointed out at the time, no Jewish people were attacked nor was the synagogue in Tredegar. However, there was clearly a fear that anti-Semitic attacks would occur and it was reported that hundreds of Jewish, as well as other residents, left the area.[13]
As Colin Holmes states, it is often noted when looking at unrest that people act when they feel the rules of the ‘moral economy’ have been breached. The riots which wracked South Wales seemed to have stemmed from the fear that the strikes were allowing shopkeepers to push up prices at a time when real wages were declining. Rubinstein notes the hostility to plutocrats in Wales at the time, as had been the case during the Boer War ten years earlier. The riot is a way of demonstrating to traders the parameters of what customers will permit. The rioting partly came from greed, as Victor Bosanquet, the chief constable noted, even ‘respectable’ people stole ‘all they could lay their hand on’. The rioting in Tredegar and the surrounding towns inflicted £16,000 worth of damage [£883,000 at today’s values]. Unusually for Britain of the time, for a brief moment rioting appeared to be acceptable behaviour and racial tensions which had bubbled away previously now broke through to the surface. However, as Rubinstein notes, the actions of a few hundred individuals have to be set against the continuing support the Welsh gave to Jews.[14]
Though the racial elements of the rioting attracted attention, the Head Constable of Cardiff was more shocked at the hostility of the city’s middle classes to the Metropolitan police stationed there. Large numbers of spectators gathered wherever there were disturbances, this occurred at all the riots discussed in this article, but beyond that, imported police were liable to attack whenever they appeared in Cardiff. They were stoned from ‘respectable’ houses. The skating rink where they were billeted in Cardiff was surrounded by 3-4,000 rioters who forced the Metropolitan police officers out. Two closely avoided death when masonry was thrown at them from a roof.
Not only did the imported police have to contend with such attacks, there were a clutch of malicious complaints against them after they had been withdrawn from Cardiff. These included accusations of assaults on bystanders and that the Metropolitan policemen had been drunk. The Home Office investigated the complaints in detail but determined that they had no foundation in fact and felt that the police had been restrained in breaking up what were clearly serious riots. The reason for the hostility towards the police by those not directly involved in the strike can only be speculated upon. Like the Chinese, these offices were an easily identifiable target for the anger of the population of the city. The rioters came from across the social spectrum so the explanation cannot really be found in the ‘them’ and ‘us’ mentality prevalent at the time, bar in the sense of the local community being angered at any outsiders disturbing their freedom to riot, a right that many in the country at the time felt was a legitimate one. As in most places in Britain, by the end of the summer, this sentiment had run its course, never to revive.[15]
It is clear from the violence in Cardiff, as elsewhere, that much of the unrest was only tangentially, or at least only initially related, to the strikes prevailing at the time. Less than a month after the Cardiff riots more violence was seen during and after the national railway strike which fitted this pattern. At Llanelly (known since 1963 as Llanelli) on 19 August 1911 two rioters, neither a railway man, were shot dead. Striking railway men had, in fact, tried to stop the mob, mainly of tinplate workers, from stoning the police and soldiers. None of the four looters, who died later that day in Llanelly, when a wagon containing detonators was set alight, were railway workers.[16] Observation of similar behaviour came from Lieutenant-Colonel Lee based in the South Midland Strike Area who noted the destruction of the Portishead Junction signal box, outside Bristol in the South-West England, was carried out by ‘hooligans’ rather than striking railwaymen.[17]
There seems no reason for the army officers to lie about the membership of the crowds. Studying the unrest between 1910-1913 it becomes clear that, though violence and vandalism were associated with the industrial unrest, and, in cases such as attacks on collieries and docks was carried out as part of the strike, much of the violence was unrelated and done by people not from the striking industry. This is reinforced by Geary who points out that the main target for strikers was preventing blackleg labour from getting to work and not in destroying property or machinery.[18] However, it is clear that there was some additional social trend afoot which led to such a range of people being involved in rioting. The temperature was 124.1°F (51.1°C) in the sunshine in Cardiff on 17 August 1911. The heat, though, cannot simply explain why usually law-abiding people turned to violence, vandalism and arson.[19]
Though farther West than Cardiff and Tonypandy, Llanelly also fell within the South Wales strike area. Dean Hopkin, in his study of the Llanelly incident, shows how the town was a peaceful one and only around half of the 535 local railway men were members of a union. However, pickets started at 1,000 people and rose to a peak of 5,000. Llanelly was an easy target. Unlike other major Welsh stations, it was not on a rise. There were level crossings both sides of the station which made picketing easy. In addition, the route from London to Fishguard, a main port for traffic to Ireland, which passed through Llanelly, was a busy, profitable one. The local police force had lent constables to both Tonypandy and Cardiff to deal with their unrest, leaving only eighteen police officers in the town.[20]
Pickets at the level crossings easily held up trains. Despite the return of all Llanelly police to the town they were clearly outnumbered. Police, and later 120 Loyal North Lancashires, brought from recent duty at Barry Docks, were unable to keep the line open. Macready sent in an additional 250 troops. The picketing fell away and services resumed. It was on the Saturday evening with the public houses having been closed early, that the violence escalated. A train was halted, disabled and its driver beaten, before 80 soldiers of the Worcester regiment were sent in. This force was probably too small to deal with the hundreds of rioters who were above the line which ran through a cutting at this point. The soldiers were stoned by 150-200 rioters.
In line with the 1908 select committee’s views, after the commanding officer had spoken with some of the rioters, a bugle was sounded and the Riot Act read. After a minute’s pause, five shots were fired, killing two men who had been taunting the soldiers and injuring two others. One shot was accidentally discharged. Only five shots were intentionally fired with fifteen seconds delay between each. The two men who were fatally shot were hit in the chest, the second whilst claiming that the round were blank. The use of blanks had been forbidden in riot situations. The third victim was shot through the neck and the fourth in the hand, but both men survived. The fact that five shots fired individually inflicted such casualties indicates the potential accuracy and impact of rifles of the time. As evidence given to the 1908 select committee noted, people could be killed 180 yards from firing and injured up to 400 yards away. The Llanelly incident shows how even a comparatively small number of troops could have decimated the rioters if they had fired volleys into the crowd. This was especially the case as the King’s Regulations advised shooting at the front of a crowd rather than over the heads. This approach was seen as reducing the potential to injure bystanders, but increased the likely casualties among rioters.[21]
One private among the Worcestershires at Llanelly deserted and fled across Wales until he was caught, hungry and exhausted 100 miles away. Rioting and looting continued throughout the night across town. Soldiers had to relieve the police station where the train driver had been taken, from siege by rioters. Warehouses as well as wagons were systematically looted. Ultimately damage totalling £3,742 [worth £205,000 today] was done. The rioters were persistent and were only broken in the early hours of the morning by repeated bayonet charges by Sussex Regiment troops.[22]
Dean Hopkin notes that the looting was blamed on outsiders from neighbouring villages, though, in fact, they were from all the poor districts in and around Llanelly. The ‘railwaymen maintained a low profile in the activities of the picket’, so, as in Cardiff, one sees rioting by a ‘much wider cross-section of the community than was directly involved in the strike.’ Women had been involved in the rioting, as had been the case in Tonypandy and in Cardiff. The parochial anger at being assaulted by the authorities is another similarity to Cardiff. People involved in rioting rather than looting, after the shootings, felt their cause legitimate and continued to call for the indictment of all the magistrates and senior police. As in Tonypandy the previous year, in some cases, looting was focused on particular individuals. Shops and property belonging to magistrates received particular attention as the people blamed them for the incidents, especially bringing troops into the towns. Hopkin writes that the population of the town were ashamed of what had happened. Interestingly, what happened there may have cooled the temper of rioters elsewhere, for example, as noticed by the chief constable of Hull.[23]
References
[1] Barbara Weinberger, Keeping the Peace? Policing Strikes in Britain 1906-1926, (Oxford, 1991), pp. 44-5, 209; Steve Peak, Troops in Strikes. Military Intervention in Industrial Disputes, (London, 1984), pp. 27-8.
[2] Weinberger, pp. 42-3; Anthony Mor O’ Brien, ‘Churchill and the Tonypandy Riots’, Welsh History Review, vol. 17 (1994), p. 74, David Smith, ‘Tonypandy 1910: Definitions of Community’, Past and Present, vol. 87 (1980), p. 159.
[3] Roger Geary, Policing Industrial Disputes, 1893 to 1985, (Cambridge, 1985), p. 118; O’Brien, p. 78; Smith, pp. 163-5, 168, 180.
[4] Who Was Who 1941-50, (London, 1967), p. 411.
[5] O’Brien, p. 92.
[6] National Archives, [henceforward NA], HO 45/10649/2120615, sub-file 134, Police reports to Head Constable, especially Superintendent George Durston’s, 29 July 1911; sub-file 107, Chief Constable [of Glamorgan, i.e. Captain Lionel Lindsay, rather than the head of the Cardiff Constabulary] to Under Secretary of State, Home Office, 29 July 1911.
[7] NA, HO 45/10649/210615 sub-file 90, undated [26 July 1911?], Memorandum to Mr. Churchill; sub-file 81, ‘Diary of Cardiff Strike’, Major Freeth, 23 July 1911.
[8] South Wales Daily News, 9 July 1911, ‘Cardiff Laundry Raids’ [report of court cases against rioters]; Colin Holmes, ‘The Tredegar Riots of 1911: Anti-Jewish Disturbances in South Wales’, Welsh History Review, vol. 11, no. 2, (1982-3), p. 224 also briefly mentions other racial violence in South Wales aside from anti-Semitic attacks; NA, HO 45/10649/210615, sub-file 77, ‘Minute’, undated [23 July 1911?], ‘Stations of Military in South Wales and Bristol Area’, undated [27 July 1911]; sub-file 137 Lew Yuk-lin, Chinese Legation to Sir Edward Grey [Foreign Secretary], 8 September 1911; sub-file 82, Ben Tillett to the Home Secretary and the President of the Board of Trade, ‘Manifesto. Transport Workers’ National Dispute’, 24 July 1911.
[9] The Times, 16 August 1911, ‘Negro Riot at Cardiff’.
[10] At this time, Monmouthshire was considered an English county though it is in what we could consider geographically to be Wales and laws, such as those on licensed premises were described as applying to ‘Wales and Monmouthshire’. Information provided by Association of British Counties.
[11] Geoffrey Alderman, ‘The Anti-Jewish Riots of August 1911 in South Wales’, Welsh History Review, vol. 6, no. 2, (1972-73), p. 191; Holmes, p. 215; NA, HO 144/1160/212987, ‘Diary of Events. South Wales Coal Strike. 21st August 1911’, Lt. Col. Freeth, 21 August 1911; sub-file 3a, ‘Statement of Mr. Joseph Cohen Regarding the Tredegar Riots’, A.S.W.
[12] NA 144/1160/212987, Freeth, ‘Diary. 21st August’; ‘Rioting at Tredegar’; A.S. Tallis (Presiding Magistrate) to W.S. Churchill, 21 August 1911; sub-file 3a, ‘Diary of Events, South Wales Strike Area 23rd August 1911’, 23 August 1911.
[13] NA, HO 144/1160/212987, Jewish Board of Deputies to Home Secretary August 22, 1911; Member of Jewish Board of Guardians to Home Office, 22 August 1911; Rubinstein, pp. 686-7, 692-3; The Times, 23 August 1911, ‘Renewed Riots in South Wales’.
[14] Holmes, p. 219; NA, HO 144/ 1160/212987/ sub-file 13, Victor Bosanquet to Home Secretary, October 25, 1911; Rubinstein pp. 667, 669, 673, 683.
[15] NA, HO 45/10649/210615, sub-file 87, Chief Constable of Glamorgan [based in Cardiff] to Under Secretary of State, Home Office, 23 July 1911; sub-file 86 Superintendent J. Olive to Metropolitan Police Commissioner [Sir E. Henry], 23 July 1911; sub-file 93, Complaint by Christopher W. Thompson, July 25, 1911; ‘Analysis of Complaint - Thompson’, 25 & 29 July 1911; sub-file 116, Analysis of Complaint’ [one for E. Cottle and one for J. Watt], 16 August 1911; Letter to James Parker, M.P., 30 August 1911.
[16] The Times, 30 August 1911, ‘The Llanelly Riots’; NA HO 45/10655/212470 sub-file 206, ‘Diary of Events, South Wales Strike Area. 19th & 20th August 1911’, unsigned [Lieut.-Col. Freeth], 20 August 1911.
[17] NA, HO 45/10655/212470, sub-file 243a, Lieutenant-Colonel Lee to Brigadier-General L.G. Drummond, 21 August 1911.
[18] Roger Geary, Policing Industrial Dispute, 1893 to 1985, (Cambridge, 1985), p.25.
[19] Dean R. Hopkin, ‘The Llanelli Riots’ in Welsh History Review, vol. 11, no. 4 (Dec. 1983), pp.491-2; NA, HO 45/10655/212470, sub-file 171, ‘Diary of Events. South Wales Strike Area’, August 18, 1911; Chief Constable of Carmarthenshire to Home Secretary, 19 August, 1911.
[20] Hopkin, pp. 493-4.
[21] Hopkin, pp. 496-501; PRO, HO 45/10658/212470, sub-file 451, ‘Llanelly Riots. Copy Depositions Taken at Inquest’, undated; sub-file 474, McKenna to Llwellyn Williams, M.P., 5 August 1913. ‘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. 19; Anthony Babington, Military Intervention in Britain from the Gordon Riots to the Gibraltar Incident, (London, 1990), pp. 125, 131, 135. Some in the crowd believed the soldiers were firing blanks, and others that they would not fire. This reinforces Major-General G.F. Browne’s concern of 1908 that it be clear that when a military unit arrived it was effectively saying ‘if we use our firearms it is to kill’ and Lord Haldane’s insistence that no blank rounds be issued.
[22]; The Times, August 25, 1911, ‘Soldier’s Refusal to Shoot a Rioter’; 30 August 1911, ‘The Llanelly Riots’ [which corrects the earlier article]. NA HO 45/10656/212470 sub-file 352, W.S.C. [Churchill] to Sir Edward Troup, 29 August 1911; NA HO 144/1022, ‘Extract from the King’s Regulations and Orders for the Army ...’, undated, especially paragraph 965.
[23] Hopkin, pp. 500, 502-4, 506-7, 510; Smith, p. 168; Babington, pp. 125, 131; NA HO 45/10658/212470 sub-file 294, ‘Hull’, Mr. Butterworth, 23 August 1911; NA, HO 45/10658/212470, sub-file 451, ‘Llanelly Riots. Copy Depositions Taken at Inquest’, undated; sub-file 474, McKenna to Llwellyn Williams, M.P., 5 August 1913; Select Committee, p. 19. Between 1869-1908 troops had fired 17 rounds at rioters killing 4 and wounding 11, the farthest being 400 yards away. In 1908 rounds were noted to be smaller, of higher velocity and more frangible if they hit masonry than had been the case in 1894.
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