The Liverpool Transport Strike of 1911 has been highlighted by the
historian Eric Taplin as the nearest occasion this country has come to a
revolution. The sequence of events built up slowly, but from June 1911, the
sequence and timing of events increased, culminating in major flashpoints
during August 1911. Large scale rioting, fierce confrontations between the
rioters the police and the military resulted in injuries to many people and the
loss of life. For some time the city of Liverpool was brought to
a standstill, and the movement of goods of any description in or out, or even
within the city, was severely restricted.
The strike was initiated by the seamen and eventually involved 66,000
men who brought Liverpool to a standstill. I intend to examine the general
labour unrest that was prevalent in the country, and in the city of Liverpool,
because of extremely poor wages and living conditions. I will also examine the
troubled sectarian divide within the city that had led to disturbances and
riots prior to and also during the strike of 1911. However, differences were
put aside during the lead up to the funerals of the rioters who had been killed during the strike. Finally, I will assess the
strike in Liverpool of 1911, which encompassed all sections of transport,
from dockers, railwaymen and tram drivers, to the lower echelon of transport
workers, the carters.
The research I have carried out has entailed visiting libraries, and record
offices, in both Preston and Liverpool as well as, trade union centres,
museums, to use the internet and newspaper offices at which I obtained both
primary and secondary sources. I have corresponded with Eric Taplin, the author
of Near to Revolution, The Liverpool Transport Strike of 1911, and gained his views on the strike. I have also been
in communication with Liverpool City Council’s Historian Steve Binns, and during my research I contacted the Merseyside, South Yorkshire and West Midlands police forces for further historical background
information. Due to police force reorganisation and several moves of their
headquarters since the event, each force informed me that no pertinent records
were kept.
Industrial unrest in Liverpool
and beyond 1906-1911
Leo Chiozza, in his book, 1
published in 1905, highlighted the
great disparity in the distribution of wealth amongst the people of Britain.
He divided the British national product into two equal halves, one half was
shared by over 39 million people, (80% of the population), whilst the remaining
5.5 million (only 12% of the population) shared the other half. Furthermore
ownership of capital was distributed even more disproportionately, 120,000
people owned two thirds of the nation’s capital. Chiozza calculated that in
1905, 650,000 of the poorer sections of society left bequests totalling £30
million, whilst £260 million was left by the upper classes, 26 leaving bequests
which equalled the total of the poorer sections of society.
A major concern to the government of the day, was the disproportionate
distribution of wealth in the ‘Golden Edwardian Age.’ Large numbers of the
population lived in widespread poverty, and resulted in people suffering health
problems caused by a poor diet. It was popularly believed that this had led to
large numbers of men being rejected as volunteers to join the army during the
Boer War because of their poor physical condition. 2 This
theory was later disproved as a myth by Michael Rosenthal in his book ‘The
Character Factory’.3 The actual working class was divided into two main
bodies, the artisans who earned a relatively decent wage and the labourers,
consisting of unskilled workers, such as the dockers, porters and scavengers.
Many of the unskilled workers had become members of ‘New Unions’ from the late
1880’s onwards. The leaders of these new unions were often socialists who
wanted to expand trade unionism on a class basis and supported the development
of independent labour politics and a party to represent the working class
movement. 4
Charles Booth (London), and Seebohm Rowntree (York),
independently highlighted the state of poverty and the ill health of people in
the latter part of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth
century.5 Housing conditions were often appalling, people lived
in extremely cramped inner city dwellings often without any form of sanitation.
The greed of some landlords, who exploited people’s needs to live in the inner
cities by subdividing properties and increasing rental charges, without
undertaking any repairs or improvements, was common place.6 The
cramped and unsanitary conditions people lived in were often greatly increased
by tenants sub-letting rooms within their rented accommodation. Eleanor
Rathbone investigated social and industrial conditions within Liverpool
c1900-1910, 7 and her data highlighted the plight of the Liverpool
casual labourer, and corroborated the findings of Booth and Rowntree.
In the first decade of the new century real wages fell by roughly 10%,
in a situation where prices were rising while money wages tended to remain
static. 8 Food prices and the cost of living in general during
this period rose steeply which, together with the fall in wages, pushed more
people into poverty. Union membership
increased quickly from 1,997,000 in 1906 to 3,139,000 in 1911, and the number
of strikes also doubled during this period from 479 to 872, affecting three
times as many workers. These strikes were led by railwaymen, miners and
dockers, particularly in the heavily industrialised areas of South Wales,
the North West and the North East. 9
Militancy increased from 1907, riots occurred in Belfast
as carters, coal porters and dockers went on strike over low wages. The
Scottish miners’ dispute of 1909 and the cotton, boilermakers and miners
strikes of 1910 preceded further serious unrest, commencing in 1910 with the
miners’ strike in Tonypandy South Wales when 12,000 miners struck for better
pay and conditions against the Cambrian Coal Combine.10 Fifteen
thousand workers went on strike over pay and conditions in the wool trade
industry in Yorkshire, 11 and further riots had occurred as a result of a strike
by steel workers at Shotton on Deeside 12,
Liverpool was a hotbed of militant unionism, an example being the
strike, of the ship scalers and cementers who struck on the 9 January 1911 for
better pay and conditions, and were still on strike into March of 1911.13 Many of the ‘new unions’ had been influenced by a revolutionary form of
trade unionism, known as syndicalism, led by the charismatic Tom Mann and Ben
Tillett. Syndicalists argued that the workers who operated the machinery
possessed the real power and once the working class agreed to act together it
would hold the power.14
The Syndicalists formed an Unofficial Reform Committee and advocated
that,
‘Every industry
properly organised, in the first place, to fight, to gain control of, and then
to administer, that industry. The co-ordination of all industries on a Central
Production Board, who, with a statistical department to ascertain the needs of
people, will issue its demands on the different departments of industry,
leaving to the men themselves to determine under what conditions and how, the
work should be done. This would mean real democracy in real life, making
for real manhood and womanhood. Any other form of democracy is a delusion and a
snare’ (internet accessed 10 May
2002). 15
This movement and its
leaders were to exercise a great deal of influence, and leadership during the Liverpool
Transport Strike of 1911. ‘Syndicalism is hostile to the State, distrusts and
resists the interference of all political government in industry’ (Askwith 1974:327).
‘Syndicalism
is primarily, indeed solely, concerned with the producer, the worker as the
agent for producing wealth. Trade Unionism is to be supreme and the State set
aside’ (Ibid: 329).
Through better education by 1911, working men were now prepared to
question the whole social system and were striving for better wages and
conditions.
The Edwardian period is often referred to as a ‘golden age’; the upper
classes did enjoy extravagant lifestyles, but sections of the working class
suffered a life of deprivation and squalor, and industrial unrest fermented
throughout the country that resulted in both industrial action and conflict
during this period.The recovery from the recession of 1908-09 created a
situation of increased trade and gave an underlying stimulus to renewed trade
union pressure for material improvements (Holton 1974:124).16
During the early part of 1911 the pressure of political and labour
unrest continued to grow, as workers struck for better wages and conditions as
highlighted in the report by the Liverpool Watch Committee Minutes, which recorded that the ship
scalers and cementers had been on strike for well over two months.17
To deal with increasing industrial unrest, often troops were sent in to
put down strikes and unrest harshly. Strike leaders appealed to troops, in an
open letter written in Liverpool by Fred Bower in May 1911, not to shoot the strikers
but to join the class struggle.18
app. 1
Although the transport and dock strikes were national events, it was in
Liverpool that the strikers proved to be most troublesome and
organised against government opposition. This can be attributed to the
organisational abilities of the Liverpool strike committee, chaired by the Syndicalist Tom
Mann. Mann was the most influential trade unionist of this period that had
helped to set up the Transport and General Workers Union with his friend and
colleague Ben Tillett.
Mann arrived at Liverpool docks on 14 June 1911 with a poster that proclaimed ‘War Declared:
Strike for Liberty’.19 Mann,
in making this statement, can be seen as bringing his Syndicalist opinions to
the fore, and he was declaring a class war. The class demarcation lines had
been drawn up in the early Edwardian novel by Robert Tressell, ‘The Ragged
Trousered Philanthropists’ in which the central character Frank Owen, a
socialist and Trade Unionist, described his fellow workers as ‘despicable, no
wonder the rich despised them and looked upon them as dirt, they were dirt,
they admitted it and gloried in it’.20
He described the workers in this
way because that was the way the workers had accepted their place in society,
their inferiority to their employers who were their social superiors, and
consequently their poverty.
With the working classes now better educated Mann seized the
opportunity to rally the union members to challenge the previously accepted
status quo, to fight for what was rightfully theirs. During this period the
country and Liverpool in particular, was enduring a tumultuous period of
labour unrest, and Taplin points to one of the severest cases of civil unrest
occurring during The Liverpool Transport Strike of 1911.
1 Bedarida F. 1991
pp 151
2 Chin C. 1995 pp114
3 Rosenthal R. 1986 pp136/7
4 Hikins H. 1973 pp 99
5 Read D. 1994 pp 339
6 Hikins H. 1973
7 Rathbone E 1904
8 Report of an Inquiry by the Board of
Trade into Working class rents and retail prices together with the rates and
wages in certain occupations in industrial towns of UK. in
1912.cited in Hikins H.R. 1973 pp 124.
9 Hasley A.H. 1972 pp 121
10 Mann T. 1923 pp 208
11 Liverpool Daily Post and
Mercury Wednesday 8 June 1910
12 Liverpool Daily Post and
Mercury Thursday
16 June 1910
13 Liverpool Watch Committee
minutes report of 1911
14 Mann T. 1923 pp
206
15 Internet http://
www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/1346/syndicalists.html
16 Holton R. 1974 pp124
17 Liverpool Watch Committee
Minutes 9 January 1911, 20
February 1911
18 Bower F. 1936 pp
180/181
19 Hikins H. 1961 pp
5
20 Tressell R 1914 pp46
Sectarianism in Liverpool prior to the Transport Strike of 1911
Liverpool’s first sectarian conflict
between Catholics and Protestants occurred in 1819, and involved a limited
number of participants, 1 who
were thought to have come from elsewhere in the country. In 1835, a major sectarian riot took place in
Liverpool on Orange Day 12 July.2 It was so serious that it
culminated in 43 people receiving prison sentences of 6 months each.3
With the massive influx of people
from Ireland during the late 1840’s, due to the
Irish famine, sectarian conflict increased dramatically. The 1851 census
reveals that of Liverpool’s total population of 83,813, 22.3%
had been born in Ireland. The first death due to sectarian
clashes occurred in 1850 when a man was shot at a religious confrontation.4 Clashes in the city continued throughout
the nineteenth century, but it is during the Edwardian period that the
sectarian conflict reached its peak.
During 1904 the Liverpool City Police were called out to
disturbances on 639 occasions. They had to use force to control situations on
eighteen occasions and of these eight were classed as riots.5
After a period of relative stability
in Liverpool between the years 1905-1908, the
Head Constable of Liverpool Leonard Dunning in May 1909 granted
Catholics permission for a procession to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of Holy Cross Church. The Police escorted 4,500 marchers
through the mainly Catholic areas of the city but it was the spark that ignited
increased sectarian conflict. Riots occurred on Sunday 20 June 1909 that were eventually brought under
control by continued Mounted Police charges, numerous baton charges, and
resulted in fifty arrests. Twenty people were taken to hospital of which eight
were police constables.6
Head Constable Dunning, who had
previously been a District Inspector in the Royal Irish Constabulary, compared
the bigotry in Liverpool to Belfast.7 He despised both Protestant and Catholic extremists and treated both
factions with distain and Impartiality.7 He was a man of ‘efficiency, courage, and discipline, and
above all, uprightness, truth, and inflexible impartiality’.8
Dunning was not politically aware of
feelings that were expressed in both the local Catholic and Protestant press.
He had an unbending political insensitivity, particularly regarding the
Catholic procession of 1909, and he viewed the sectarian conflict simply in
formal legal and peace-keeping terms.
Sectarian skirmishes continued to
occur on a regular basis up to the Transport Strike of 1911. Prior to the
transport strike of 1911 the police reported to the Liverpool Watch Committee that sectarian
violence occurred on 19 March, at an Irish League meeting.9
On 22 May, Holy Trinity Church St. Anne
Street, along
with many other churches of both denominations had many windows broken,10 and serious sectarian disturbances
occurred in Everton on 19 June and 26 June 1911 in the Netherfield Road area of the city.11 As a result of continuing sectarian
problems, the Head Constable reported to the Liverpool Watch Committee that after a period
of relative calm, sectarian violence was very much on the increase.12
Rioting continued right up to the
period of the transport strike in the city, with damage to properties in Norton
Street on the 14 August 1911.13 During the actual fierce rioting associated with the transport strike,
sectarian skirmishes continued in Great Homer Street, the boundary between
Catholics and Orange Protestants. It was reported that a police inspector
described the ‘skirmish as the fiercest seen for years’ and troops, who were in
the city to assist the authorities in quelling the transport strike rioters,
were used to bring this sectarian riot to an end. 14
The only redeeming feature of hope
during this period of Liverpool’s
sectarian divide, was the fact that, members of both religions attended the
funerals of the men, killed during the transport strike riots that had brought
the city to a standstill.
Sectarianism was to trouble the City
of Liverpool for several more decades, and the fierce rivalry between the
factions only really dissipated with the break up of the tight knit sectarian enclaves through
housing clearances in the early 1960’s, when people were sent to new housing
estates on the outer edges of the city, and beyond.
1 Billinge’s Advertiser 19tand 26 July 1819
2 Liverpool Mercury 17 July 1835
3 Liverpool Courier 4 October 1835
4 Liverpool Chronicle 17
July and 3 August 1850
5 Waller P.J. 1981 pp209
6 Liverpool Daily Post and
Mercury 21 June 1909
7 HO 45/11138/1864474. cited in Waller
P.J. Democracy and Sectarianism
8 The Times 22 February 1941
9 Liverpool Watch Committee
Minutes 20 Mar 1911 pp468
10 Ibid 22
May 1911 pp565
11 Ibid 19
and 26 June 1911 pp636, 650-4
12 Ibid 31
July 1911 pp 30
13 Ibid 14
August 1911 pp 49
14 Liverpool Daily Post and
Mercury 14 August 1911
The Liverpool Transport Strike of 1911
In chapter one, I have highlighted the industrial unrest, poverty and
poor health that existed in the country, and in Liverpool
in particular, for working class people.
Chapter two detailed the long history of sectarian violence in the
city. Liverpool was a violent, sectarian city, and it appeared that nothing
would unite the city. In 1911 events took place within Liverpool
that temporarily united both Catholics and Protestants as the city was gripped
from June until September by a series of strikes for better pay and conditions
that brought the city to a standstill.
The living conditions in urban areas were extremely poor. Large areas
of Liverpool consisted of poor properties, primarily of either
small back-to-back terraced houses, occupied by large families, sometimes two
families to a room. They had a communal entrance with common sanitary arrangements
and most properties had extremely poor facilities, amenities and sanitation
with communal washing facilities. Working conditions in Liverpool
were extremely poor, with most of the labour employed in the docks, warehousing
and transport. Unlike other major towns, Liverpool did not have a
manufacturing industrial base and people were employed and discarded on a
casual basis.
The period from 1910, until the start of World War One in 1914, was
known as ‘the Great Unrest’. Strikes occurred to gain union recognition, and
industrial conflict broke out, often led by rank and file members of unions, in
pursuance of improved wages, hours of work and working conditions.
Whilst the majority of the lower classes were beginning to politically
support the Independent Labour Party, the more militant were keen to quicken
the pace of change, and joined the Syndicalist movement. In 1910 the Industrial
Syndicalist Education League was established in Manchester, and sixty delegates
elected Tom Mann as its leader.1 The delegates represented a large number of union
members and by the end of 1910 they had been joined by the Transport Workers
Federation. This group represented the dockers, seamen and carters, and strikes
began to occur in early 1911 in Hull, Manchester and London.
On 31 May 1911, a weekday, the Transport Workers Federation, called
a demonstration to be held at St. George’s Hall Plateau. The meeting asked to
support the two seamen’s unions in their proposed dispute with the ship owners.
Thousands of people supported the call to demonstrate, and,
‘On a workday
evening, the workers marched from the south and the north of the City with
bands playing and banners flying. Seamen, firemen, ships’ cooks and stewards,
dockers, carters, railwaymen, canal workers, motormen and other transport
workers were all united.’ 2
People came from across the sectarian divide to listen to speeches from
union leaders, Havelock Wilson of the seamen’s union, Joseph Cotter , a
Syndicalist, of the stewards union, Will Thorne M.P., Ben Tillett and James
Sexton. The seamen’s demands were that they objected to the degrading medical
inspection that was insisted on by the ship owners. They demanded that some
wages be paid when their ship was in port and not be held until their return home.
Further demands included improved conditions on ship, and an increase of ten
shillings per month to bring the seaman’s wages to £5 10s per month. A similar
increase was asked for ships’ firemen to bring their wages up to £6 per month
on the Atlantic liners.
On the 14 June
1911 500 firemen refused to ‘sign
on’ to man the following Ship the C.P.R. liner ‘Empress of Ireland’ and
the White Star Line’s ‘Teutonic’ and ‘Baltic’. The Strikers put
pressure firstly on their colleagues on the mail steamers to support the strike
and then the strike call was extended to seamen of other shipping firms.3
A meeting of the leading Liverpool ship owners had agreed to allow each company to reach
individual settlements, according to what each company’s trade warrented.4
This was a disastrous
error by the Liverpool ship owners as it opened the floodgates for seamen in
other ports to negotiate with Members of the Shipping Federation, when during
this period the ship owners needed to present a collective united front in
their negotiations with the unions.5
Sympathetic strikes occurred throughout the country, and the
National Shipping Federation, of which the Liverpool ship owners were not a
part, favoured a fighting strategy of running some ships, laying up other ships
and indemnifying their owners, with the intention of forcing the strikers back
to work. The seamen’s strike was solid in its support from all factions of sea
going workers, the stokers, stewards, ships’ cooks and other on shore groups of
workers who usually adhered to a strict policy of job demarcation ‘joining
hand-in-hand for the furtherance of the common cause’.6
The Liverpool ship owners
collectively decided to negotiate with the seamen, under a committee chaired by
Alfred A. Booth, a nephew of Charles Booth the social reformer.7 The big
transatlantic companies concluded agreements with the union; the smaller ship
owners held out with the intention of keeping the wages at the old levels. They
came under immense pressure from the Board of Trade to conclude an agreement
with the union strike committee, led by Tom Mann. The Daily Courier
reported Mann as saying that “the seamen’s strike was ending and attributed the
gratifying conclusion to the shipping companies’ generous treatment of the
men.”8 app. 2
On 28 June 1911, the 4000 dockers reacted to the seamen’s victory by
walking off the job, to strike for improved wages and conditions. These were
followed by scalers, coal heavers, and by the end of that day 10,000 men were
out on strike. The seamen came out in full support of the dockers who had
supported them during their dispute with the ship owners.9
Within a week, an agreement was reached with the dockers’ union by
thirty deep-sea ship owners and twenty master stevedores, to adopt on a port
wide basis union hours and rates of pay, and for employers to recognise union
members and not to discriminate against them.10 The
dock unions had gained the recognition it had been striving for in Liverpool’s
northern docks system, and its union secretary James Sexton thought the
agreement reached ‘magnificent’.11
Throughout the month of July other workers in Liverpool
heartened by the success of workers in shipping related industries came out on
strike for better pay and conditions. Tug boat workers, scalers on the Mersey
Ferries, coopers and labourers at the giant Stanley
Dock tobacco warehouse, Cotton Exchange porters, brewery workers and workers at
the rubber plant all struck, but it was when the railway workers went on
strike that the industrial unrest, with its pattern
of continuing strikes entered its most bitterest phase.
Railwaymen’s union leaders representing the Lancashire and Yorkshire
Railway Company were co-opted on to the strike committee in Liverpool and when
1000 dock porters came out on strike on 7 August, it was agreed that all
transport workers would add their support through sympathetic
strike action. By the next day
4000 railway workers were on strike, over union recognition and wage demands,12
initially against the wishes of senior rail trade union officials who favoured
negotiations via the conciliation boards.13 Mounted Police were used
to quell disturbances at the Edge Hill goods station as clerks from the goods
offices began to unload railway vans.14
The railway employers took a hard confrontational stance and issued a
statement stating that no railwayman on strike would be reinstated. The
employers intention was to blacklist all the strikers and began to hire porters
from outside the Liverpool area.15
As each day passed, other railway companies workers struck in support,
followed by other transport workers. Soon, the entire Liverpool
dock system was brought to a halt.
The Liverpool strike committee had, in effect, taken the leadership of
the railwaymen in Liverpool away from senior railway union officials, and as
the strike of railwaymen then spread outside the confines of the city to
Manchester, Preston and Crewe, 75% of all the inward and outward cargo to and
from the port’s hinterland could not be moved in or out of the city.16
The situation deteriorated rapidly over the next few days and lead to
the railway strike becoming a national dispute and, after hurriedly convening
and consulting, the national railway executives made the dispute official, and
represented their members during the dispute.17 On the
9 August 1911 the Police Watch Committee resolved unanimously:
‘that the Head Constable
be and is hereby authorised to obtain assistance of additional police
to such numbers as he may seem desirable to preserve peace in the
city during the railway strike.’ 18
Detachments of police and military arrived in the city on 10 August
from Leeds, Birmingham, 200 officers from the Royal Irish Constabulary,
together with 400 troops from the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, and were greeted
with boos and catcalls outside Lime
Street Station by thousands of
strikers congregated on St. George’s plateau.19 The
Lord Mayor asked for additional Police and troops in a telegram to Home
Secretary Winston Churchill, and within days extra Police had arrived from
Lancashire and Bradford. In addition to the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, extra
troops from the Scots Greys, Hussars and The Yorkshire Regiment arrived in the
city and were stationed at Seaforth barracks or billeted at Sefton Park.20 In
total, an extra 2,400 police and 5,000 troops were in the city.21
Churchill described the confrontations as just hooliganism when he
informed Parliament that ‘disorder and riots sometimes occur in those parts of Liverpool
where sectarian difficulties exist’. 22
Further minor disturbances occurred over the next two days, but the
conflict surrounding the strike deteriorated due to events that occurred
during, and after a mass meeting called in support of the strike that was held
on Sunday 13 August 1911, which became known as ‘Bloody Sunday’ when
police, troops and rioters clashed in lengthy, bitter street fighting.
Permission had been obtained for the transport workers to hold a mass meeting
on St. George’s Plateau on the Sunday afternoon, and the strike committee
called on ‘all workers taking part in the demonstration on ‘Sunday Afternoon
Next’ to conduct themselves with manly dignity.’23
Previously agreement had been reached by Tom Mann with the Head Constable that
the presence of the police and the military would be kept to a minimum, to try
and limit any prospective confrontation. 24
Fred Bower, who spoke to the crowd at the meeting on 13 August, wrote
in his book, ‘Rolling Stonemason’ ,
‘From Orange Garston, Everton and Toxteth Park,
from Roman Catholic Bootle and Scotland
Road Area, they came. Forgotten
were their religious feuds, disregarded the dictum of their clericals on Both
sides who affirmed the strike was a atheist stunt. The Garston band had walked
five miles and their drum-major proudly whirled his sceptre twinned with orange
and green ribbons as he led his contingent band, half out of the local Roman
Catholic Band, and half out of the local Orange Band.’ ‘there
was a wonderful spirit of humour and friendliness permeated the atmosphere… It
was glorious weather when, from a dozen wagons on the Plateau in Lime Street, speeches
were being made in support of the railway workers who were asking for an
increase of a shilling or two per week.’ 25, app. 3
Estimates of the people who attended the rally put the crowd at 80,000,
‘women and children were
ranked tier upon tier of them and the meeting was perfectly orderly’.26
Mann, speaking from one of five lorries placed among the crowd
reiterated his call for a general transport strike in Liverpool,
saying,
‘We cannot, in the face
of the military and extra police drafted into the City, have effectual
picketing and we cannot but accept the display of force as a challenge. We shall be prepared to
declare on Tuesday morning a general strike, that will mean a strike of
all transport men of all classes.’27
and there was a unanimous agreement to accept the strike call. A
disturbance occurred at about 4
p.m. when a man was sitting on
the window sill of the Station Hotel in Lime Street to gain a
vantage point, and was watching the proceedings of the meeting when the police
ordered him to come down. He refused to do so, was brought down by the police
and the huge crowd resented this and a fight began.
Several policemen were seriously hurt and at this juncture the police
withdrew up Lord Nelson Street to the safety of Lime Street Station.28 Contrary
to his agreement with Mann, the Head Constable had stationed one hundred
soldiers of the Warwickshire Regiment together with numerous officers from the Leeds
and Birmingham Police inside St. George’s Hall. At the first sign of
trouble the contingents of police emerged from the hall and baton charged the
crowd. Since their arrival, simmering ill feeling towards the Birmingham
Police had occurred, mainly because the strikers who had a good relationship
with the Liverpool Police. The strikers saw this as an escalation of the
confrontational approach by the authorities in bringing police from another
force into the city, and this was heightened by their indiscriminate use of the
batons.29 Bystanders were attacked, and the police continued to
hit men and women who had fallen to the ground, and this further antagonised
the crowd.30
Another eyewitness described the scene
‘as policemen
aiming cruel blows upon the heads of men, women and children… dozens
lay bleeding and unconscious, citizens were to be seen lying helpless on the
ground’ 31
Mounted Police officers, assisted by some members of the Lancashire
force,32 charged the crowd and, after a lengthy resistance and
numerous baton charges lasting 30 minutes, the police cleared the steps of St.
Georges’ Hall. The ground was covered in broken glass, bricks, stones, pieces
of timber and other missiles. The Birmingham Police, who had led the charge, suffered greatly from their attacks on
the crowd. Two officers received serious injuries, Superintendent Boulton
received a broken leg and P.C. Phillips received a head wound with an iron bar, two severe scalp
wounds, one to his cheek and was kicked and trampled on as he fell to the ground
defending his senior officer.32 The Liverpool Echo reported the confrontation between the police
and the crowd as ‘ a scene which
reminded one of the turbulent times in Paris when the Revolution
was at its height’. 33
The Liverpool stipendiary magistrate Stuart Deacon appeared on the
steps of St. George’s Hall, and surrounded by troops of the Warwickshire Regiment,
read the Riot Act, which meant that the streets had to be cleared of people
otherwise the authorities would take action to do so. Trouble erupted in nearby
Christian Street, where severe fighting broke out and the police and troops were
pelted with missiles from roof tops. Again, Deacon was called and the Riot Act
was read.34 The police cleared the rooftops using similar tactics to the rioters, and
ordered that public houses in the vicinity be closed.35
On the
night of 14 August, a sectarian riot occurred in Great Homer Street, not
connected to the rioting during the day, on the borders of Catholic and
Protestant areas, resulting in much damage. Troops from the Yorkshire
Regiment made a bayonet charge, and fired seven volleys to disperse the crowd;
many people were injured from the continual baton charges carried out by the police,
36 and extra troops from the Northumberland Fusiliers were
sent to the city overnight.37
The Liverpool Strike Committee called a general strike as from midnight on
14 August and Tom Mann announced:
‘A strike of all transport men of all classes; of
railway workers, passenger as well as goods men, drivers, stokers. It will mean
all connected with the ferry boats, tug boats, river tender –men, Dock Board
men, Overhead and underground railways, flatmen, bargemen, dockers,
coal-heavers, crane men, elevator men, warehouse workers, carters, and in fact
every conceivable section and branch of the great transport industry in
Liverpool will down tools until this business is settled.’ 38
On the 15 August all work in the city was as at a standstill and the Liverpool
Echo ‘reported that there was quietness in the docks’ as workers heeded the
call for strike action during the day. The City Justices appealed for men to
enrol as special constables and hundreds came forward to volunteer and were
accepted. In addition, magistrates signed orders giving police the powers to
close public houses in areas affected by trouble.39
Five prison vans, escorted by the Hussars, were attacked in Vauxhall Road, taking prisoners to Walton Jail, and furious attempts were made to
rescue the prisoners. The riots that took place were over several hours, with
rioters firing weapons at the police and troops resulting in two men being
killed. The Riot Act, according to the Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury
had to be read five times to try and bring order and the paper reported one
death on 16 August as:
‘The troopers
conscious of the importance of defending the prison vans had to defend their
lives against the murderous onslaught being made on them from
every side. At last the order to Fire was given and five or six shots rang out
in the air……. But it was only a momentary halt to the proceedings. A man who
had been one of the foremost in the melee lunged forward towards one of the
troopers; his arm was upraised and in his hand was a formidable iron bar. The
trooper was not one of the men who had used his carbine but instantly realising
that the moment was a deadly one for him, he quick as thought snatched his
revolver from his holder and fired one shot just as arm wielding the
fearsome weapon was a falling upon him. It was a fatal aim the trooper had
taken for his assailant fell mortally wounded.’ 40 app. 4
Members of the strike committee claimed that none of the men who took
part in the attack on the prison vans were strikers, although both worked on
the docks, and that they were doing everything to keep ‘their men in hand’. The
deaths of the two rioters would lead to a national strike unless the ship
owners and railway companies gave way in the dispute.41
The Liverpool Territorials were instructed to return the bolts of their
rifles to barracks, thus rendering them useless, as it was felt by the
authorities that there was a real possibility that the rifles would be used in
any future conflict against the military and police authorities.42 The
Government dispatched two cruisers to Liverpool on the 17 August,
H.M.S. Antrim was stationed in the Mersey opposite the Albert Dock, and H.M.S.
Warrior was stationed at Douglas under steam, with a view of entering the
Mersey if the situation further deteriorated.43 The
situation in Liverpool continued to cause concern as food and other perishable
goods were in short supply.
Most other goods, even post, could only be moved within the city
boundary’s by agreement of the strike committee. appendix 5
The authorities were powerless, the city was at a standstill. An observer
recalling the situation;
‘I remember the stench of
the unscavenged streets - the corporation workers came out in sympathy –and
of the truck loads of vegetables rotting at Edge Hill Station. I remember bits
of broken bottle, relics of battles down by the docks, the rain patter of
feet walking the pavements when the trams ceased to run and clank, the grey
Antrim lying on guard in the Mersey, the soldiers marching through the streets,
special editions of the evening editions of the evening papers
coming out every half-hour, and American tourists, decanted from the Baltic,
sitting at the Pier Head on their Saratoga trunks with no porters to carry them
away’.44
A further strike was declared on 18 August when the general secretary
of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants announced the beginning of a
national railway strike with the words ’War is declared, the men are being
called out’.45
Essential
freight and foodstuffs had to be moved around the city in convoys, led by
special constables under armed military escort, with Home Secretary Winston
Churchill still trying to play down the seriousness of the strike, praising the
local authorities for the continued movement of goods in a telegram to the Lord
Mayor of Liverpool. However, when the city authorities requested that sailors
from the Cruiser H.M.S. Antrim be put on standby to operate the Mersey Ferries
in case the crews joined the strike, this option was denied by the Home Office.47
Early the
following week the funerals took place of the two men killed who were both
Catholics 48,and the funerals of Michael Prendergast and John
Sutcliffe brought token halts to sectarian conflict when three hundred
Orangemen and Protestants attended the funerals and the situation calmed. The
Lord Mayor sent a message to the Home Office expressing his fear that ‘a
revolution was in progress… and that anarchy prevailed.’49
Fierce negotiations between the railway companies,
unions and the government took place at the Board of Trade in London over the
weekend of 19 and 20 August. An agreement was reached and all railway workers
were ordered to resume work on 21 August.
Problems still existed with other unions, primarily the tramway men,
whose jobs had been replaced by non union members. Transport employers refused
to reinstate the strikers, but because of the solidarity of the unions none of
the transport unions would end the strike until the tramway workers were
reinstated. Tom Mann led negotiations with the government at the Board of Trade
and by the 25 August the tramway men had been reinstated to their
jobs and the Liverpool Strike Committee issued instructions for a general
return to work.50 Tom Mann expressed his views on the conclusion of the
strike and its results.
‘We are pleased indeed with the result. We have had a
ten weeks’ fight and we have gone through some very strenuous
times. Allowing for the fact that we took on various sections of workers to
help them ventilate their grievances and obtain redress, and having fought for
and won substantial improvements for the men who originally came out’. 51
Rioting and intimidation still occurred in the city. There were several
outbreaks during the day in the Scotland
Road district, when convoys and
tramcars were attacked and troops had to be called out to control the crowds
and police had to deal with cases of intimidation of people who refused to give evidence in
riot cases.
However, the conveyance of goods by troops within the city ceased by 25
August and they were withdrawn from the streets as the city returned to something
approaching normality.52The coroners inquest into the deaths of Michael
Prendergast and Thomas Sutcliffe heard that Prendergast was probably shot by a
member of the mob who had been seen firing rifles, and the troop of Hussars who
had been assisting the convoy of prison vans were exonerated. The jury found
that there was a dangerous riot occurring and that the discharging of troopers
weapons was the only way to suppress it, and a verdict of ‘Justifiable homicide’ returned.53
Additional loss of life occurred in the city as a result of an epidemic
of diarrhoea in the city as a result of the non movement of foodstuffs that
inevitably became stale. The movement of milk, and cleansing operations in the
streets ceased. It is estimated that 6-7000 tons of rubbish remained on the
streets and strikers compounded the problem by blocking up grids and gullies to
prevent drainage. During the period July-September, 843 more deaths occurred
than during similar periods over the previous five years.54
1 Frow E. & Hikins H. The Liverpool Central Transport Strike
of 1911 Marxism Today March 1964 pp 78.
2 Ibid pp 78
3 Bean R. pp374 Employers
Association in the port of Liverpool 1890-1914-British Library
4 Liverpool Journal of
Commerce 28th June 1911
5 Ibid 30th June 1911
6 Frow E. & Hikins H. The Liverpool Central Transport Strike of 1911 Marxism
Today March 1964 pp 79
7 John A.H. Booth Man and Labour
Relations
8 Daily Courier 29th June 1911
9 Ibid
10 Cunard Papers, minutes of Executive
Committee 20th July1911
11 Liverpool Daily Post and
Mercury 22nd August 1911
12 Waller P. J. Democracy and Sectarianism
pp254
13 Taplin E. Near to Revolution The Liverpool
General Transport Strike of 1911 pp12
14 The Times 9th August 1911 pp10
15 Frow E. & Hikins H The Liverpool
Central Transport Strike of 1911 Marxism Today March 1964 pp 81
16 Report by Head Constable of Liverpool to
Home Office H/O 212470/7a
17 The Liverpool General Transport
Strike 1911 pp17
18 Liverpool Watch Committee
Minutes 9th August 1911 pp45
19 The Times 11th August 1911 pp8
20 H/O 212470/14/ , 31/, 120/
21 Hikins H. The Liverpool
General Transport Strike pp20
22 Waller P. J. Democracy and Sectarianism pp255
23 Tom Mann The Memoirs of Tom Mann pp266
24 Fred Bower The Rolling Stonemason pp
196
25 Tupper E. Seaman’s
Torch pp 59
26 Tom Mann The Memoirs of Tom Mann 269
27 The Times 14th August 1911
28 letter from W.H. Voules, Liverpool to avid Lloyd George M.P. H/O 212470/43
29 Ibid
30 Letter from F O’Brien, editor Liverpool Magazine to Home Secretary H/O 212470/103
31 Internet http://www.lancashire.police.uk/1909.html
accessed 10th May 2002
32 Liverpool Watch Committee
Minutes 9th October 1911 recommending Kings Police Medal for P.C.
Phillips
33 Liverpool Echo Monday 14th August 1911
34 Ibid
35 Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury 14th August 1911
36 The Times 15th August 1911
37 Liverpool Daily Post and
Mercury 15th August
1911
38 Hikins H. The Liverpool Transport Strike pp23
39 Liverpool Daily Post and
Mercury 15th August
1911
40 Liverpool Daily Post 16th August 1911
41 Ibid
42 The Times 17th August 1911
43 The Times 18th August 1911
44 Cole M. Growing up into revolution
45 Liverpool Echo 18th August 1911
46 Home Office Telegram H/O file 212470/69)
Hikins H. The Liverpool Transport Strike
47 Home Office File H/O 212470/31) Hikins H.
The Liverpool Transport Strike
48 Bohstedt J. More than one working class:
Protestant and Catholic Riots in Edwardian England pp 173
49 Liverpool Daily Post and
Mercury 21st August
1911
50 The Times 26th August 1911
51 The Times 25th August 1911
52 The Times 26th August 1911
53 The Times 01st September 1911
54 Report by E.W.Hope M.D. City of Liverpool
Medical Officer of Health 1911
CONCLUSION
A retrospective look at
the Transport Strike
The Liverpool Transport Strike of 1911 was a turning point in
industrial relations between employer and employee. The city had been divided
by confrontations, both sectarian, that had occurred for nearly one hundred
years, and industrial conflict, within a harsh economic climate. The working
class had taken on the employers for union recognition, improved pay and
conditions, and had achieved a victory.
Liverpool did not have a
major manufacturing base that would have provided stable continuous employment
for its population. It was a major seaport and relied heavily on the trade and
employment that incoming ships would provide for seafarers, dockers,
warehousemen, carters and other transport based jobs; such employment was often
casually based and people were employed and discarded on a daily basis.
The Liverpool Transport Strike is highlighted by the fact that
strikers were well led by union officials under the chairmanship of the
Syndicalist union leader Tom Mann. The increased militancy and unprecedented
industrial solidarity, even amongst Protestant and Catholic occurred because
they had, in Liverpool a central theme, that of a class war. Mann’s aim
apart from winning the strike, was to create a ‘permanent industrial solidarity
on Merseyside’ as a first step to industrial unionism.1
Kynaston,2 believes that as events unfolded, Mann was forced to
abandon his idea of a class struggle and concentrate instead on wage increases,
better conditions and union recognition. The evidence to support this theory is
that the men returned to work after the settlement of the dispute and did not
continue on strike.
The seeds of the strike had been sown long before the summer of 1911,
when Havelock Wilson the leader of the National Seamen’s and Firemen’s Union had
planned strike action since 1910, with the intention of forcing the Shipping
Federation to recognise the union for the purposes of collective bargaining on
pay and conditions. The Shipping Federation had a strong anti-union policy and
consistently treated seafarers harshly and Wilson
waited for an upswing in trade from the recent depression which was
complemented by a decrease in unemployment before he launched a campaign
against the ship owners.3
Although Syndicalism was minimal throughout the country, Mann’s
presence and leadership had ensured that it was well represented in major
cities like Hull and Liverpool, and this is where the major conflicts of the
transport strike occurred. On Merseyside there were a significant number of
syndicalists within the National Union of Ship Stewards, and union officials
Frank Pearce and Joe Cotter, both syndicalists, worked closely with the
Seamen’s and Firemen’s Union in the lead up to, and during the strike. Each
group of workers supported each other’s claim in turn, and when Cotter’s
members supported the striking seamen when they went on strike, it was the
first time that seafarers had acted together.
The work discipline imposed on the ships and docks was fearsome;
bullying and corruption were widespread, and Eric Taplin placed great emphasis
on the fact that the dispute was caused by the employers failure to recognise
trade unions. The Transport Strike was solidly supported by the non-unionised
north-end docks and this proved to be a major turning point in the dispute.
Once the seamen went on strike, the dockers who previously had been instantly
dismissed for joining a union,
took the opportunity to join the union, in the hope that union
solidarity would gain them better pay and conditions, and arrest the bullying
and intimidation that they were having to endure.4
All the separate groups of workers, with individual grievances drew
strength from the solidarity from other workers and joined in the dispute, and
it was the solidarity of the workers which forced the employers to enter into
negotiations. Waller rightly claims that it was the new found union solidarity,
particularly between the dockers and carters, rather than any syndicalist
ideals that was the basis for the successful conclusion to the strike.5
It is noticeable that the new found strength and solidarity alarmed the
press, with The Times referring to the growing union strength and the
mass picketing as ‘sinister .. and open to coercion and disorder’. It described
the events in the city as
‘Labour agitation gone
mad…the situation appears to be rapidly and hopelessly from bad to worse
…anarchy reigns in the city.’6
Tom Mann’s claim, that the sectarian barriers in the city began to be
broken down as both Protestant and Catholics united in the interests of
industrial solidarity, is very questionable. Both factions did come together to
support the industrial dispute, but sectarianism continued in Liverpool
for decades after the conclusion of the dispute. Initially, the relationship
between the local police force and the strikers was good, but the response of the civil authorities to the initial strike and the
action by the Birmingham Police only inflamed the situation, and relations
between the local police and the general public took some time to recover.
The city had been calm, prior to the local Watch Committee giving
permission to the Head Constable to call in extra police, who arrived on 10
August, (military forces arrived in the city shortly afterwards).The decision
by the Head Constable to station police from Birmingham within the confines of
St. George’s Hall on 13 August, contrary to an agreement reached prior to the
event, and then to order the officers to baton charge the crowd appears to have
been an extreme reaction to a minor disturbance.
Chapter two referred to the Head Constable’s inflexibility, and the
fact that Bower in his book The Rolling Stonemason referred to the huge
meeting taking place on 13 August as initially taking place in
‘A wonderful spirit of humour and friendliness…. All in their Sunday
best, many men with their womenfolk.7
If the police had not reacted to a minor incident, charged the crowd
from inside St. George’s Hall, then possibly the events that unfolded could
have been prevented.
The result was a savage display of brutality by the Birmingham
Police when they attempted to clear the Plateau and this proved the real
catalyst for future trouble. The disturbances that followed resulted in the
military becoming involved in dealing with the rioters and The Liverpool
Echo called the events of 13 August;
‘as brutal, …the fighting
savage… the labour trouble in Liverpool has assumed a dramatic and tragic development when
appalling scenes of serious violence were witnessed in the streets of the
city’8
The serious trouble over subsequent days involved troops and police
dealing with the reaction to the aftermath of the brutal treatment of the
meeting of 13 August, together with continued sectarian violence resulted in
the city being in turmoil, and this hardly shows the degree of unity of the
working class that Tom Mann envisaged in his original statement of a class war
on 14 June.
The Head Constable’s report to the City Council 1910-1911, produced in
the latter part of 1911 does not give any additional information as to why the
order for the police to charge the crowd was given, but by then Dunning had
retired and the report was presented to the Council by the new Head Constable
Francis Caldwell, Dunning took the reasoning behind his decision on 13 August
with him into retirement.9
The report praised the 4142 special constables drawn from all ranks of
society of whom 2847, had enrolled to protect their employers property, and
1295 had enrolled for general service with the full time police in the
preservation of the peace.10 The
Special Constables served until October when the Liverpool Watch Committee
founded a permanent reserve of 1000 men.11
During the period 10-22 August, Hansard reveals that only two of
the nine Liverpool M.P.’s, thought the situation serious enough to ask a
question in the House of Commons. T.P. O’Connor, the Nationalist member for Liverpool
Scotland, asked a question in parliament about the brutality
of the police, ‘I myself have been assaulted during the troubles’ and
associated himself with the cause of the strikers. R. P. Houston the
Conservative member for West Toxteth who asked a question about whether non
union members who wanted to work could be safely moved around the city.12 O’Connor
supported the strike because of the rioting and looting had occurred in his
constituency, but Houston it appears supported the government.
There was a mixed reaction in the city to the strike, and the riots
during the week following the events on 13 August. The Liverpool
Watch Committee’s minutes reveals that it did not hold any additional
meetings. It left control with the Head Constable who viewed both the
repercussions from the riot on 13 August and the continued sectarian violence
purely as a law and order issue.13
With a general strike in the city, the introduction of permits to move
goods and services across city the deteriorating situation was viewed with
alarm, both locally and at government level.14 The
permit system was really a working class control of the means of distribution,
and even authorities in the city accepted that this was the only way to move
goods; this was highlighted when the Head Postmaster asked the strike committee
for permission to move mail via
permit around the city.15
The City Council saw their authority in the city slipping into the
hands of the strike committee and the Lord Mayor cabled the Home Office
informing them that ‘a revolution was taking place in the city ….. and that
anarchy prevailed’.
Porcupine recognised ‘the
crimson flag of anarchy’, rioting and looting persisted and targeted in
areas bordering the sectarian enclave dividing lines to affect shops and
property of opponents religion, when shops and property belonging to people’s
own religion survived.16
The government realised that the strike committee had taken the first
step of organising the transport of goods for themselves; Hikins even suggests
that if allowed to continue, it could have resulted in social revolution,
civil war and an end to state authority, a scenario that forced the government
to take the only option open to it; that of persuading the employers, and
owners to agree to union demands.17 This course of action had been promoted by Dunning in
a communication to the Home Office prior to10 August when the initial
contingents of police and military units arrived. 18
Dunning appears to have been a sensible person, and if his suggested
course of action had been taken then matters would have been resolved
peacefully. Roger Geary
concludes that the intervention of government during the strike was minimal and
that the extra police were only sent to the city to ensure that the railway
system continued to function.19 Churchill was not known for being indecisive, as he
had reacted firmly to previous conflicts, and did so with the strike in Liverpool.
The fact that apart from extra police and troops which had been sent to the
city, a cruiser, H.M.S. Antrim was stationed in the Mersey,
with another warship nearby, was a sign that the government meant business and
were prepared to do what was necessary to restore order.
Churchill, as Home Secretary was deeply involved in the dispatching
of police and troops to the city and was determined, and is highlighted by his
involvement in his discussions with the Lord Mayor over his refusal to allow
sailors from H.M.S. Antrim to man the Mersey Ferries and work in the local
power station.20 He had
directed other recent conflicts at Tonypandy and Hull to crush dissent, and it
was his plan to either, move goods, or, if possible move strike breaking labour
around the city, in an attempt to keep the city moving with the intention of
breaking the strike. There is no record of any anti union labour being moved
around the city, this was entirely due to the solidarity of striking workers.21 The
fact that Churchill did not order the sailors to man the ferries shows he
exercised a certain amount of caution when dealing with this matter for fear of
inflaming the situation further.
On the conclusion of the strike the local newspapers gave a balanced
reflection of the strike
‘the employing classes must realise the duty to the
people that thy employ…. If the ship owners had been
more sympathetic
in dealings with the workforce the problem could have been resolved… the
Shipping Federation as well as
seeking the comfort of their passengers they should have an eye for the
interests of their staff.’22
the challenge to the employers was also made to reform the working
conditions on the docks to ensure regular
stable employment. In reviewing the contributions of the Strike Committee and
the Trade Unions, the newspapers highlighted the problems caused by
‘sympathetic
and so called peaceful picketing’ with all the related intimidation of
workers that had become associated with
this type of dispute.’23
Troops were withdrawn from the streets by 28 August but sporadic
violence and looting continued for some time and sectarian violence and
sporadic street clashes occurred continued up to the commencement of World War
One.24
The Liverpool Transport Strike of 1911 lasted for nearly three
months and brought the city to a standstill. It could have been avoided, but
for the inflexibility of the employers to recognise trade unions and their
right to represent the workers for improved pay and working conditions. The
solidarity of the working men proved to be highly significant, particularly the
support given by the non unionised north end dockers, and the employers were
unable to break the strike, as they had done, on previous occasions by employing anti union labour.
Violence occurred because the civic authorities and the government made
the mistake of bringing in police from outside police forces, and the military
to support them. Before their arrival the city had been calm and the use of the
Birmingham Police to clear the Plateau on 13 August was a huge
mistake.
After the conclusion of both the strike and hostilities, there was
smouldering resentment in the city to the police and authorities .Austin
Harford, an Irish Nationalist local councillor, a local councillor for the Scotland
ward, complained that the police had behaved like ‘bashibazouks’ and the United
Irish League in Liverpool petitioned the government for amnesties for persons
convicted during the strike, for rioting and looting offences and he was
supported in this campaign by John Walker the independent Protestant
Councillor.
The relationship between the authorities, including the police and the
general public was not helped by the Liverpool City Council voting £2000 in
gratuities to injured policemen.25 National and local authorities were extremely
worried as events unfolded, during August 1911. They were losing control of the
situation, eventually having to force the employers to negotiate settlements to
the dispute. With the hindsight of history however, the public authorities and
private employers did not relinquish any real power or control following the
eventual settlement of the strike.26
However, industrial relations in the city remained disturbed for some
time after the Strike; relations between employers and employees remained
uneasy up until the start of World War One with official and unofficial
stoppages occurring on a semi-regular basis.27
FOOTNOTES
1 Taplin E. The Dockers Union pp100
2 Kynaston D. King Labour pp164
3 Holton R. British Syndicalism pp90
4 Taplin E. Near To Revolution The Liverpool
General Transport Strike 1911
5 Waller P. J. Democracy and Sectarianism pp 253
6 The Times 14 August 1911 pp7
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