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Telford 1 Town Moor riots
Revolution-on-Tyne

The Transport Strike of 1911 in Liverpool had essentially failed after the Railwaymen returned to work, persuaded by union officials more fearful of the a challenge to their power and position than they were interested in the improvement of the lot of their members. Once the Railwaymen gave in, the other unions were isolated and the trickle back to work became an ignominious flood. The employers immediately began to seek out and dismiss those men they saw as ringleaders. The Syndicalist movement at the heart of the 1911 strikes had not been entirely defeated however. As the country moved into 1912, strikes continued to take place in larger towns and cities like Hull, Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast and in various smaller centres across the country, such as Lincoln, Darlington and Chesterfield.

In almost all these disputes, the workers were as much at odds with their own union officials as with the employers. In some cases the disputes began amongst unorganised labour, spreading from there. The largest of these disputes following Liverpool was probably the national dock strike, which began in Southampton and rapidly spread to ports across the country. Here, Tom Mann and other syndicalist activists had been steadily and quietly working, stressing the insidious growth of 'officialism', the tendency of Union officials to be captured by the interests of the employers, to see themselves in fact as separate and above the men they represented.

It wasn't just men of course. The 1911 Singer dispute in Glasgow had been triggered by a small group of women workers, who rapidly gained the support of their male colleagues. As in Liverpool, that dispute failed but the experience was critical for the women involved who, in addition to their demands for improved pay and conditions, began to agitate also for the vote. The combination of labour activism and the suffrage movement was an uneasy alliance. For many of the Syndicalists, Parliamentary action was a side show. For them the only way for the working classes to secure power to themselves was Direct Action in the form of strikes. Elections meant playing the State's game to the State's rules. For the Syndicalist movement, It wasn't enough to change the rules, the game itself had to be set aside and a new Game begun.

So, the discontent continued to grumble on until in April 1912, the management of the London and North Western railway attempted to dismiss one of their men who had been involved in the 1911 Liverpool dispute, alleging sabotage of railway equipment. Without waiting for Union approval, the men of his branch immediately walked out, calling on other union members to support them. Within the week, the rail strike had spread nationally, and other transport workers were joining them. The cities of Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham were paralysed without a permit from the local Trades Council allowing the movement of food or other essential supplies. In May 1912, the focus of these disputes shifted to Tyneside as miners, engineering workers in the shipyards, seamen and dockers all joined the national rail strike, the dispute then rapidly spreading to the coalfields of Northumberland and Durham, to the shipyards of Sunderland and to the steel works in Consett. By the beginning of June virtually nothing moved across the entire North East of England without the consent of the strikers.

The scale of the Tyneside strikes was especially worrying to the government, whose chief arbitrator, Sir George Askwith, was reported as saying that “We have 25,000 troops already committed across the country. We only have 80,000 troops available in all and the Territorials cannot be trusted. If the actions of the men on Tyneside continue we will be unable to maintain order.”

It was into this atmosphere that Tom Mann re-emerged to address a huge rally of strikers on the Town Moor in Newcastle on June 12th 1912. In this historic speech he made clear his revolutionary aims.

Last year a hundred thousand people came to the centre of Liverpool. We have as many here today. We gathered then, as we do today, peacefully, to demonstrate our determination to win our terrible battle against the employing classes and the state. What happened last year? Why are we here again today, facing the same battles, the same threats. Why are we again facing the guns and the clubs of the State and the employing classes who own it? Why? Because we faltered. Because we did not act with unanimity. Because we allowed reactionary officials to break apart the solidarity of the working classes of this city and of this country, to exploit the sectional interests of individual unions against the interests even of their own members.

This cannot happen again. Once more we see the military and the police drafted in; once more we see gunboats in the Mersey and nowin the Tyne - we can see nothing except a challenge. A challenge to every worker who values his job. A challenge to every claim each worker makes of his employer. A challenge to every right a worker should expect under common decency. Brothers, we rise to this challenge. And we meet it, head on.

Brothers and sisters, there's a thin line between order and chaos. The forces of the State and the employing classes may yet tread it this afternoon in Newcastle as they have done before; as they did in Tonypandy, in Llanelli, in Derby, in Birmingham, in Lincoln, in Hull, in Manchester, in Glasgow – and in Liverpool. There comes a time however, when the operation of the machinery of the State becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you cannot take part! We have surely reached that condition, comrades and the time has come for you to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus of the State and the employing classes – and you've got to make it stop! You've got to say to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you are free the machine will be prevented from working at all!!

Think of this - if two men can keep 2,000 men employed and hold them at bay in one street in Stepney, how many men would be required to defeat millions of men, spread over the area of Great Britain? Brothers you know the answer – the working classes of this country have the strength, if they act with unanimity, if they stand shoulder to shoulder, they have the strength, to win this fight.
WE CAN WIN! WE WILL WIN!​

As Mann finished speaking a body of police began trying to force their way through the crowd in order to arrest him. As they pushed forward, wielding their truncheons to right and left to clear a path, they met strong resistance. The police were rapidly brought to the ground and beaten with their own truncheons, before being summarily ejected from the crowd to jeers and hoots. With this success, the crowd turned its attentions to the parties of infantry stationed at intervals around the perimeter of the Moor. For the first time territorial units had been entrusted with this role. The men had never seen action and had little training to face the wild crowd now advancing towards them. They began to fall back, all the time being taunted by the more rowdy elements of the crowd. This retreat rapidly turned into a rout as the men abandoned their weapons and took to their heels pursued by strikers.

Behind the fleeing Territorials however was a troop of Scots Greys, regular cavalry who already seen this sort of duty in Liverpool the previous year. Seeing the Territorials fleeing towards them, the troop commander gave the order to move forward at the trot in an attempt to intimidate the crowd. At this point a missile was hurled from the crowd, hitting one of the horses, causing it to rear up. The trooper kept his seat, but in panic drew his pistol and shot dead one of the strikers at the front of the crowd. The Troop commander was unsighted at that moment and assumed his men had come under fire. He gave the command to draw swords and move forward into the crowd.

Under the pressure of thirty horses the crowd at first fell back, but the mass of people was such that they could soon move no further and those at the front were trampled underfoot. At some point the commander was made aware of his error and tried to withdraw his men. Before he could do so, another troop, having heard the shot and seen the subsequent disturbances attempted to disperse the crowd by moving in on the crowd from the far side.

By now it was clear to all parties involved that matters were going awry. Many of the crowd were there in family groups. These began to struggle away from one set of horses only to meet others attempting to escape the press coming from the other side. Meanwhile others, more organised attempted to move towards the disturbance. Inevitably many were injured; men, women and children. The unfortunate troopers of both units were now surrounded by an angry mob, unable to manoeuvre their horses or to regroup. Many were pulled from their mounts and badly beaten. Others kept their seats and struggled free as best they good, but with scant regard for who they rode down in their desperate attempt to escape.

Meanwhile the hapless Territorials had made their way to the nearby Fenham Barracks, to be met by an outraged Commanding Officer. Berating them for their cowardice he threatened to place all of them before courts martial for cowardice and desertion. At this point the frightened and exhausted men abandoned any semblance of military discipline and simply walked out of the barracks to return to their homes.

By nightfall the full toll of the day's events became clear. Two police officers were dead from the beating they had sustained. Seven others were seriously injured either from beatings or from the crush of the crowd as they attempted to escape the horsemen. Seven strikers were dead from blows to the head, sabre wounds or gunshot wounds, while a further 12 people had been trampled to death in the crowd, including two women and a boy of 11 years old.

As the news spread, riots broke out across the North East. Wherever mounted soldiers or police appeared on the streets they were pelted with missiles and forced to retreat. No patrolling on foot was possible over large areas of the region. Over the next week a further seven died, including one policemen and an officer of the Scots Greys who had been mobbed as he attempted to ride out across the Town Moor. Another policeman and a trooper died of injuries received on the first day of the rioting.

In desperation more troops were sent to the region, boosting numbers to over 10,000. At the same time faced with what appeared to be the beginnings of a revolution, legislation was hurriedly pushed through Parliament to provide emergency powers. As originally approved the Emergency Powers Act 1912 was brief. This provided for:

a) the declaration of a State of Emergency by an Order in Council;
b) the power to make regulations, by Order in Council, for securing the essentials of life to the community.

The potential scope of these regulations was vast, granting to “a Secretary of State or other Government department, or any other persons in His Majesty's service or acting on His Majesty's behalf, such powers and duties as His Majesty may deem necessary for the preservation of the peace, for securing and regulating the supply and distribution of food, water, fuel, light, and other necessities, for maintaining the means of transit or locomotion, and for any other purposes essential to the public safety and the life of the community, and may make such provisions incidental to the powers aforesaid as may appear to His Majesty to be required for making the exercise of those powers effective; and may, by such regulations, authorise the trial by courts martial and punishment of persons contravening any of the provisions of such regulations"

In other words, almost any aspect of daily life could be controlled by regulation and moreover, breach of those regulations was to be controlled by summary judgement in courts martial. Such a huge increase in the power of the state had never been seen since perhaps the time of Elizabeth.
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