A Frozen Spring (relaunched version)

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Lady Charlotte 1 Battle of Parliament Square
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    • IanBertram

    Suffragism turns nasty!

    From Aristocrat to Revolutionary - the letters of Lady Charlotte Fitzgerald
    Volume 1 1905-1919
    Published by the Limerick Workers Press 1955

    Ballincarron House, Limerick

    Mrs Cecilia Connolly
    McAllister House
    Otago
    New Zealand

    December 5th 1910

    My Dearest Cissy,

    I know my last letter to you is almost certainly still at sea, but so much has happened since I wrote that I am simply bursting with news and cannot wait.

    Mother has I know written to tell you of our return to Ireland, I'm afraid poor Father found my involvement with the suffragists too much to bear, especially after your being caught up in the vivisection protestations over that poor dog in the Medical School.[1] Of course you have no need of suffragists, since women have had the vote in New Zealand since 1893, but we are still not not so advanced I am afraid back home. It looked for a while last year as if there might be a change and a Bill was in Parliament. It might have passed too, if that appalling Mr Asquith had not reneged on his promises to Mrs Pankhurst.

    I'm sure you have by now heard about the women's protest outside Parliament. You won't know however that I WAS THERE!!! Yes, your meek little sister Charlotte! I was carrying my purple banner,waving my flags and shouting along with thousands of other women. I'm sure poor father would have dropped dead on the spot to see me, but it was SO exciting, at least at first.

    I fear I am getting ahead of myself. However, before I say more, I must ask you not to breathe a word of what I am to write, even to dear George.

    Everything was very carefully planned. There were lots of meetings around London beforehand where Mrs P or one of her daughters gave us details of the plan and how it would all work out. We were all to dress in our finery to avert suspicion and to arrive in the area of Parliament Square in small groups. On the signal, we were simply to walk forwards into the Square. It seems though that the government were forewarned, because there were lots of policemen waiting for us.

    At first they were quite amused as we walked towards them arm in arm and singing. Then they realised that even 5000 policemen cannot stand against 30000 determined women [2]. They started to become rougher in their dealings, charging into the line of women and breaking it apart, only to find themselves surrounded and having to struggle free again. We offered no violence to them, we simply walked forward. In return I am afraid we were were badly treated. I saw women knocked to the ground by punches and by blows of the truncheon, there to be kicked!

    Bystanders took advantage of the disorder too, laying hold of women, mishandling them in most indecent ways. One such creature tried to grab me, but I am afraid to say I and Harriet, who stayed by my side throughout this sorry affair, surrendered our feminine instincts and beat him with the sticks of our banners to such effect that he fled.

    Others were not so lucky. I saw another woman dragged away down a side street, the beasts taking her tearing at her clothes as they took her, she screaming all the while. The police who saw it simply laughed and returned to bludgeoning the poor women before them.

    O Cissie, I have never seen such things! I could not believe that Englishmen, worse policemen could behave so. I felt as if I was in the midst of a crowd of wild animals, for as the hours wore on, yes my dearest, hours, many of the women involved also descended into some lower order. I saw women howling like beasts as they set about some policeman, while a few feet away a group of police were manhandling a woman outrageously, tearing her clothes from her very body.

    The battle, for that is what it was, lasted from 11 in the morning until almost 5 in the evening, without break and without quarter on either side. In the end of course, with their greater strength and greater willingness to use brute force, the police prevailed. Across the whole of Parliament Square, women lay collapsed on the ground, many bleeding, some senseless, lying amidst torn clothing and broken and bloody banners, ignored by the police as they tended to their own injured.

    Something changed in England on that day, Cissie.

    As for myself, I resolved that this could not go on. I could no longer support the Pankhursts in what seemed like a quest to achieve ever greater levels of violence, arson and destruction. Indeed on the very next day Downing Street was the scene of almost a repeat of the Battle of Parliament Square, while that evening windows were shattered across the City, in gentlemen's clubs, political offices and many other buildings. There was even an attempt to burn down Westminster Hall.

    On my return home, battered and worn, Father was not amused. He had tolerated to a degree my spouting “suffragist cant” as he called it, but he was not willing to see his daughter “brawling in the street like a common criminal”. He became much less angry the next day when he saw for himself the same behaviour by police in Downing Street, but he immediately made plans to move the whole household back to Limerick regardless of plans for the Season.

    I must confess that I did not care about missing the Season. I have found that I have less and less in common with the empty headed girls flocking to be presented. Indeed after the Battle, I found myself to have more in common with my maid Carson, who tended to my wounds and understood the loss I felt that matters had sunk so low.

    I became of a mind that so long as women's suffrage was presented as a War between men and women, nothing would be achieved except at great cost to both sexes. I resolved to look for something that would bring the sexes together in search of a greater common good. I know that I am not alone, that other members of our Movement were equally alarmed by what happened on that day and since. We will I am sure, one day soon, find a way forward in harmony between men and women and between all classes, something alas that Mrs P and her daughters are unlikely to find to their taste.

    I will write more tomorrow, I am so exhausted by recalling that awful day that I can do no more for now.
    …
    [1] The Brown Dog affair was a political controversy about vivisection that raged in Edwardian England from 1903 until 1910. It involved the infiltration of University of London medical lectures by Swedish women activists, pitched battles between medical students and the police, police protection for the statue of a dog, a libel trial at the Royal Courts of Justice, and the establishment of a Royal Commission to investigate the use of animals in experiments.
    [2] Estimates of the numbers present vary. It is unclear whether Lady Charlotte figures are hyperbole or she has some intelligence of actual numbers from her then involvement with the WSPU.


    META COMMENT: Apart from the invention of Lady Charlotte, there isn't much in this that didn't actually occur in OTL. The Battle of Parliament Square was pretty much as described as was Downing Street a day later. If anything Downing Street was worse in that it involved direct confrontations between Asquith and the suffragists and later with Churchill, who behaved very badly towards a friend of his wife, to the extent that a few weeks later someone attempted to horsewhip him while on a train journey because of his behaviour.See Chapter Three of Dangerfield in the bibliography. It is the outcome in the last few sentences that will be important.
     
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    • Politics 1
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    • IanBertram

    Disunited Kingdom – the fall of Britain and the loss of Empire 1910-1914

    Published by the Communist Workers Party, Johannesburg, 1991
    Eric Obstbaum
    About the author
    Comrade Obstbaum was born in Egypt to Austrian parents. He and his parents fled Berlin for South Africa to escape the oppression of National Socialist Germany, after being refused entry to Britain in 1933.

    Introduction
    In 1900, Britain was a prosperous country with an economy in good shape and politically stable. Within 20 years it was beginning to fragment and within 40 it had fallen to the status of a minor power. The story of the country's decline and fall over the that brief period and of the struggle between Australia, Canada and South Africa for dominance over the remnants of the old Empire, is well known. Indeed that struggle still affects relationships between those countries even now. What however caused that catastrophic decline? How did an Empire that straddled the world fall apart so quickly and with such ruinous effects on the home country? It is these questions I intend to address In this pamphlet. The fallout from this event has dominated 20th century politics and it is incumbent upon socialists everywhere to acquire an honest assessment of what those early British revolutionaries were attempting to do, how they did it, and what caused their revolution’s eventual degeneration.     It is my thesis that the answers can be found in the short period immediately before the First War, where the the stresses in British society began the disastrous slide from Imperial hegemonic power to post-industrial decline.

    Several interlocking factors were at work. First, the increasing militancy of workers. That militancy was unstructured and often dominated by groups with an incorrect understanding of the situation, but it was real. Second was the destructive conflict between Loyalist and Nationalist forces in Ireland, a conflict that spilled over from time to time onto the mainland. This conflict was destructive because it diverted progressive working class activism into petty nationalism and provided cover for a series of repressive measures by the state. The third factor was the growing demand for women's suffrage. While a demand for votes within the capitalist system was not of itself a progressive activity, those demands exposed the power structures within that system and demonstrated how far the holders of power were willing to go to keep it. The fourth factor was the mobilisation of the officer group within the British Army as a political force. Initially triggered by a concern that the army was to be used against Loyalists in the North of Ireland, the raised political awareness of this group was a sea change in relationships between the army and wider British society. The widening of membership of the officer class during the Great War created further schisms and opened up the possibility of different sections of the military standing with different groups, in particular the workers they were soon to be called upon to suppress. By exposing the class basis of the power structures, significant numbers of the lower ranks began to see the need to organise to protect their own class, sometimes with officer support, even to the extent of mutiny.

    Worker Militancy
    As early as the 1890s, troops had appeared on the streets of Northern towns to suppress dissent and to force strikers back to work. In 1893, two strikers were shot dead in the town of Featherstone, while in 1907 a massive strike in Belfast was put down with major force by the military leading to yet more deaths. Despite this, by 1910 militancy was growing and trade unions were experiencing a massive increase in membership.

    That militancy was not however revolutionary. Its main concern was to secure an improvement in living standards in a period where real wages were falling for the working classes at the same time as landowners – especially mine owners – were seen as taking ever greater and greater amounts of money out of their holdings. The vast majority of workers involved in strike action in this early period had no more than an inchoate sense of unfairness and so far as they saw a remedy it was simply in more money for their work. The Trades Union leadership were by and large happy with this state of affairs since any disturbance to the status quo in the form of more radical political or social change would also affect their own position. Class consciousness had not begun to emerge.

    It was with the uprising in Tonypandy, where the first major clashes between workers and the British State took place, that a more revolutionary consciousness began to emerge. In the absence of a revolutionary leadership, this growing consciousness was vulnerable, to opportunism and to counter-revolutionary forces. From a revolutionary perspective the most serious threat was the growth of syndicalism, that strand of anarchism which concentrates on local action in the work place and ignores the worker's most powerful tool, their collective political power as a class.

    Despite that, gains were made. In Tonypandy some workers clearly recognised the need to prepare for much worse repressive behaviour. Explosives and weapons were seized and organisational work was done to build up cadres. In Llanelly in 1911, further clashes took place and these rumbled on across the country in numerous locations but with most success in Liverpool. It was Liverpool that the best chance of a truly revolutionary movement emerged, only for that chance to fade away because of a lack of revolutionary consciousness among local leaders and a sell-out to the bosses by the national trades union leadership, frightened that in the chaos of revolution they would lose their privileged status.

    As Lenin puts it in What is to be Done:
    Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only from outside the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain this knowledge is the sphere of relationships of all classes and strata to the state and the government, the sphere of the interrelations between all classes. ​
    ​
    The failure of the leadership to recognise this and the insistence by syndicalists on the trade union as the central organising body and the general strike as the central task of a revolutionary movement, led to the ultimate failure of the Liverpool rising (and similar post war events in Glasgow) opening the door to the defeat of the left by counter-revolutionaries and eventually the rise of the militarist ultra-right Silver Badge movement that in turn evolved into the Argentist Party. To again quote Lenin:

    The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness," that is, combining into unions, etc. Socialist theory, however, in Russia, as elsewhere in Europe, was the product of the "educated representatives of the propertied classes", the intellectuals or "revolutionary socialist intellectuals.​
    ​
    The initial successes in Liverpool of syndicalist organisers like Mann in Liverpool, because they were rooted in a defective understanding of the true revolutionary situation proved not to be sustainable, while in Ireland and to a lesser degree in the rest of Britain, sectarian conflicts distorted the development of a united working class movement out of a historical tradition of resistance to the British landed classes into petty nationalism.
    ...
    EDIT 3/03/2020
    Meta
    This is of course Eric Hobsbawn the Marxist historian. Obviously the UK in 1933 in this TL is very different to ours. How different? We'll see
     
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    • Blenkinsopp Liverpool interlude
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    • IanBertram

    Interlude

    Letter from Captain Charles Blenkinsopp to his brother, serving in India.


    Liverpool 1911
    …

    The last few days in Liverpool have been pretty bloody, but an incident last evening provided a little in the way of light relief. Some of the men on patrol near the docks, close to where HMS Antrim is moored brought to me a character they suspected of being a spy. He had been seen by an infantry patrol earlier in the day, apparently sketching the dockside facilities but had eluded capture. Later he was seen again by my men who this time made sure of his capture and brought him to me.

    He was a weaselly little figure, pale, with dark hair swept to one side and a shrivelled excuse for a moustache under his nose. You will know how Hussars are inordinately proud of their long moustachios so this toothbrush of his was the subject of much ribaldry on their part. He spoke no English, or at least would not admit to it. I ascertained, using my limited German, that he was an Austrian. I looked at his drawings and they were pathetic daubs, certainly not the drawings of a spy.

    Without any other information, I could not hold him, so I told the men to set him loose. To be on the safe side we destroyed his drawings, although I kept one of the better ones as a souvenir of my time here, and sent him on his way under instructions to stay away from the docks in future. They took him away with much twirling of moustaches and loud laughter. I don't suppose we will ever hear from him again.
     
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    • Peelitebkearns

    Is this TL continuing? It's a very well-researched, enjoyable read so far. With this in mind it could well take time to write updates to this, so take my post as an enquiry into the future of this TL rather than an attempt to hurry you along at all.
     

    IanBertram

    Still going...

    I know there has been a huge gap, but I've had two spells in hospital this year and lost all momentum. Things are picking up again, so watch this space...
     

    IanBertram

    Updated bibliography

    In preparation for the next post, (still a few days away yet but still in 1911) I have updated the bibliography, which as ever is available in Word format on Dropbox. There is still a lot to add - I have lots of text files which came from a range of web sites, but which I now need to track down and reference.

    See my sig for the URL.
     

    IanBertram

    Still here...

    It has been far too long I know, but I've had continued problems with illness. I'm still reading though and keep adding ideas to my notes. The problem is that this keeps making me want to go back and revisit what I've already written.

    I'm holding fire on any new posts therefore until I get my ideas straight and have written enough to get the timeline well in advance of the postings.
     

    IanBertram

    Still here...

    I know I've said this before, but my problems with illness have continued. Indeed I'm currently recuperating after an operation. However I've carried on reading and thinking so watch this space.

    I have several posts written, but they jump ahead to 1916 -1919 and I really need to fill in the gaps between first.
     
    Askwith 1 on 1911
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    • IanBertram

    Extract from “A Life in Public Service” by George Ranken Askwith, Baron Askwith of St

    Extract from “A Life in Public Service” by George Ranken Askwith, Baron Askwith of St Ives, London 1928.

    The year 1911 did not begin well. The Welsh miner's strike dragged on, with some 300,000 men involved. Over the year the country was harassed by numerous 'wildcat' strikes, none of any great duration, but cumulatively amounting to thousands of days lost production. It seemed that the Trades Union leadership was becoming more and more out of touch with the mood of the men they represented. I spent much of the year travelling from one dispute to another, mediating as much between the men and their leaders as between the leaders and their employers.

    The fault appeared to be not with the men, but with their leaders who to a man were ineffectual and weak. Not surprisingly, when a leader emerged who was strong and forceful they stood out. Unfortunately those effective leaders were also radical socialists, who used their success in securing improvements in working conditions to promulgate their pernicious philosophy. The most prominent of these was probably Tom Mann. Highly intelligent, with a vigorous manner, he refused to be seduced by the blandishments of office and remained 'one of the men.' His ability and his wide ranging influence in many industries made him in my mind a great threat, not just to industrial peace, but to the security of the country. I was particularly fearful of an eruption of violence such as had occurred in Tonypandy the previous year and which had continued sporadically ever since. Mann had never publicly advocated such violence, but his subversion of the established structures of the Trades Unions in favour of direct action by the men made it obvious to me that serious civil unrest was a real possibility. I used every opportunity available to ensure that the threat he posed was made clear, not just to the President [of the Board of Trade], but also to the Home Secretary, in whose hands lay matters of domestic security.

    Through such contacts and my own sources, I became aware too of dangerous links appearing between the likes of Mann and certain elements of Irish Nationalism. I had already seen similar tactics as were being used by Mann in both Belfast and Dublin and was concerned to see these formerly separate movements had begun to make contact.

    January 1911 also saw a major strike of ship repair workers and others in Liverpool that lasted over three months, largely to the intervention of Mann and one of his associates Ben Tillet. Eventually however, I was able to secure a reconciliation between the men and their leaders and therefore an end to the dispute. Mann and Tillet however made inroads elsewhere, leading to the creation in Liverpool of the so-called 'Reform Committee' with the express intent of undermining the official Trades Union leadership and subverting government authority.
     
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    • Arrow 1
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    • IanBertram

    The revolution begins

    It was a small step at the time. Faced with dissent and political violence at home, the Spanish Government sought advice in 1907 from Britain on the appointment of someone to create and direct a secret service bureau that would, in the words of a press report at the time, “wage war on anarchists and people suspected of bomb outrages”. Chief Inspector Charles Arrow, newly retired from Scotland Yard was recommended for the role by the then head of CID in the Metropolitan Police, Sir Melville Macnaghten.

    It isn't clear why Arrow's name was put forward. He had no previous experience of dealing with political or even gang crime. He had particular expertise in dealing with blackmailers and domestic murders – the so-called crimes of passion so beloved of cheap novelettes of the period. Despite this he appears to have taken to his new role with relish.

    In a newspaper interview in 1926 he was quoted as saying:

    “I was always guarded by armed men. My hotel and my offices were protected day and night by machine gunners. I always carried two guns when I went out; I kept my hand on one in my pocket at all times – just like a Chicago Gangster – and carried the other in a hip pocket. At the most violent period in 1909, the streets leading to my hotel were barricaded but the hotel was often fired on by snipers on rooftops. The hotel chef was killed in his bed by a ricochet and two members of my guard were shot dead at different times. I was constantly receiving death threats but I did not let them worry me over much. I just looked on them as an old Spanish custom.”
    ​
    After about 3 years Arrow returned to Britain. He later alleged that his dismissal was the price paid by the Spanish government for a truce with the revolutionaries, but stories also emerged, admittedly from the revolutionary side, of excessive violence and summary executions on the part of his bureau.

    His return to Britain in 1910 coincided with the beginnings of the that period before the outbreak of war called by many 'The Great Unrest' – a period of religious and political ferment so extreme that it destabilised the very fabric of British society. Arrow's evident disdain for foreigners shown in his comment about 'old Spanish customs' was soon expressed publicly in various newspaper articles and extended generally to cover the Irish and Jews. He also seems to have retained a taste for anti-left wing activities. His name was linked from time to time with various right wing groups, such as the British Brothers League. His association with these groups brought him into contact with many prominent figures on the right of British politics, including John Pretyman Newman, Charles Burn, Robert Burton-Chadwick and most notorious of all perhaps, Noel Pemberton Billing. In the post war years he exploited these links to the full.

    In 1911, he made his first overt step into public life in the UK, setting up the Silver Arrow Agency. Nominally this was a private inquiry agency, although his client list included many major industrialists, banks and some government departments, such as the Northern Lighthouse Board, which appeared at first glance to have little use for such services as the Agency provided. Initially Arrow appears to have given preference in recruitment to men with military rather than police experience. By 1913 the agency was employing some 250 men. Although they normally operated in civilian dress, they also had a uniform which they wore when performing security duties such as escorting payroll deliveries. The emblem of the agency was a single arrow in a circle. This symbol was also used in various forms to denote ranks within the organisation.

    Although never publicly acknowledged, Arrow appears to have had as his model, the Pinkerton Agency of the USA, not just as a detective agency, but also for the part that agency played in suppressing labour disputes throughout the latter half of the 19th Century. In a letter to Burton-Chadwick, dated 11th November 1912 he says:

    “I have been very much impressed with the work of the Pinkerton men in America. They have done much to reduce the pernicious effect of union agitators and I am convinced that we will soon need their like here in England. The dreadful strikes in South Wales and most recently in Liverpool have made me realise that our police forces will soon be unable to cope. Their size is based on the fundamental philosophy that we are a law abiding country, but things have now got to the state where increasing numbers are not prepared to respect the law. Anarchists, Fenians and others will, I am convinced, make use of this disorder to promote their own evil ends, if indeed they are not already doing so.”
    ​
    By the outbreak of war, Arrow was also in touch, not just with prominent political figures on the right, but also people like Basil Thomson, head of the CID at the Metropolitan Police, Francis Caldwell, Head Constable of Liverpool Police and with many other Chief Constables of provincial forces across Britain. Wherever an industrial dispute broke out, he seems to have made it his practice to contact the Chief Constable for the area, offering advice and services. In Manchester for example, he appears to have offered his services in escorting food vehicles into the City and in transporting strike breakers. There is no evidence that any of these offers were taken up, or even that he expected such to happen, but the contacts he made with these key men and their associates proved critical in the post war years.

    (not so much a reboot as a step back a little)
     
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    • IanBertram

    Thanks

    Thanks for the good word - I'm keeping my fingers crossed healthwise. As the weather improves though I expect/hope also to spend more time on my art though - writing and printmaking are always battling for my time...
     

    IanBertram

    Charles Arrow

    I shpould add that Charles Arrow is not invented. He did go to Barcelona to run an anti-anarchist secret service, although I don't know the circumstances of his appointment. I've slightly lengthened his time in Spain. I found him in the book 'The Slow Burning Fuse' listed in the Bibliography (see my sig). He did go on to create a private detective agency, with bank and government contracts, but so far as I know they were not uniformed.

    Of the two quotes attributed to him, the first is based on an newspaper interview he gave in 1931, while the second is actually from 1972 and apart from the reference to the Pinkertons comes from an interview with a senior member of the military in the UK Land Forces HQ in the aftermath of the miner's strike. This comes from Bunyan's 'Political Police in Britain' also in the bibliography.

    None of the posts so far deviate very much from what actually happened in OTL.
     
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    Telford 1 Town Moor riots
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    • IanBertram

    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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