SERIOUS RIOT IN LONDON -MONSTER PROCESSIONS IN [RAFALGAR SQUARE.
THE POLICE OVERWHELMED THE GUARDS CALLED OUT IEAVY FIGHTING.
Reynols Newspaper, 20th November, 1887).
Bloody Sunday, 13th November, 1887. After police broke up meetings in October socialists held a series of demonstrations uminating in a procession to Westminster Abbey during a service to protest against inemployment.
Radicals organised demonstration to proest against imprisonment of an Irish lationalist. Government banned demonstraion, garrisoned Thames bridges.
Demonstrators ignored ban.
As the Clerkenwell contingent reached Bloomsbury end of St. Martins: The police, nounted and on foot, charged in among the eople, striking indiscriminately in all firections and causing complete disorder in he ranks of the processionists. I witnessed everal cases of injury to men who had been truck on the head and face by the police. n a short-time the bands were dispersed and he police had captured the remnants of he banners... the action of the police.. vas received with yells, of execration and groans and hooting.
Rotherhithe, Bermondsey, Peckham, Deptford, Battersea contingents beaten back on Thames bridge.
Cordon of police round Trafalgar Square. Life Guards within call. John Burns and Cunningham Graham arrested in the course of trying to break into the square after a fierce struggle. 'During the melee, the police freely used their weapons, and the people, who were armed with iron bars, pokers, gas pipes and short sticks, and even knives, resisted them n a most determined manner. Sticks were fourished in the air and a most resolute rush was made to break through the police ranks when the reserves inside the square callied to the support of the main body and a score of police troopers charged!
Afterwards:
Many thousands of special constables sworn Trafalgar Square in state of intermittent siege fer next fortnight, occupied by large police garrison. 28th November: Alfred Linnell killed. December: Funeral procession.
Rob Smillie, President, Miners* Federation, on police " in Dublin 1913 against strikes in which 2 workers were killed. 400 wounded and 200 arrests made: *If revolution is going to be forced upon my people I say it is our duty, legal illegal, to train our people to defend them- Samuel Bamford explaning why the radical selves... It is the duty of the greater trade demonstrators drilled: union movement, when a question of this *We had been frequently taunted by the gravity arises to discuss seriously the idea Press, with our ragged dirty appearance at of a strike of all the workers." these assemblages; with the confusion of our proceedings, and the mob-like crowds W. Gallacher and J. R. Campbell. which our numbers were mustered. Direct Action 1919:
Workers" control in industry ... involves a A clerical magistrate from the bench: revolutionary struggle for power. We do not believe you are a downright blackguard believe it is possible to any great extent to reformer. Some of your reformers ought to win control by wringing step by step con be hanged, and some of you are sure to be cession from the capitalists . it cannot be hanged the rope is already round your solved by the workers remaining passive and necks. expecting an essembly of political supermen to change the world for them. A Yorkshire freeholder:
*Armed or unarmed, Sir, consider such "VICTORY OF PETERLOO". MEETING meetings as that held at Manchester, be IN MANCHESTER FOR nothing more or less than risings the PARLIAMENTARY REFORM, 1819. people; and I believe that these risings of the people, if suffered to continue, would end Samuel Bamford: in open rebellion. 'Stand fast, I said, they are riding upon us.
Stand fast. And there was a general cry in 1830. Duke of Wellington's response to the our quarter of "Stand fast". The cavalry were labourer's revolt in the Southern Counties: in confusion; they evidently could not, with I induced- the magistrates to put themsęlves all the weight of man and horse, penetrate on horseback each at the head of his own that compact mass of human beings and their servants and retainers, greoms, huntsmen, naked held-up hands and defenceless heads. sa bres were plied to hew away through game-keepers, pistols, fowling pieces armed with horse what whips, they could get, and to attack these mobs, disperse William Harrison, Cotton spinner: them, and take and put in confinement those 'As I was running away three soldiers came who could not escape." down upon me one after another; there was whiz this way and whiz that way, backwards and forwards and I, as they were going Joseph Swan hat-maker of Macclesfield, arrested 1819 for selling radical pamphlets to strike, threw myself on my face, so that, if they cut, it should be on my bottom. and a poem. In chains and shunted from jail to jail. Eventually sentenced to two years for The Coroner: blasphemous libel and six months for You act as well as speak? seditious libel. 1831: still selling. Asked in court why. Answered:
Harrison: Swann:
Yes: I'm real Lancashire blunt, Sir; I speak " sell them for the good of my fellow the truth; whenever any cried out "mercy" countrymen; to let them see how they are they said: Damn you. what brought you misrepresented in Parliament. I wish to let here?' the people know how they are humbugged 11 killed _ several hundred wounded; more than 100 women and girls. Bench:
'Hold your tongue a moment."
Swann: shall not for I wish every man to read these publications.
Benchi 'You are very insolent, therefore you are committed to three months imprisonment in Knutsford House of Correction. to hard labour.
Swann: *I've nothing to thank vou for: and whenever 1 come out I'll hawk them again."
Joseph Swann forcibly removed from dock. William Les. 1833: Pulls meeting Union of the Work; Classes at Cold Bath Fields -now Mount easant. "The procer so sooner commenced the the furious the multitude, knocking den indiscri men. women and childregreat num them being very dangersly wounded.' Robert Cal policeman, stabbed "by person whi he had struck with his truncheon." he Jury returned the verdict: Justifiable micide.
1866: Den stration Hyde Park, CAnD319E for workin liclass vote. Demand that park opened r meetings. Scuffle with police and railing attened.
Matthew Aold: Culture and Anarchy. *The working were therefore beginning to assert and into practice an Englishman's right to where he likes. hoot as he likes, threa as he likes, amash as he likes. All this I tends to anarchy He comes in immensumbers and is rather raw and rough.
John Burnt Unemployment demonstration, 1886, as scribed by the Times Weekly Edition, 1: February, 1886: *There wai great roar of voices as the man with the d flag mounted the stonework overlookinthe square. he (denounced) the Housof Commons composed of capitalists 10 had fattened on the labour of the wong men, and in this category he included dords, railway directors and employers To hang these, he said. would be waste good rope, and as no good to the pee was to be expected from these 'representaes' there must be a resolution to alter present inte of things. The people wiwere out of work did not want relief but stice, A You Pioneer on watch for enemy planes VIOLENCE LEGAL AND ILLEGAL 'RIOTOUS AND DISGRACEFUL PROCEEDINGS-MACHINATIONS OF A FEW DESIGN. ING INDIVIDUALS Familiar? It's a Birmingham magistrate in 1817, banning the holding of a reform meeting.
In each generation the ruling class react with postures and paroxysms of shock and horror in response to pressure from below. This capacity for repeated shows of moral outrage and offended surprise is perhaps accounted for by that distorted thing they call history' which shakes hands with the rulers and bends down, turns round and looks at the ruled wrong way up and upside down, and consequently is unable to see them clearly at all.... Thus exploitation, class interest suffering either existed so long ago, or never existed at all, or would have disappeared naturally, i.e., when most people had been conveniently 'removed by them. Words fade and merge into unmeaning. Sympathy for the rulers is mysteriously 'realistic', for the ruled, class-bias and/or sentimentalism.
They have foisted their terms upon us and left us struggling hopelessly in their definitions. Thus a respectable-reasonable-moderate-peaceful-legal-native tradition of inevitable gradualness GOOD is opposed to an unrespectable-unreasonable extremist-violent-illegal imported tradition of revolution BAD. Whose respect-whose reason-whose scale of extremities-whose violence and whose law are the obvious first questions? Again moderation might well be unreasonable and violence is quite frequently legal. First trap acceptance that the violent response to a violent situation is necessarily bad. Second trap that 'violence' is necessarily more militant in a political sense. The sufragettes took arson in their stride, their cause was politically moderate, many of the Chartists who threatened physical force were politically more cautious than the moral force men. There is a basic and crucial distinction between the willingness to use 'violent' direct action in particular situations and the habitual use of the threat of organised force in a revolutionary political way.
We have been traditionally given to riot rather than revolution and that wily old giant Capitalism, born from our people, who has waxed fat, passed his prime and grown old on our labour, knows it all too well. He keeps his thumbs in his braces ready to shoot if the going gets a bit too rough but meanwhile he mouths peace and order behind the truncheon. He has a very short memory and in his old age is given to spout of his liberalism, enlightenment and welfare, regret the consensus and the backlash. Black Dwarf has been around at least as long as the Giant and remembers quite a few of the things the Giant likes to keep under his pants.
THE DWARF PRESENTS A PEEP UP THE GIANTS PANTS - UNRESPECTABLE - UNREASONABLE - EXTREMIST - VIOLENT - ILLEGAL - OUR PAST.
Brave fighters happily tell each other how they wiped out the enemy
THE BLACK DWARF 13,7