The Hall of Science

Opened in 1840 by the Owenite Co-operative Movement, the Hall of Science was a centre for working class education and social activity for a decade.

Salford was an important centre for those inspired by the writings and ideas of Robert Owen to set up Co-operative enterprises.

In 1831 a small group of Co-operators opened up a school for children and adults, making the furniture themselves. They taught the three R’s as well as music, drawing, singing and dancing. Within six months they had 170 pupils, ranging in age from 12 to 40, most of whom were local factory workers keen to improve their education. For many, schooling had been denied them as they had no money to pay. The teachers at the Co-operative School were unpaid and there was no charge for tuition.

At the 3rd Co-operative Congress, held in 1832, the Manchester Society presented a report urging all societies to establish libraries and reading rooms to spread Co-operative ideas. At this time few working people could afford to buy books or even newspapers.

Having outgrown their original premises in 1835, the Salford Co-operators built and opened the Co-operative Social Institute on Great George Street. The costs were met by a local glazier, Joseph Smith. Robert Cooper, one of the teachers at the Salford Co-operative School, described the hall as follows.

“The windows were of stained class, the floors carpeted and the platform neat and elegant, ornamented with mottoes in gilt mouldings. Altogether it bore an aspect of comfort and respectability , such as I never saw before or since in connection with an almost purely working class movement.”

George Holyoake, who later became the most well-known historian of the Co-operative Movement, visited the Institute and recorded it as “a pleasant structure, costing £850 and capable of holding six hundred persons.”

In February 1837 Robert Owen addressed large audiences at the Salford Institute. These meetings became so crowded that they were moved to Bywater’s Rooms on Peter Street, which held 3,000 people. Members were enrolled and they went on to set up local groups and spread the Co-operative Movement’s ideals and principles. The third Congress of an Owenite organisation, The Association of Classes of All Nations, was held in the Institute during Whit week, 1837, where they were addressed by Owen himself.

By 1839 the Owenites had outgrown the Salford Institute and they moved to a new home. In January 1840 the Hall of Science was opened by Robert Owen on Byrom Street in Campfield, just off Deansgate in the centre of Manchester. The building had cost £7,000 and was the largest lecture hall in Manchester, holding over 3,000. The hall bore the motto “Sacred to the Investigation of Truth.” There were evening and Sunday lectures and also concerts, parties and excursions. The Sunday school had 250 pupils by 1842. The hall also attracted opposition. In April 1840, for instance, an attempt was made to burn it down. The perpetrators were never caught.

In the summer of 1842 a great strike swept across the Lancashire cotton towns. On 16 August a delegate conference took place in the Hall, chaired by Alexander Hutchinson. The Chartist newspaper The Northern Star commented that the meeting had been marked by great earnestness and good order. Many of those attending were later arrested after the strike ended.

Frederick Engels arrived in Manchester in December 1842 to work in the family firm Ermen & Engels and soon found his way to the Hall of Science, which was just a few minutes walk from the firm’s offices on Southgate.

He wrote (somewhat condescendingly):

“At first on cannot get over one’s surprise at hearing in the Hall of Science the most ordinary workers speaking with a clear understanding on political, religious and social affairs..…I saw the Socialist hall, which holds about 3,000, crowded every Sunday.”

Engels engaged in political dialogue and debate with the hall’s main lecturer, John Watts, and also wrote for the Owenite journal The New Moral World.

He described a meeting in the Hall thus: Watts “without removing his hat …comes onto the platform on which there is table and chairs. After raising his hat by way of greeting those present , he takes off his overcoat and then sits down and delivers his lecture, which usually gives much occasion for laughter, for in these speeches the English intellect expresses itself.”

The Hall only survived until 1850 when, after splits and divisions within the Owenite movement, it was sold and the Manchester Free Library was established in the building. In 1877 the Hall was demolished after its structure had become weakened by the weight of books and the library moved to the former Manchester Town Hall on King Street and in 1934 to its present home in Central Library.

The Irish in Manchester and the Civil Rights Movement in the North of Ireland, 1963-1974

The emergence of the Civil Rights movement in the North of Ireland led to solidarity organisations being established in Britain, seeking through meetings, marches and strikes to highlight what was happening. The government used the prevention of Terrorism Act, passed in November 1974, to clamp down hard on campaigners.

The Emergence of the Civil Rights Movement in the North of Ireland

In May 1963 local Catholics in Dungannon established the Homeless Citizens’ League to campaign for better housing conditions. One of its leading members was Patricia McCluskey, wife of local doctor Conn McCluskey. In August 1963 thirty families squatted in condemned buildings and eventually embarrassed the Stormont government, after Doctor McCluskey had personally lobbied it, into announcing that some 64 new houses would be built in the town.

News of this victory quickly spread beyond Dungannon and the McCluskeys received letters from families across Northern Ireland, asking for advice on how to win similar concessions for their own towns from Stormont. This convinced them of the need for a more permanent pressure group and led them to establish the Campaign for Social Justice on 17th January 1964 “for the purpose of bringing the light of publicity to bear on the discrimination which exists in our community”. The CSJ sent out regular newsletters and produced five pamphlets which detailed the injustices happening in Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was formally established at a meeting of 100 delegates in the International Hotel, Belfast on 29th January 1967. On 5th October 1968 a Civil Rights march in Derry was brutally attacked by the RUC and sparked a wave of anger, leading to the formation by students of a radical group, People’s Democracy.

Bernadette Devlin rapidly emerged as one of its leading figures and in April 1969 was elected to the House of Commons on a Civil Rights ticket. She made her first appearance in the Commons two days later, rushing over to take part in a debate on Northern Ireland and looking like “anybody’s classless undergraduate daughter” as the Daily Mirror put it. She attacked Unionism and the Wilson government for forgetting what Socialism was and rejected attempts to label the Civil Rights movement as a narrow Catholic uprising, saying “We are not sectarian. We fight for the rights of both Catholics and Protestants”. She spoke at countless meetings in Britain and the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign was set up, including for a while a group in Manchester based in Gee Cross, Hyde. This organised a meeting under the title The Real Struggle in Northern Ireland at Chorlton Town Hall on 9th November 1969 at which Michael Farrell from People’s Democracy was the principal speaker

Solidarity in Britain with the Civil Rights Movement

Events in Northern Ireland were now being keenly followed by many in the Irish community in Britain. The day after the attack on the Civil Rights march in Derry The Observer carried a full and graphic report of the RUC’s violence, written by Mary Holland under the headline “Ulster Police Club Marchers”. She also wrote a long feature, carefully researched, entitled “John Bull’s White Ghettos”, which exposed the political gerrymandering in Derry. Her articles were very influential.

According to the Irish Democrat the Manchester branch of the Connolly Association was now meeting every 3rd Wednesday at The Crown & Anchor public house in Hilton Street and becoming active again under the direction of Joe McCrudden, a Belfast man. There was a Civil Rights meeting in Manchester at Chorlton Town Hall on 9th March 1969, at which the speakers were Desmond Greaves and Betty Sinclair, a trade unionist and Communist from Belfast.

College students in Manchester also set up a Civil Rights Committee. The most active members of this seem to have been those attending the Catholic De La Salle teacher training college, who held a mass meeting on 16th January 1969 and leafleted city centre pubs and clubs on events in Ireland, as a prelude to an all night vigil in support of the demand for Civil Rights in Albert Square. The weather was not on their side – there was fog and rain and only 30 students stayed the course. They were pictured next day in the Manchester Evening News, walking around the Albert Memorial and carrying banners which demanded (unironically) “One Man One Vote”. The chair of the Committee was 20 year-old Conal Harvey from Belfast who told the press, “We want to draw the unfair situation in Northern Ireland to the attention of the people in Manchester. We are planning more protests.”

The British Army goes in

In August 1969 there was a three day battle in Derry between the people of the Bogside and the RUC. Rioting then broke out in Belfast in which whole streets were burn out and people were killed. Finally James Callaghan, the Home Secretary, sent in the army.

Frank Gogarty, a leading member of NICRA in London, was reported in the press as saying that the Association proposed to call all Irish people in Britain out on a one-day strike as an expression of horror and indignation at the police brutality in Derry. The Guardian reported that on 14th August there had been sympathy strikes in Birmingham, Coventry and London with more than 500 people staying away from work and further strike action planned in the Midlands to bring out all Irish labour. This was followed on 20th August by a further strike by Irish workers in Birmingham whose co-ordinator Tom McDowell claimed that some 7,000 people in the area had answered the call with support from corporation bus workers, factories and building sites.

St Brendan’s Centre in Manchester was named in the press as a recruitment centre for volunteers wishing to go over to the north. Local organiser John Madden said that he hoped to get the first volunteers across to Ireland almost immediately and was planning to organise a demonstration in Albert Square and a walkout by Irish workers. The following day St Brendan’s publicly denied that it was being used as centre for volunteers as this would be against its constitution.

On 25th August 1969 there was a march in Manchester. Supporters of the Civil Rights movement gathered in Platt Fields and marched to Ardwick Green . A photograph of this march in The Guardian showed one marcher holding a placard which stated “Get The Troops Out.”

In October Manchester City Council (then Tory controlled) refused to allow the local branch of the Campaign for Social Justice to hire council-owned halls to hold public meetings on the situation in the North of Ireland and a planned meeting had to be called off. On 6th November the CSJ organised a torchlit procession in the city centre in protest. John Madden, who was originally from Dungannon and had lived in Manchester for 15 years, claimed that 99% of the Irish population were sympathetic to their cause. He told the Irish Democrat it was “the sort of thing I used to experience when I was a councillor in the worst place in Northern Ireland for discrimination. I did not expect to find it in Manchester.” There was a protest march to the Town Hall against the ban after the annual Manchester Martyrs procession.

The Manchester CSJ stepped up its activities by taking part in the national petition for a Bill of Rights and holding a meeting in Houldsworth Hall on 22nd March 1970 at which the speakers were Ivan Cooper MP, Betty Sinclair, Mark Carlisle MP and Stan Orme MP. On 4th April they held a folk concert in the Lesser Free Trade Hall featuring the Grehan Sisters.

In July 1970 the British army imposed a curfew and ransacked the Falls Road in Belfast, looking for weapons. Four people were killed. In February 1971 the IRA shot dead a British soldier. Daily gun battles were soon taking place as well as a bombing campaign. At 4.30am on 9th August 1971 the Stormont government re-introduced internment, leading to more gun battles and extensive rioting. Nationalist areas virtually seceded from the Northern Ireland state.

Bloody Sunday, January 1972

A NICRA march was held in Derry on Sunday 30th January 1972. British troops from the paratroop regiment prevented it getting out of the Bogside and the usual small riot developed involving local youth. Most of the marchers were listening to the speakers, who included Bernadette Devlin and veteran Labour MP Fenner Brockway, when the paratroopers charged into the Bogside shooting thirteen men dead. Another man died later of his wounds.

A hurricane of anger swept Ireland, North and South. There were strikes and marches as tens of thousands of Irish workers protested in Dundalk, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Dublin. Airport workers at Dublin and Shannon refused to handle British aircraft, grounding planes in Manchester and other British airports. Jack Lynch declared 2nd February, the day of the funerals, as a national day of mourning. The British Embassy in Dublin was burned down when a crowd estimated at 30,000 gathered outside it and threw petrol bombs. In the North rioting went for days in almost every Nationalist area. Bernadette Devlin told the Daily Mirror, “It was mass murder by the army . This was our Sharpeville and we shall never forget it. The troops shot up a peaceful meeting”. By contrast Brian Faulkner blamed the organisers of the march and the IRA for the killings.

In Britain Bloody Sunday provoked the most intense response by the Irish during whole the thirty years of the Troubles. In Manchester over 100 students from De La Salle College, Middleton held an emergency protest meeting at midnight followed by a mass meeting in the afternoon which voted to boycott lectures and hold three days of mourning. A number of the students then went to the statue of Queen Victoria in Piccadilly and, amidst a snowstorm, began a vigil and fast, setting up a makeshift black flag and a wooden cross bearing the words “Will they rest in peace – how many more?” Some bus-drivers and office and shop workers jeered and shouted abuse as they passed (postal workers at the South Manchester sorting office threatened to boycott all mail to Ireland except Forces Mail on the grounds that the soldiers were not getting a fair deal). Members of the James Steele branch of Provisional Sinn Fein in Manchester mounted a protest at the army recruiting office on Fountain Street with placards that read “Derry Bloody Sunday, 13 massacred by British army”. Their spokesperson Seamas O’Morain gave his name in Irish and told reporters that they were protesting peacefully against the British army’s campaign of murder in Ireland.

On Thursday the De La Salle students led a march of 2,000 from the Cathedral through Manchester city centre, passing the Army Recruitment Office which was heavily guarded by police, and finishing with a rally at the Mancunian Way. There was a further march in Manchester on Saturday organised by the Manchester Connolly Association attended by 1,500, which was addressed by Lennie Draper, Desmond Greaves and Ann Doherty from the Manchester Civil Rights Association. A meeting attended by 1,500 students at Manchester University banned all military recruiting on campus and denied union facilities to the British army Officer Training Corps. An attempt to close the University Student Union failed when Tory students obtained a court injunction preventing this.

The Irish Democrat produced a special four page supplement on Bloody Sunday to go with their usual February issue. Desmond Greaves called for the resignation of Maudling, suspension of the Commander in Chief of British forces in Northern Ireland, immediate withdrawal of all paratroops from Northern Ireland, withdrawal of all troops from streets where they had become a provocation, an immediate end of internment and negotiations to lead to a united Irish Republic. The Manchester Connolly Association sent a telegram to Edward Heath (signed by John Tocher, divisional organiser of the engineering union and others), condemning the massacre of civil rights demonstrators and calling for troops to be confined to barracks and for a Bill of Rights to be brought forward.

Irish Civil Rights Association

In the general election held in October 1974 six candidates stood in the British general election under the banner of the Irish Civil Rights Association, the first time that candidates had stood on a specifically Irish platform since the Anti-Partition League in 1951. Margaret O’Brien, secretary of ICRA in Britain, said that they called for higher pensions and lower mortgages. “We should achieve this by a commitment to a United Ireland instead of propping up a rotten little statelet that costs £700 million in year and makes her name the derision of the world”.

The ICRA candidates stood in constituencies with sizeable Irish populations. Neil Boyle stood in Moss Side, Manchester, gaining just 238 votes. According to his election leaflet he was aged 37, born in Donegal, married with four children, worked for British Rail and had been active in the Civil Rights movement since 1969. ICRA candidates called for the release of all internees and a general amnesty for all political prisoners; a commitment from Britain to the idea of a united Ireland and a phased withdrawal of all British troops from Ireland. ICRA attacked the Labour government for increasing the number of internees in Long Kesh and Armagh, for renewing the Emergency Provisions Act and for the death of Michael Gaughan on hunger strike. It was clear from the results that, whatever strong feelings that Irish people might have had about events in Ireland, most Irish people at this period continued to give their vote to the Labour Party.

The Prevention of Terrorism Act

On 21st November bombs exploded in two pubs in the centre of Birmingham, killing 21 people and wounding 162. There was widespread public outrage and fury, some of which was directed at Irish people in Britain (although a number of the victims had been Irish).

Within two days the government rushed through the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which became law on 29th November. Such was the public mood that not a single MP dared vote against. Desmond Greaves commented in later years that “the disastrous bomb outrage did the Irish movement in Britain more harm than a regiment of cavalry. The witch hunt that followed, which included anti-Irish marches, threw the Irish movement back decades.”

There were frequent police raids, arrests and exclusions from Britain. Many Irish solidarity organisations stopped meeting and it was not until the hunger strike campaign of 1981 and the emergence of new organisations such as the Irish in Britain representation Group that Irish people began to speak out again about what was happening in the North of Ireland.

Article by Michael Herbert

Irish Republican Operations in Manchester 1920-1922

During the Irish War of Independence, Irish Republicans mounted a number of armed operations in British cities, including Manchester, which were intended to cause economic damage and put pressure on the British government to cede independence to Ireland

The Campaign in Manchester 1920-22

In the autumn of 1920 the IRA launched a series of attacks on British cities, including Manchester, London, Liverpool and Glasgow, which were carried out by local Republican units. Peter Hart has estimated the strength of the IRA in Britain as about 1,000 volunteers, of which several hundred took part directly in operations. Almost all IRA volunteers were permanent residents, whether born in Britain or Ireland.

On 24th November 1920 the government announced in the House of Commons that they had captured secret Sinn Fein documents, amongst which were detailed plans to destroy the Stuart Street power station in Bradford, Manchester that proved electricity to many parts of the city including mines and factories. The government alleged that the plans contained maps of the station and details of the shifts worked there and that three raiding parties were to have been used in the attack, comprising 65 men in total. In a newspaper interview Mr SL Pearce, Manchester Corporation’s chief electrical engineer, stated that the information on the workings of the station appeared to have been gathered in October when four men and two women had visited it on a Sunday morning by prior arrangement.

On 2nd January 1921 Police Constable Henry Bowden was patrolling some warehouses on Ordsall Lane when he came across ten men in the vicinity of a large grain warehouse, owned by the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Company. They supplied him with their names and addresses but he still insisted that they accompany him to the police station. When they reached Oldfield Road one of the men suddenly produced a revolver and fired at the policeman. Fortunately for him the bullet passed through his wrist and entered his shoulder. The men ran off.

A fire was later discovered at Baxendale in Miller Street, Shudehill. Police later arrested four men were in connection with the shooting: Patrick Flynn (22), Jeremiah Roddy (20), Daniel O’Connell (25) and Charles Forsythe (32). Forsythe was the landlord of a boarding house at 3 Poole Street , Salford, where the other men were lodgers. They and another man Patrick Waldron were later charged under the Defence of the Realm Act. On 22nd February Flynn was sentenced to ten years penal servitude for attempted murder.

On 13th February the IRA carried out a series of co-ordinated incendiary attacks on factories and warehouses in Manchester, Rochdale, Oldham and Stockport. In Manchester the targets included the wholesale druggists Potter & Clarke, Luna Street, Openshaw; the resin distillers Smith and Forrest, Holt Town; the Union Acid Company, Mitchell Street, Newton Heath and the Premier Waterproof & Rubber Company, Dantzic Street. During the attack on Smith & Forrest the watchman John Duffy was held up by three men armed with revolvers whilst they made preparations to fire the premises. When he made a sudden movement one of them fired at him but missed. One of the other men commented “That was a lucky escape, mate”. Finally Duffy made a run for it and again his luck held for the bullets the men fired after him missed their target.

Six days later the IRA mounted further incendiary attacks against ten farms in the Manchester area. The first outbreak took place shortly before 8pm and the rest followed shortly afterwards. The fires were set by soaking straw and hay with paraffin and setting it alight. The targets were Dairy House Farm, Dunham Massey; Dawson’s Farm, Dunham Massey; Baguley Hall Farm, Baguley; Barlow Hall Farm, Chorlton-cum-Hardy; Hardy Farm, Chorlton-cum-Hardy; Park Road Farm, Stretford; Lostock Farm, Urmston; Grange Farm, Bramhall; Cutter’s Hill Farm, Outwood, Radcliffe; and Hale Mill Farm, Culcheth near Leigh.

There was an eleventh target, namely Ivy Bank Farm, Sale. When the owner Mr. Jackson came out to investigate a disturbance shots were fired at him by a man in the yard. Fortunately for the farmer they went wide. Police later found a Webley revolver and can of paraffin in Dane Road. The cost of damage for the night’s work was estimated at £30,000. The geographical spread and the number of targets in the campaign of arson points to the existence of a well-organised and well-armed network of IRA members in the Manchester area. There was more attacks on 21st February at Poach Bank Farm, Bury and on 22nd February at Mill Hill Farm, Woodley, where a dutch barn was destroyed by fire

On 22nd March a PC Carr disturbed three men in a doorway whilst patrolling outside Manchester United’s football ground. He challenged them and in reply they fired at him but did not hit him. The officer was armed but had no time to fire back. A wallet was later found with a certificate from the Manchester Royal Infirmary in the name of Patrick Fennell and a picture of Terence MacSwiney. Fennell, who lived at 21 Bedford Street, Chorlton-on-Medlock, was arrested the following day and appeared in court in early April, charged with the attempted murder of the police officer. His landlady was later fined for failing to register her lodger under the Aliens Restriction Act.

On 18th July Fennell was tried before Justice Rigby Swift. At first he was found guilty of being at the football ground but acquitted by the jury of the actual shooting. Then the judge made an extraordinary intervention. “That is not a verdict”, he told the jury,” If the jury find that Fennell was present with other people taking part in something where shooting might take place he is guilty.” The admonished jury then duly returned a verdict of guilty on the second charge. Sentencing Fennell to seven years penal servitude the judge said that in doing so he was assuming that Fennell’s was not the hand that fired the shot.

The most spectacular series of IRA operations in Manchester took place on 2nd April. The day began with a co-ordinated attacks by the IRA in the heart of the city and ended with the shooting dead of a young Irishman by the police in controversial circumstances. The morning’s attacks all took place between 6.00am and 7.00am. It seems likely that the IRA deliberately chose to strike early on a Saturday morning, knowing that there would be fewer passers-by or policemen and that the chosen targets would have only cleaners in them. At Bridgewater House on Whitworth Street four men armed with revolvers held up the cleaner and nightwatchman. Somehow the cleaner managed to slip out of the building and summoned assistance from a police constable named Boucher. When he challenged the men one of them fired at him, wounding the officer. The men then ran off and the policeman tried to give chase before collapsing in the street and being taken to the Infirmary by tram. Police later recovered a revolver and a can of petrol. At 38 George Street the raiding party held up the cleaner at gunpoint and started a fire while at 33 Portland Street three men held up the cleaner and set fire to the building, using some of the cotton goods lying about. The cleaner, who was trapped inside, raised the alarm and firemen arrived, who quickly put out the blaze.

Two men held up the cleaners at gunpoint in the Lyons State Cafe, Piccadilly, whilst a third member of the party tried to start a fire with paraffin. “We are doing now what you are doing in Ireland” said one of men and as they left they fired a shot above the heads of the staff. There were also attacks on three city centre hotels. At Victoria Hotel on Deansgate two men had spent the night there as visitors. After they left staff discovered a fire in their room which had been started using paraffin. There was a similar attempt at the Albion Hotel on Piccadilly, where a man giving his name as H Wilson from Bristol had spent a night. In the morning a chambermaid discovered him spreading petrol on a second floor staircase and setting fire to it. He managed to escape in the confusion, leaving a bag behind. At Blackfriars Hotel two men who had spent the night there under the names of Kay and Matthews left early in the morning, saying that they would be back for breakfast. Later staff found that their room was on fire. One witness described the attackers as “well-dressed young men, between 20 and 30 years of age, of gentlemanly appearance”. A number spoke with Irish accents.

Later that same evening a large number of armed police raised the Irish Club on Erskine Street, Hulme. As they entered the club there was shooting between police and two Irishmen. Constable Bailey and Detective Bolas later claimed that as they entered the building Sean Morgan had confronted them with a revolver in each hand and that therefore Bolas had shot him dead and also wounded Sean Wickham, after the latter had allegedly wounded Bailey. The police arrested a large number of men at the Irish Club and also picked up others over the weekend, including Paddy O’Donoghue. The death of Sean Morgan was registered on 14th April after an inquest, the cause of death being officially given as “Bullet wound to the head. Due to being shot by a police officer whilst the said John Morgan (sic) was resisting the said police officer in the legal exercise of his duty. Justifiable homicide”. A memorial to Sean Morgan was unveiled in Moston cemetery on the ninth anniversary of his death in 1930.
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Despite the arrests of a number of senior figures, including Paddy O’Donoghue, the IRA campaign in Manchester continued. There were three attacks on 19th June on railway signalboxes in Manchester, similar to attacks that had been occurring in London. A signal box near Woodlands road station and a box near Fallowfield station were set alight. The attack on a signalbox near Marple station was more serious. Just after midnight Signalman Edward Axon was working alone when shots were fired at the box which wounded him in the groin and shoulder. Fortunately he was able to summon help and was taken to hospital.

A Treaty between the Republican Government and Britain was signed on 6 December 1921 and IRA operations halted. After a lengthy and sometimes bitter debate Dail Eireann approved the Treaty on 7th January 1922 with 64 votes in favour and 57 against. Sinn Fein had already effectively split into two camps with De Valera opposing the Treaty and Collins and Griffith supporting it. Most of the leadership of the IRA supported the Treaty, but many rank and file members and field commanders opposed, viewing it as a betrayal of everything they had fought for. De Valera resigned as President of Dail Eireann and was replaced by Arthur Griffith. Civil war broke out in June and lasted 12 months, leading to the defeat of the anti-Treaty forces.

The Civil War had some effect in Britain. On 4th June 1922 there were raids on a number of collieries in the St Helens area – including Bold, Sutton Manor, Clockface, Collins Green and Billinge – during which young men dressed in dark suits, armed with revolvers and seemingly well acquainted with the layout of the collieries stole explosives and detonators. There were similar raids in other parts of the country. In October there was an explosion in the Central Detective Office in a Stockport police station when a detonator that was being examined after a raid went off accidentally, slightly injuring a number of civilians and police, including the Chief Constable. John Mulryan of Wilton Street, Reddish was subsequently charged with being in possession of a quantity of arms and ammunition.

By the end of 1922 Irish Republican operations in Britain had come to an end.

Article by Michael Herbert

Challenge Anarchy

Challenge Anarchy was a day of protests in Manchester city centre on Mayday 2000. Organised by activists from environmentalist, anarchist and other direct action-orientated communities, it was intended to be both fun and political, and to address some of the problems for protesters that had arisen in the policing of large Reclaim the Streets and Mayday demonstrations in London.

[This post is also Manchester Radical History’s slightly belated contribution to Blog Action Day 2009, blogging on climate change and the environment.]

Mike (not his real name) is a Manchester-based activist in his late 30s, who has been involved in Earth First!, anarchism and other direct action-orientated campaigning since the early 1990s.

“I think there was definitely an awareness that this was a workers’ day but that it also had deeper roots than that. There was anarchist stuff that linked in with it, although I can’t remember what it is at the minute, I can’t remember if it was an anarchist attempt to do something on that day in the nineteenth century and got thwarted and they probably got killed, or what, but then going further back from that there were pagan ideas about Mayday and Beltane and those having been appropriated by the labour movement, and blending those things. When Earth First was stronger people could see more of the connections, what was stereotyped as the Red, Black and Green (red for labour, black for anarchism and green for the environment) and seeing them as melding together.
“So Challenge Anarchy took place after people had started organising for Mayday in London and there had been big Mayday Reclaim the Streets events there that made it into something different, and there was an awareness in Manchester that we wanted to do something like that, I think it was the year after the Guerrilla Gardening in Parliament Square.
“There was already organising around Mayday in London from an anarchist kind of perspective and there was an awareness that we wanted to do something in Manchester but we really didn’t want to get surrounded by cops and kettled the way they were. Mike Todd, who later came to Manchester Police, had pioneered the Zero Tolerance approach to Mayday ‘rioters’ in London and cordoning people as a tactic, that became known as kettling. So we thought: we want to do something on this day, we want it to be interesting, and we’re not going to let ourselves get kettled.
“Somewhere in all of that the idea of the Challenge Anarchy came through and there were lots of different parts to it – there was a seaside in the city, so on Market St some sand was put down and there was a coconut shy where you could throw balls at coconuts with politicians’ head on them, and there was an eco-crystal ball reader who would talk about eco-doom at people in her tent, and sticks of rock done which were red, black and green with the words ‘resistance is sweet’ down the middle and a little label with some kids making faces, sticking their tongues out, and information on how to get in touch with Manchester Earth First!
“There was ‘money’ as well. Some fake £20 notes were printed up and they had different slogans on as well to make people think. It’s quite tricky to get stuff like that printed because it’s so illegal, printers won’t touch it, but someone managed to do it and people in advance were scrumpling them up and just dropping them in places around town. But on the day someone had a suitcase full of it and as he crossed the road he let the suitcase fall open and had people rushing into the road and stop traffic like that… so there was things like that as well as the ‘direct action’ stuff… and also some people had read in the Guardian that there was going to be Guerrilla Gardening, which we hadn’t planned on at all, but they brought trees to the meeting point in Piccadilly Gardens. So people felt empowered enough to bring along things like that, and it wasn’t people who were already involved so that was really nice.
“A lot of effort had been put into meeting at Piccadilly Gardens but also into not getting kept there, so the idea was that there would be different ‘Challenge Anarchies,’ named after the Challenge Anneka TV programme with Anneka Rice, so there were different Anarchy Rices, which was the name of a facilitator for an affinity group. Some groups we already knew in advance and they could just be sorted out with a bag of goodies. With others we had to go round Piccadilly Gardens looking at little groups of people who were clearly here for the event and approach them and see if you could get a group of friends or even strangers into a group with a facilitator if they needed help, and gave them a bag of ‘goodies’ and those were things like ‘should you accept this mission’ type things for a whole range of tactics and issues. There were stickers and chalk but also superglue and spray paint, and leaflets on lots of issues, so you could go round with leaflets and stickers. It was brilliant because the police didn’t notice that the number of people in Piccadilly Gardens wasn’t getting any bigger, and it was only at a certain point that they realised and I remember the panicked reaction of them suddenly realising, and at the same time hearing of all these little actions going off all over town.
“There were different targets. Some temping agencies because there was a lot of stuff around casualisation and the death of Simon Jones [a young activist in Brighton who, having been forced into temp work by his dole officers, was killed on an unsafe work site in 1998]. There was stuff around banks – one of the fly-posting targets was the bank headquarters on King Street – and there were stickers to go on cashpoints. And there was information on media control and media corporations, and McDonald’s, both environment and animal rights things and some other animal rights targets, and probably others.
“And it was brilliant, because you’d see groups of people getting led out of the Arndale Centre by security after having done something and another group going in past them to go to the same place, or the police standing guard outside a McDonald’s because they’d just chucked people out but were still letting customers in so people would go in as punters and start doing stuff behind the police’s back… another interesting thing was that it was partly based on a Doin’ It Up North that happened in Sheffield, where it had been a similar idea where you got bags of stuff where you could choose to ‘accept the mission’ or not.
“A lot of similar strategies of organising and advertising had been used with the Okasional Cafes – people came up with a logo which had been used by EF!, the spanner with leaves growing out of one side, but it actually came from before that, from Paris ’68, and came up with some more situationist-inspired words but not getting into the whole thing that London Reclaim the Streets did where they had whole fold-out fliers where if you figured out how to unfold them that was the easy bit and then trying to get your head round the words was even harder. We tried to find words that sounded good and had some kind of resonance or radicalism in them. So like Okasional Cafe it started with that thing of getting just the logo out there on posters or stickers, then adding the words, then putting a date on and then more detail, but very much with the idea of using the logo so people might be, aah, I’ve seen this somewhere before… and feel that there was a buzz going on. Part of it was because the internet wasn’t really around, and I think that actually meant that the organising was better, it had to be better than now, because if you wanted to get people you had to step outside your ghetto, you couldn’t just put it on the internet and think people will come, which I don’t think actually works but seems to be what people do now. And you can’t just ‘put some leaflets in the Basement [social centre]’ which is what happened in later years. You actually had to go to every single venue you could think of, even if they weren’t political, getting publicity out and fly-posting and really making the stuff we do more accessible than people seem to now, which is really crazy. Because people talk now about getting stuff in the mass media and getting out there now when actually all they’re doing is sending it to their mates on Facebook.
“But we hadn’t realised that there were going to be so many people, so not only were all these small group actions going off but there was also a group of about 200 people who we didn’t have facilitators for, and also even though if experience tells you that being in small affinity groups is safer and more effective, people tend to go to the large group and want to do that. There were a few people who had more experience who were like, ‘OK, I’ll stay with the big group – I don’t think it’s a good idea but I’ll stay with them,’ so they were really spirited and were doing things like pulling huge bins out of alleyways to make barricades against the police, but not solid barricades so you can pass through those lines. A lot of the lessons that had been learnt from big public order events – the Guide to Public Order Situations was published from Manchester at about that time – and they moved before they could be controlled, and at one point they occupied the Mancunian Way, which was something that people wanting to organise RTS in Manchester had wanted to do for years but never managed to. There was an RTS that accidentally occupied Princess Parkway at another time….
“But that’s another story.”

Article by Sarah Irving

Simon Jones Memorial Campaign
http://www.simonjones.org.uk

Earth First! UK
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/

Brian Doherty of Keele University on direct action in Manchester, including Doin’ It Up North
http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/spire/Working_Papers/Brian_Doherty_working_papers/Comparing%20Radical%20Environmental%20Activism%20in%20Manchester,%20Oxford%20and%20North%20Wales.doc

Guide to Public Order Situations
http://www.wombles.org.uk/article200610188.php

The General Strike in Manchester, May 1926

The General Strike was the most significant British labour dispute of the twentieth century. It was a massive solidarity action called by the Trades Union Congress in support of the miners, who were striking against cuts in pay and longer hours. It began on 3 May 1926 and was called off on 12 May by the TUC with no guarantees from the Tory government of fair treatment for the miners and no guarantees against victimisation of returning strikers. The miners’ strike lasted until the end of 1926 and ended in bitter defeat.

Background

The mining companies had been placed under government control during the First World War. The Miners’ Federation of Great Britain pressed for complete nationalisation and called a national strike in February 1919. It was delayed after the Coalition government led by Lloyd George promised a Royal Commission to look at the future of the industry.
In June 1919 the majority of Sankey Commission members recommended that the mines should be nationalised but, having bought a breathing space, the government now reneged on its agreement and handed the mines back to the owners on 31 March 1921. The miners were locked out the following day by the coal owners after refusing to accept worse employment conditions. The railway and transport union promised to take action in their support on 15 April but called it off at the last minute. This betrayal became known “Black Friday”. After three months on strike the miners were forced back on the employers’ terms.

In 1924 A J Cook was elected secretary of the MFGB. A charismatic speaker, he toured the coalfields, addressing large meetings of miners and their families and revitalised the union after the defeat of 1921.

Faced with a declining economic outlook in June 1925 the employers’ organisation – the Mining Association – gave notice of its intention to reduce wages and increase hours on 31 July.

On 10 July the General Council of the TUC met the Executive of the MFGB and offered its support. On 25 July the Council proposed an embargo on the movement of coal should the miners be locked out. Meetings between the government, the miners, the owners and the TUC failed to reach an agreement. On 30 July a Special Conference of Trade Union Executives agreed to support the transport ban and also empowered the General Council to offer financial support.

At 4pm on 31 July the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin announced to the House of Commons that the government would subsidise the miners until 1 May 1926 and also set up another Royal Commission under Lord Samuel to report on the future of the industry. Once again the government was buying time

It is clear that the government expected a strike to take place eventually and used the breathing space to devise and implement ways of maintaining supplies and transport in the event of industrial action, setting up 150 haulage committees to co-ordinate privately owned fleets of lorries and placing local authorities on alert to maintain essential services. In addition to the government’s own extensive preparations other bodies, such as the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies, led by Lord Harding and Admiral Jellicoe, enrolled volunteers. They claimed to be “non-political” and acting for “the good of the community”. By May 1926 they had registered 100,000 volunteers.

By contrast the TUC made no plans for a general strike, seemingly believing that a settlement would be reached, only establishing a Ways & Means Committee on 27 April 1926, just days before the strike happened.

The Samuel Commission published its report in March 1926. It recognised that the industry needed to be reorganised, but rejected the suggestion of nationalisation. The report also recommended that the Government subsidy should be withdrawn and miners’ wages should be reduced.

On 30 April the coal owners locked out the miners.

On Saturday 1 May the TUC held a special conference of union executives which pledged support to the miners . That same day May Day marches were held throughout Britain amidst growing excitement and a conviction that a strike was now inevitable.

“Surely the most momentous May-Day in our history…I heard tonight that the Hyde Park demonstration was the largest and best even our oldest folk could remember…..Reports show that everywhere yesterday’s demonstrations were the biggest ever known. The workers seem ready”. Fenner Brockway, “Diary of the General Strike”, Socialist Review, June 1926.

The Strike in Manchester

Saturday 1 May

It rained, of course. Undeterred thousands paraded on the annual May Day march from Ardwick Green to Belle Vue under “dripping banners “ and “rain sodden umbrellas” as the Manchester Guardian reported.

“Men and women in gleaming mackintoshes and wearing the red and yellow favours of the Labour party; delegates from trade unions following in dignity behind their banners; Communists with broad ribbons across their shoulders – a splash of colour in the drab train”….The banners of the trade unions were varied by those of other groups, ranging from a sober ‘Stand by the Miners’ to the appeal of the Communists – ‘Don’t Shoot the Workers’.”

After the procession a meeting chaired by the MP JE Sutton (a former miner and MP for Clayton) took place in the Great Hall at Belle Vue. In the midst of the speeches another MP, Joe Compton, announced that “the trade unions of the country have decided to call a general strike”. After a moments hush the audience broke into cheers.

“The Communists waved their red streamers and hats were thrown into the air. Thereafter every reference from the platform to ‘the coming fight’ and every appeal to ‘stand by the miners’ was received with cheers and applause. The solidarity of the meeting was incontestable”
(Manchester Guardian)

The meeting finished by unanimously agreeing a resolution in support of the miners which ended “He who is not for the miners is against the working class.”

Monday 3 May

As the midnight deadline approached the railway workers, tramwaymen, carters, dockers, power enginemen and foremen, printers, iron and steel workers, vehicle builders and builders all announced their intention to strike work. The Electrical Trades Union, which had its headquarters in Manchester, issued an instruction to its branches to take joint action “along with any other section of men who have ceased work on transport, printing, engineering and steel production”.

Mr Mattinson, general manager of the Manchester trams, announced that strenuous efforts would be made to maintain “ as good a service as possible” and that plans were being made to use taxi-cabs and charabancs on routes from Albert Square.

Councillor Mellor, Secretary of the Manchester & Salford Trades & Labour Council, gave assurances that every effort would be made to co-operate with local authorities in ensuring the safety of food supplies and other essential services. The trade unions set up a central committee to run the strike covering the whole of the North West. The Secretary was JA Webb from the Transport & General Workers Union, whose members would be crucial to the success of the strike.

The police were making their preparations too, of course. According to testimony given to WH Crook, author of The General Strike, published in 1931, preparations for the strike had included the need to keep transport moving from the very first day of the strike. The police had drawn up route maps of the roads that would be used and these had been circulated to police constables in March. Mobile squads of police were to be held ready for instant deployment in threatened areas. It was announced publicly that the Chief Constable Sir Robert Peacock would review the force of special constables set up in Manchester during the war with the purpose of discovering the present strength of this force. Volunteers for this force were also being enrolled at the training school at London Road fire station. Manchester City Council announced that it was setting up a Manchester Area Emergency Committee and enrolling volunteers at public buildings.

The Manchester Evening News told its readers to “Keep Cool and Carry On.”

“The security of the Constitution having been threatened the duty of every right-minded citizen lies plain before him. The Englishmen who never will be slaves to kings or conquerors will never be slaves to a class. The people who have invented the right to rule themselves will not submit to the rule of any minority of workers who may seek to usurp the powers of government. The government must govern.”

Three trains left Manchester for London at midnight from London Road, Central and Victoria railways stations, though with few passengers on board since there was no certainty that they would reach the capital as they had to change drivers en route. Shortly after midnight pickets took up their positions outside the stations. Railway company officials were uncertain what level of service would be provided. All would depend on whether railway workers would be loyal to their union and obey the strike call.

More than 5,000 Manchester tramwaymen held a mass meeting at midnight in the Co-operative Hall, Downing Street at which there was solid vote in favour of striking. The power for the trams was cut off at 2am.

Tuesday 4 May

Not a single tram ran. There were no local trains and only one train to London from London Road at 9.30am via Sheffield and Nottingham and one each way between Central Station and Derby.

With no public transport there was enormous traffic on the road into Manchester city centre from the suburbs, as the middle classes turned to their cars. Taxis charged 6d a ride. The docks were at a standstill, though food and other essentials were being moved.

By the early afternoon it was claimed some 12,000 volunteers had been enrolled at the Free Trade Hall for various services, including one aviator.

Stella Davies, then a member of Gorton Labour party, vividly recalled the first day of the strike in her book North Country Bred, published in 1963.

“The mill chimneys ceased to smoke and the wheels ceased to turn, Over Gorton, Openshaw, Clayton, Newton Heath and Collyhurst the air grew clearer: the hills which ring the east of Manchester could be seen with an unusual sharpness across the intervening river valleys. The pavement and even the roads were crowded with pedestrians and the drivers of private cars offered lifts with surprising generosity.”

A Manchester news-sheet reported that “city girls” were wearing red ribbons at tram and bus stops, indicating that they would like a lift.

At the Socialist Hall on Margaret Street, Openshaw, the District Committee of the Communist Party was meeting in permanent session, whilst speakers addressed the crowds outside. Dick Stoker, a party member with a car, had just arrived back from London with copies of the CP emergency bulletin The Workers Daily when the police arrived and arrested him. He was later sentenced to two months in prison for “having committed an act likely to cause disaffection”. Quick-thinking members of the Young Communist League hid some of the bulletins under a pile of coke and later distributed them locally.

Wednesday 5 May

Public transport was largely at a standstill. A half-hourly service was achieved on the line to Radcliffe, one of the volunteers being a vicar.

Stella Davies visited her local station with other members of the Labour Party Women’s Section, taking tea and sandwiches.

“The pickets were steady men responsible who, as the occasional train drew into the station, regarded with interest and much amusement the efforts of the amateurs to bring the engine to stop at the right place and not over-shoot the platform. ‘Now you know’, they said to one discomforted youth, who had taken the train right through the station, ‘any fool can start a train. When you’ve learned to stop it where you want, you can join the union.’”

The strike reached the nation’s breakfast table after the decision of the TUC to call out the printers and shut down national and local newspapers.

The Manchester Guardian commented

“The decision of the Trades Union Congress to call out the printers and to silence the press seems to us a singularly misguided policy, and we cannot believe that it will be maintained. To put the press out of action gives a most dangerous power to the Government, which by its control of broadcasting will enjoy a complete monopoly in its distribution of news and views. Is this desired by the Trades Union Congress and the miners?”

The work force of the Manchester Guardian actually appealed to the TUC for an exemption from the strike but this was turned down.

The Government now produced its own newspaper the British Gazette, whilst the TUC used the presses of the Daily Herald to produce the British Worker which first appeared on 3 May.

Most newspapers attempted to producer some form of publication. The Manchester Guardian appeared a two sides of typescript on 3 May and on following days as a single printed news-sheet. The Manchester Evening Chronicle managed a daily typewritten sheet and also displayed news in the huge windows of its Withy Grove offices.

The public was also able to get news from the intriguingly named “Mutagraph” which the Manchester Evening Chronicle described as the latest and most fascinating of publicity devices… used at once to give vital news to large Manchester crowds thirsty for first-hand news of the nation’s new ordeal”. Fenner Brockway watched the device in action during his time in Manchester, “In Piccadilly a large crowd – mostly strikers – watched a Daily Dispatch news bulletin thrown up on a huge sky sign. Again a capitalist monopoly of news”.

It was reported that there were many empty seats for a show at the Manchester Hippodrome.

Thursday 6 May

A four page news-sheet entitled the Manchester Emergency Echo was published by EH Lumby at Central Press in Chorlton on Medlock, much of the content being lifted from the anti-strike Daily Mail which was now being published abroad and flown into Britain. The content included the following advice

“Don’t pay attention to wild stories of disorders, rioting, outrages and the like. Evil tongues are deliberately inventing these to scare you. …. Don’t criticise the Government . They are doing their best to deal with a different situation and will do better with your support and help…Don’t go denouncing the strikers in violent terms. Many of them are patriotic Britons led into a desperately foolish course by reckless leaders…Above all, don’t get scared.”

Friday 7 May

Ellen Wilkinson and JJ Horrabin, who were reporting back to the TUC on the position in parts of the country, declared that in Manchester “the position is absolutely solid”. They urged, however, that a strike newspaper be produced in Manchester.

Saturday 8 May

Fenner Brockway arrived in Manchester to edit a Manchester edition of the British Worker.

JA Webb reported in optimistic terms to the TUC. “The response to the TUC has been splendid…The feeling among members of the various sections is splendid and no instance of friction with police authorities has been reported.”

Sunday 9 May

The Lord Mayor of Manchester announced that food supplies were being maintained satisfactorily. A man was arrested by the police for allegedly attempting to interfere with a lorry-load of flour from Sutcliffe’s Mill, Hulme. He was later jailed.

There was a large rally in support of the strike in Platt Fields. Stella Davies described it as a “large orderly crowd and the presence of many women and children with sandwiches and bottles of milk made it seem almost like a picnic….the speakers exhorted the strikes to keep quiet, stay at home and offer no provocation”.

A report on the meeting sent to the TUC estimated that there were at least 20,00 people present. Two brass bands made up of striking tramway workers led the procession into the park. The speakers, who included Mary Quaile and Rhys Davies, addressed the crowd from three platforms. There were also meetings in Gorton and Blackley.

Interestingly the Manchester Guardian reported that the size of the meeting as “several hundred” strikers.

Monday 10 May

The North West Strike Committee informed the TUC that they had received authoritative information that 2000 beds, blankets and pillows had been sent into the Salford Docks in readiness for strike-breaking volunteers.

The Electricians Union threatened to stop electric power if attempts were made to run trams in Manchester.

The first edition of the Manchester edition of the British Worker appeared in a run of 50,000. It was printed by the Co-operative Publishing Company after the Co-operative Printing Society has refused to print it.

The front page declared

“The General Council does not challenge the Constitution. It is not seeking to substitute unconstitutional government. Nor is it desirous of undermining our Parliamentary institutions. The sole aim of the Council is to secure for the miners a decent standard of life. The Council is engaged in an industrial dispute. There is no constitutional crisis.”

The paper reported that there was wonderful solidarity everywhere and that the workers’ response had exceed all expectations.

“They have manifested their determination and unity to the whole world. They have resolved that the attempt of the mineowners to starve three million men, women and children into submission shall not succeed. All essential industries and all the transport services have been brought to standstill. The Trades Union Congress General Council is not making war on the people. It is anxious that ordinary member of the public shall not be penalised for the unpatriotic conduct of the mineowners and the Government.”

Tuesday 11 May

The print-run of the Manchester British Worker rose to 100,000.

Workers at the only flour-mill still working in Manchester now joined the strike. Three men were prosecuted in the Manchester Police Court for allegedly inciting a crowd to set fire to a railway company motor-lorry in Piccadilly, which had been taking foodstuff from London Road station to Victoria. The lorry had been partly destroyed. Peter Tilley, John Marshall and John Marsland were sentenced to three months imprisonment with hard labour.

The Manchester Guardian in an editorial entitled “Is it an Industrial Strike?” called upon Manchester’s striking tramwaymen to return to work.

This call appears to have been part of a co-ordinated attempt to get the trams running for the Tramways Committee now threatened to sack strikers if they did not return to work by noon the following day. Getting the trams back on the streets would be a psychological blow against the morale and unity of the strike.

The TUC called out all members of the shipbuilding and engineering unions. The police escorted 500 volunteers to Salford Docks to unload foodstuffs.

Wednesday 12 May

Only 29 tramwaymen obeyed the call to return to work. The other 5,000 mustered at their depots at noon and marched into the city centre. The procession from Hyde Road depot was a half-mile long, led by the tramway band and miners carrying lamps.

Even as the procession set off the General Strike was coming to an end. The government had refused to negotiate with the TUC. Instead there had been meetings between the TUC and Sir Herbert Samuel. On the basis of a meaningless memorandum the TUC went to Downing Street and called off the strike, even though the memorandum had been rejected by the miners leaders. It was no less than a complete surrender. They had failed even to ask for guarantees of no victimisation of strikers when they returned to work.

Stella Davies later wrote about how the news was heard in Manchester.

“In the course of the afternoon while I was on my round of the picket stations, the news came through. The end of the strike had been announced as an ‘unconditional surrender’. The pickets could not at first believe it. They would wait until they heard from their headquarters before they left their post and I left them, still picketing, to rush home and sit before the wireless. No comfortable words came from the BBC The official governmental line was that the Samuel Memorandum was not binding upon them, being merely a recommendation, its terms were not, in the event, put into operation.”

Fenner Brockway wrote in his diary of the strike

“Everyone was confident that the Government had climbed down….Then the fuller reports became to come by wire….When they showed that the terms were only an arrangement with Sir Herbert Samuel and that the miners lock-out was to continue one simply could not believe one’s eyes”

Thursday 13 May

The Manchester Guardian accurately summed up the situation.

“The effects on British labour will be profound. The history of 1921 has repeated itself. The support of other unions has been withdrawn, The Government has committed itself to little or nothing. The mineowners are committed to nothing.”

The strike continued in many areas as employer attempted to victimise returning strikers. In Manchester 25,000 railway workers stayed out and marched in protest and the dock workers stayed out in their support

Friday 14 May

It was a “day of humiliation”, according to Fenner Brockway, “The TUC has ordered them back, their own Executives have ordered them back. There is no hope of concerted resistance, so they are going back, disappointed, disillusioned, yet still heeling the exaltation of the remarkable solidarity of these days.”

JA Webb reported to the TUC that many employers were trying to impose worsened terms and conditions on returning workers. “ Many men have been informed that their engagements will only be temporary and that the regularity of employment that they have enjoyed in the past has now been withdrawn”.

John Forshaw, a Communist, was arrested by the police for having copies of “The Great Betrayal”, a leaflet put out by the Communist party attacking the TUC’s decision. He was sentenced to one month imprisonment. He was kept in a cold cell and, though diabetic, refused a doctor. He contracted pneumonia whilst in prison and died a few days after being released.

Aftermath

The miners carried on fighting but were forced back by poverty and starvation by the end of November. Some miners were out of work for many years. The miners’ union did not stage another national strike until 1972, nearly 50 years later.

Sources and Further Reading

The General Strike archive at the Working Class Movement Library includes books, pamphlets, newspapers, the British Worker, strike papers, photographs and other items.

Fenner Brockway, “A Diary of the Great Strike”, Socialist Review, June 1926

Wilfrid Morris Crook, The General Strike (1931)

Stella Davies, North Country Bred (1963)

Edmund and Ruth Frow, Nine Days in May, New Manchester Review,, 12, 23/4/1976

Edmund and Ruth Frow, The Communist Party in Manchester (nd)

R H Haigh et al, The Guardian Book of the General strike (1988)

Merseyside and the General Strike

TUC archive on the General Strike

Article by Michael Herbert

The Siege of Manchester, 1642

The English Civil War (actually three separate rounds of conflict) lasted from 1641 to 1651. The basis of the conflict was a struggle for power and authority between the King Charles I and Parliament but added to the mix were religious conflicts and wars in Scotland and Ireland. There was also a radical democratic upsurge amongst the Parliamentary soldiers and public led by the Levellers, who demanded greater rights for the common people. They were eventually crushed by Cromwell and his commanders who feared that the rights of property owners would be swept away. England became a Republic in 1649 after the execution of Charles I. The monarchy was restored in 1660 when Charles II returned from exile.

The Civil War began in the summer of 1642. On 22 August Charles I raised his standard in Nottingham. Parliament controlled London, East Anglia, most of the Midlands and all of Southern England (except West Cornwall). Lancashire was divided. The most prominent local aristocrat, Lord Strange (James Stanley , heir to the Earl of Derby), was a Royalist. Both sides frantically sought to lay their hands on arms and gunpowder. The Royalists seized the magazines at Lancaster, Preston and Liverpool, but Manchester declared for Parliament and refused to hand over its ten barrels to the Royalist forces.

On 15 July a party of Royalists led by Lord Strange came to Manchester and a fight broke out during which Richard Perceval, a linen weaver from Levenshulme, was killed, allegedly by Thomas Tyldesley from Astley. This has been claimed as the first death in a conflict which eventually claimed tens of thousands of lives.

By September Lord Strange had gathered several thousand troops in Warrington, while Manchester had a militia raised from the townspeople under the command of Colonel John Rosworm, a German soldier living in Manchester who had served in the Low Countries and Ireland and been taken on for six months to organise the town’s defences, at a cost of £30. As it turned out he was kept on for six years at £60 a year

Strange moved out of Warrington on 24 September and laid siege to the town. The alarm was sounded by ringing the church bells. The Royalist headquarters were in Alport Lodge on Deansgate near what is now St John Street. The town refused to surrender and on 26 September the Royalists attacked down Deansgate, firing their cannon. They were driven off after some fierce fighting. They then attacked across Salford bridge but were held back as the defenders were on higher ground in the churchyard.

There was more fighting the following day but the again the attackers were repulsed. A truce was called and further talks took place but again the town, though running short of ammunition, refused Strange’s demands, though there were some divisions in the town.

On 29 September there was another round of fighting in which 200 Parliamentarians sallied out to attack a house on Deansgate which had been occupied by the Royalists . There was an hour of fighting in which the Royalists were defeated. A sniper on top of the church shot dead the Royalist Captain Standish who was standing in the door of a house on the Salford side of the river.

There was more fighting the next day. On 1 October there was an exchange of prisoners and Lord Strange and his troops abandoned the siege. In the course of the week’s skirmishes the Royalists appeared to have lost about 200 men and the defenders about 20. The victory at Manchester greatly boosted the moral of Parliament’s supporters in Lancashire. There was no further fighting in Manchester for the rest of the Civil War. Rosworm later complained to Parliament that he had not been paid enough.

Lord Strange, now the Earl of Derby, was executed in Bolton on 15 October 1651 for his part in the Bolton Massacre of 28 May 1644 in which 1500 Parliamentary troops and townspeople were slaughtered by Royalists commanded by Price Rupert.

In 1874 a bust of Oliver Cromwell by Matthew Noble was presented to Manchester City Council by Thomas Bayley Potter MP, and placed in the Town Hall. The following year a statue of Cromwell, also by Matthew Noble, was put up near the Cathedral. It was moved to Wythenshawe Park in 1968 when the road layout was changed, where it remains.

In October 1965 BBC TV broadcast a play called “The Siege of Manchester” in its Theatre 625 series, written by Keith Dewhurst and directed by Herbert Wise. Alan Dobie played Captain Rosworm, James Villiers played Lord Strange.

The other significant Civil War event locally was the siege of Wythenshawe Hall by several dozen Parliamentary soldiers between 21 November 1643 and 25 February 1644. The hall was owned by the Tatton family who sided with the King. During the siege the fiancée of a servant, Mary Webb, was killed. Legend has it that in revenge she took a musket and shot dead a Colonel Adams who was sitting on a wall. The hall was finally taken by storm after two cannon were brought from Manchester. It was returned to the family two years later after they paid a substantial fine. Every June there is a re-enactment of the siege.

Article by Michael Herbert

More information on the Siege of Wythenshawe Hall:

Wythenshawe history trail information

Print-ready guide to historical walks round Wythenshawe

Manchester City Council information on the annual re-enactment of the Siege

Bill Watson and Eccles Communist Party

Bill Watson joined the Communist Party in 1965, after a chance encounter with a Communist at a construction site in Wolverhampton. He had been working as a bricklayer for six years and after witnessing the exploitation on building sites and how his parents had suffered at work, Bill immediately joined the party. He went on to become a leading member of the Eccles branch, campaigning against Thatcher’s policy to end school milk, to save the last local cinema as well as various issues such as Northern Ireland, Unemployment and Anti-apartheid.

Bill Watson was born in Irlam in 1944 to a working-class family. His father worked as a bricklayer and his mother worked on a farm as well as in munitions factories during the Second World War. Despite the lack of active political involvement in his family, his personal experiences of work and seeing his family struggle did influence Bill’s political awakening. “My father slogged his guts out for 50 years to enrich other people and all he got out of it is bronchitis. My mother worked on a farm; the farmer drives a big car, my mother’s got rheumatoid arthritis.” Bill also remembers that since his teens, he’d always thought that socialism and communism was a great idea but believed that human selfishness would prevent its realisation. This all changed after a meeting with the Communist party when when he was 21.

“It was as if the curtains were opened and this thing about nature was a load of baloney really. Human beings are capable of being everything from terribly evil to wonderfully good, depending on the environment that they live in and how they react to it.” The meeting profoundly affected Bill, who states that he learnt to look at society in a new way and acknowledge that change was possible. “We as humans have changed so much already, we weren’t set in stone.” He moved back to Irlam and got involved with the Eccles Communist party the same year. Bill was also greatly influenced by two books he read at the time: Robert Tressell’s ‘Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ and Engels’ ‘Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State’.

School milk and the last cinema

The Communist Party in Eccles was not a particularly large branch – it only had around 80 members – yet they were very active and campaigned on various local issues. One of the memorable campaigns was against Margaret Thatcher’s policy to end school milk during her time as Education Secretary in 1971. “There was a major campaign over that in Eccles. We had hundreds of school parents outside school gates with placards.” Whilst they failed to change the policy, Bill states it was an example of the party leading a campaign without actually doing in its own name, as they wanted as many different people to get involved and to just win on the issue.

Another campaign led by the party was against the proposal to shut down a local cinema in 1974. “Eccles used to have three big cinemas and this was eventually reduced to one, which was the Broadway cinema, and the proposal was to turn this into a bingo hall. We thought it was a terrible idea.” Locals were also worried that the loss of the cinema would be detrimental to the youth, who already had very limited facilities. The campaign gathered significant support with local people, who expressed their concerns to the council and Labrokes’ company which was suggesting the bingo hall. The campaign was successful in the earlier stages but it went to tribunal and they lost the cinema in the end. Even so, the 1980s saw the rise of unemployment as a major issue in Eccles and the party would play an important role in tackling it.

Working together to tackle Unemployment

Local workers staged strikes against redundancies in local factories such as Gardener, which made diesel engines, and the Eccles communists worked hard doing things like food collections to support them. They also set up an important organisation known as ‘Eccles Community Campaign Against Unemployment’ (ECCAU), working alongside local clergymen, labour supporters and Salford’s trade council. “We would always try to work on as broad a basis as possible because that’s the way that we saw politics as developing- people working together instead of in isolation with groups fighting each other.”

ECCAU campaigned against unemployment and sought practical ways to resolve it by setting up the Salford Unemployment Centre. “We approached the council and for asked for the centre, and after a lot of campaigning and hard work (which included the Labour councillors too), we got the building and some funding.” The management team reflected the role the communists had played and it was composed entirely of ECCAU members apart from a few council personnel. “I think that they were just there to keep an eye on us and make sure that we didn’t do anything stupid, which we wouldn’t anyway!” Bill speculated. There was also a people’s march for jobs which ran the whole length of the country and came through Eccles and Salford and was supported by the Eccles Communists.

Support also came from unexpected places such as Salford’s Conservative Mayor, Tom Francis. “It was the same on issues like race- there were people in the Tory party that were good on race and there were people in the Labour party that were awful on race. There were even people in the Communist Party that were awful on race.” Watson was influenced at a young age by his father’s hod-carrier (a worker who carries bricks to the bricklayer) Billy Taylor, who was Afro-Caribbean, and he went on to campaign against Apartheid and cycled from Manchester to London to raise money for the ANC after Mandela was released in 1990.

Northern Ireland and meeting Special Branch

Bill Watson and with his wife, Sheila, were also heavily involved in the Northern Ireland issue and Sheila even visited Long Kesh internment camp for Republican prisoners on behalf of the Eccles Communists. The following was published in their branch newsletter ‘Red Rag’ on April 1974, describing her time there:

“There was barbed wire and fences and soldiers and guns everywhere. We went into another hut where we were searched. They took my driving license. Then through another door and we waited until our names were called. I visited the husband of the girl I was staying with. He had served three years of a 12 years sentence. The morale was great- they weren’t miserable or anything. He kept talking about when he was out and getting things done but I just couldn’t believe the type of place he was in. Long huts. You know, just like concentration camps in films. Grey and miserable.”

A meeting was also organised by the National Council of Civil Liberties (now Liberty) on Northern Ireland at which Edwina Stewart, of Northern Ireland’s Civil Rights Association, was invited to speak. Bill, along with Bert Cottam, went to pick her up from Manchester airport to find that she had been escorted by Special Branch, straight off her plane. “Burt and I started asking questions and we both got arrested. I managed to make a phone call that Edwina had been lifted from the plane, I think it was to David Lancaster, one of the councillors here, and then they asked for our names.” Bill initially refused to give his name, but was then threatened with a week’s jail and so he cooperated to avoid imprisonment. Edwina was also later released, although the meeting she attended was viciously attacked by the Ulster Defence Force (an extreme, right-wing protestant group with links with the BNP).

“I saw them pick up chairs and just batter old people to the floor with them,” says Bill. “They had been posted round the audience and there must have been a signal, as at some point they all stood up and started battering people. It was all over in a minute and then off they went.” The UDF had sent in coaches from Liverpool and on their way back, they were stopped by the police but no-one was arrested. Students from UMIST, who had hosted the meeting, took out a private prosecution against some of the attackers, which were successful and resulted in prison sentences.

The beginning of the end

Following the collapse of communism in Russia in the early nineties, the Communist party in Britain disintegrated into smaller parties such as the ‘Democratic Left’ and the Communist Party of Britain (as opposed to the Communist Party of Great Britain). Today, both carry very little influence in mainstream politics and many other members joined the Labour party. Eccles Communist party met a similar fate because, as Bill points out, the political culture where people sign up to a party just doesn’t exist anymore. Although many of the campaigns that Bill worked on were unsuccessfully and the party collapsed, he says he has absolutely no regrets. “I absolutely loved it. I learnt a lot during my time with the party and I really hope that it benefited people in some way.”

Article by Arwa Aburawa