Black 1919: Riots, Racism and Resistance in Imperial Britain 9781846312007, 1846315131, 9781846315138, 9781800855328

Citation preview

Black 1919

Postcolonialism across the Disciplines 5

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Postcolonialism across the Disciplines Series Editors Graham Huggan, University of Leeds Andrew Thompson, University of Leeds Postcolonialism across the Disciplines showcases alternative directions for post­ colonial studies. It is in part an attempt to counteract the dominance in colonial and postcolonial studies of one particular discipline – English literary/cultural studies – and to make the case for a combination of disciplinary knowledges as the basis for contemporary postcolonial critique. Edited by leading scholars, the series aims to be a seminal contribution to the field, spanning the traditional range of disciplines represented in postcolonial studies but also those less acknowl­ edged. It will also embrace new critical paradigms and examine the relation­ship between the transnational/cultural, the global and the postcolonial. Already published Interdisciplinary Measures: Literature and the Future of Postcolonial Studies Graham Huggan Deconstruction and the Postcolonial: At the Limits of Theory Michael Syrotinski Friends and Enemies: The Scribal Politics of Post/Colonial Literature Chris Bongie Postcolonial Thought in the French-Speaking World Charles Forsdick & David Murphy

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Black 1919 Riots, Racism and Resistance in Imperial Britain

Jacqueline Jenkinson

Liverpool University Press

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First published 2009 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © 2009 Jacqueline Jenkinson The right of Jacqueline Jenkinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A British Library CIP record is available

ISBN 978-1-84631-200-7 cased

Typeset in Amerigo by R. J. Footring Ltd, Derby Printed and bound in the European Union by the MPG Books Group

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This book is for Stephen, Ben, Belinda and Sean and in memory of my late parents, Anna and Jackie

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Contents

List of tables and figures Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction

viii ix x 1

1 The wider context of the seaport riots

38

2 Chief events of the riots

72

3 Who were the rioters?

103

4 Police and court responses

131

5 Repatriation to the colonies: the government solution to the riots and some Caribbean consequences

155

6 Aftermath: global reverberations, self-help, alien status and further riots

190

Conclusion

217

Bibliography Index

224 236

vii

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Tables and figures

Tables 1.1 Nationalities of sailors accommodated at the Glasgow Sailors’ Home in selected years 1914–29 3.1 Places of birth of black, Arab and Asian rioters and others 3.2 Age ranges of male rioters (where known) in 10-year bands 3.3 Numbers of black, Arab and white male rioters arrested and the outcomes of their trials 4.1 Prosecution rates for black and Arab rioters by place 4.2 Prosecution rates for white rioters by place 4.3 Selected riot offences and outcomes compared 4.4 Ratio of local population to police constables in selected British ports, 1919

52 105 113 113 132 132 132 138

Figures 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

Places of birth of black, Arab and Asian rioters and others Age ranges of male rioters Identified occupations of black and Arab rioters Identified occupations of white rioters

106 112 114 115

viii

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the staff of the many archives and libraries consulted in Scotland, England and Wales for their assistance in researching this book. My initial research on this topic was undertaken while I was a PhD student in the 1980s. I would like to thank Dr Ian Duffield for his great assistance in my post­ graduate research and Professor John M. Mackenzie for his most useful guidance on an earlier version of the manuscript. I would also like to record my gratitude to Neil Evans and to those colleagues at the University of Stirling who read and offered sound advice on this book.

ix

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Abbreviations

APU ARAG BWIR IMR NASFU NFDDSS NMB n.p. NSFU SPAO TNA

African Progress Union African Races Association of Glasgow British West Indies Regiment infant mortality rate National African Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union National Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers National Maritime Board no pagination National Seamen’s and Firemen’s Union Society of Peoples of African Origin The National Archives



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Introduction

The seaport riots of 1919 were part of a wave of global unrest that affected Britain, parts of its empire, continental Europe and North America during and in the wake of the First World War. The trigger for the violence in many of Britain’s seaports was dissatisfaction among sections of Britain’s working class at a range of unsatisfactory peacetime circumstances, the chief of which were severe post-war competition for jobs, especially in the merchant navy, and local housing shortages. In the course of the riots, crowds of white working-class people thousands strong targeted minority ethnic groups, including African, African-Caribbean, ‘Arab’, south Asian and Chinese workers, and their businesses and property.1 The riots took place in Glasgow, South Shields, Salford, Hull, London, Liverpool, Newport, Cardiff and Barry between January and August 1919. Further sporadic rioting took place in 1920 and 1921. Five people were killed, dozens injured and at least 250 arrested. This introductory chapter examines various themes that lay behind the riots: the broader economic and social context; contested understandings of national identity and ‘Britishness’; the vagaries of life in Britain’s seaports; theories of crowd behaviour; and an assessment of the influence of racist thought within sections of British society.

Economic and social context of the riots The onset of high unemployment in the merchant navy as the industry contracted to suit peacetime conditions posed problems for Britain’s large trading seaports during and after 1919. Falling demand, when combined with four years of dis­ ruption of traditional markets and routes, meant that many British ships were being laid up just as thousands of merchant sailors who had joined the armed forces were returning to home ports in search of their former ­employment. At 

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Introduction the same time, many of the thousands of job vacancies created when British merchant sailors left for war service, and when seamen from enemy and nonallied nations were barred from British vessels, had been filled by black, Arab, Chinese and south Asian colonial British workers. The post-war decline in the merchant shipping industry affected British sailors of various ethnicities, those recently demobilized and the currently employed. All feared for their future and came to believe that British workers were being squeezed out of the shipping industry as employers increasingly turned to cheaper overseas workers to reduce their wage bill and preserve profits. This fear of unfair foreign competition was a long-standing one in the merchant navy. In fact, the leading seamen’s unions had conducted a campaign to keep black, Arab and Asian sailors off British ships since the Edwardian period. The move was designed to preserve white British workers’ jobs and did not distinguish between British and foreign sailors from these areas. Reinvigorated in 1919 after a period of enforced quiescence during the war, the attempt to enforce a union ‘colour’ bar was one of the chief sources of contention in the ports. Although the riots were triggered by the specific economic circumstances of the large seaports, it is important to place these riots within the wider wave of rioting and social protest across Britain during and in the months immediately after the First World War. Widespread anti-German riots occurred around Britain throughout the war. These peaked in the ‘Lusitania riots’ of May 1915 following the sinking by a German submarine of the Cunard cruise liner RMS Lusitania, with the loss of 1,198 lives, hundreds of them civilian. Some of the wartime anti-German protests became more broadly anti-alien in their focus. In addition, there were anti-Jewish riots in Leeds and the east end of London during 1917 as sections of the local white British populations took to the streets in the belief that Jewish families in these areas, including eastern European immigrant ­settlers, were reluctant to ‘do their bit’ by sending their sons to war.2 Rioting and street protest continued beyond the Armistice in November 1918. Months of violent mass protest across Britain led Jerry White in 1981 to label 1919 a ‘troubled year’.3 Mass violence was often triggered by the difficult transi­ tion from war to peacetime conditions. For example, in January 1919 soldiers awaiting demobilization went on strike all over Britain, demanding speedier release from the armed forces. There were also at least three riots involving many of the thousands of Canadian service personnel who were stationed at army camps around Britain in 1919 awaiting repatriation. Post-war mass protest and riot often involved organized ex-service groups out to draw attention to perceived injustice in the treatment of returning troops and their dependants. Many former soldiers and sailors were left disillu­sioned by their lot on demobilization. The National Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers staged a range of coordinated campaigns and demonstrations throughout the country in 1919 and 1920. Their ‘monster’ demonstration outside Parliament in May 1919 descended into violence and was broken up by a police baton charge.4 In Luton in July 1919, rioters, ­ including many ex-combatants, 

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Introduction burned down the town hall.5 There were also riots involving recently demobilized troops in London in March and in Edinburgh in July 1919.6 The prominence of service and ex-service personnel in social unrest, mass protest and rioting across Britain in the 12 months following the Armistice was a sign of the times. It is hardly surprising that individuals in uniform or sport­ ing service ribbons would be visible in gatherings of people in the weeks and months after the Armistice, given that Britain’s combined armed forces totalled 6.6 million at the war’s end. The violent participation of troops and former ser­ vice personnel in the seaport riots was frequently highlighted in contemporary press reports.7 However, recent combatants were not the prime movers in the port rioting. The riots in Britain’s seaports mainly involved white local civilians, some of them merchant sailors. The myth that military service had brutalized those who served in the First World War and that this had led to post-war rioting and mass protest was used by contemporaries and later writers to account for the violence. There was indeed a widespread belief that the trauma of war had led to uncontrolled aggressive tendencies. This ‘brutalization’ theory further encompassed the idea that battlehardened, war-weary men and women brought a tendency to violence into the domestic sphere as well as the public sphere of riot and protest. While it was a truism that innocence had been irretrievably lost through wartime experience, the work of Joanna Bourke has convincingly refuted this theory by examining the impact of war on the psyche of war veterans. Bourke suggested that, contrary to promoting violent tendencies in a domestic setting, the leading desire among ex-combatants was for a return to domesticity and to forget their recent experi­ ences.8 Bourke cited detailed studies of the psychological impact of the Vietnam War on veterans which found no relationship (or even a negative relationship) between violent crime rates and military participation. Bourke’s study of the letters and diaries of twentieth-century ex-combatants found that veterans were not ‘numbed’ by killing, even when distanced from the enemy by technological development; on the contrary, ‘combatants themselves consistently raised issues of personal responsibility’.9 While this point is well made, it is important to remember that although ex-service personnel may not have been brutalized by war, their experiences and years of service left many disillusioned and prepared to organize and protest in large numbers against their peacetime lot. General demonstrations of post-war resentment across many sections of British society were in the large seaports specifically focused on the twin issues of job and housing shortages. These broader economic and social aspects of the rioting will be discussed in more detail Chapter 1.

National identity, the imperial agenda and a ‘black Atlantic’ perspective The seaport riots and their aftermath posed a challenge to the legitimacy of Britain’s imperial rule and raised questions about the identity and status of colonial peoples both within the metropole and in the colonies. This book 

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Introduction assesses the expression of imperial and national identification within the groups of British colonial subjects who were attacked during the riots, and among the host population, at both individual and official level. Divergent interpretations of national identity emerged from metropolitan and colonial opinion during the 1919 riots. ‘Britishers first’ was the overriding sentiment during disorder in the ports, particularly when rioting broke out as sailors confronted each other directly in the hiring yards of merchant marine shipping offices. However, those on opposing sides during the riots held differ­ ent opinions of what was meant by ‘being British’. An article in The Times written at the height of the rioting poked fun at the allegiance black Britons felt towards the empire: ‘The negro is almost pathetically loyal to the British empire and he is always proud to proclaim himself a Briton’.10 The seaport riots highlighted contested meanings of national identity: black British sailors protested about the employment of foreign white sailors; white sailors (including foreign-born) cam­ paigned and rioted against the employment of black African, African-Caribbean, Arab, Chinese and south Asian sailors, many of whom were British. The broad concept of British identity can be summed up in the term civis Britannicus sum. This idea was set out by Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston in 1850 and derived from the Latin phrase civis Romanus sum. Not everyone in the Roman empire held citizenship: it was a privilege enjoyed by only a few (and could be inherited, merited or won after long service). Many Roman citizens lived hundreds of miles from the city but still claimed the privileges of their status. Following a show of gunboat diplomacy,11 Palmerston set out his understanding of the rights of British subjects around the world in a marathon speech before Parliament: It is a question that involves principles of national policy and the deepest interests as well as the honour and dignity of England … whether as the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity when he could say Civis Romanus sum, so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong.12

Following Palmerston’s momentous speech, the phrase civis Britannicus sum came to denote the rights afforded all subjects under the British crown no matter where they lived. The protection given to British subjects was built on the feel­ ing that subject status was an honour bestowed by British rule. It also allowed any British subject right of entry into Britain. This status was reinforced in law in 1914, in the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act, which stated: ‘Any person born within His Majesty’s Dominions and allegiance [is] … a natural born British subject’.13 Despite such legislation and the apparent stout defence of the interests of individual Britons, the possession of an overseas empire led not to an inclusive but to an exclusive notion of British national identity. According to Colley, the feeling of dominance over subject peoples permeated metropolitan British society.14 In her influential essay ‘Britishness and Otherness’, Colley succinctly 

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Introduction described this feeling: ‘we usually decide who we are by reference to who and what we are not’.15 At times, Britishness was equated with possessing a white skin. During the seaport riots, distinctions were frequently drawn between the rights of ‘British’ on the one hand and black, or more often ‘coloured’, sailors on the other. These distinctions were made by individuals across the social spectrum, including white rioters, members of the police forces in the riot ports, trades unionists, magistrates and lawyers during riot trials and also in the press. Britishness was ‘colour’ coded, and only grudgingly and infrequently were the rights of black British subjects recognized and considered, usually in the lip service paid to the notion of ‘white Britishers first, next black Britishers, last of all aliens’. British feelings of superiority over subject peoples were already well estab­ lished by the time of the 1919 seaport riots. However, the recent experience of the First World War brought many native white people into first or extended contact with black colonial British subjects, who came to Britain in their many thousands as workers, soldiers and sailors. The presence of black British troops and workers failed to alter popular one-dimensional perceptions of Britishness. A study conducted in 1918 revealed strong ‘race’ prejudice within wartime British society. This prejudice was not based on hostility as a result of personal contact with black British colonial subjects but on the broad process of imperialism, which brought the prejudices of colonial administrators and travellers back to the metropole.16 Rose has made the point that ‘British identity’ became more sharply defined in times of war: ‘War exaggerates the significance of the nation as a source and object of identity’.17 Kushner and Ceserani also noted that anti-alien senti­ ment was exacerbated by participation in war: ‘Anxieties concerning class, public health, moral codes and above all, national identity were projected onto immigrants and minorities’.18 Into the mid-twentieth century, similar arguments about Britishness and national identity were rehearsed during the August 1947 riots in which British Jewish populations were attacked.19 Kathleen Paul has also written about constructions of national identity in relation to post-Second World War immigration to Britain. According to Paul, a hierarchy of Britishness was created in which white Britons enjoyed a unique status, while black and south Asian Britons from the empire/commonwealth were regarded as possessing a different (lesser) British identity.20 Research into the issue of British national identity is linked to the broader study of imperial inter-connectedness, with the relationship between colony and metropole subject to much scrutiny. The notion of such inter-connected­ ness was developed by French West Indian writer Franz Fanon, who stated that empire building affected not only the colonized but also the colonizers.21 Issues of citizenship, national identity and equality were subsumed into the wider dichotomy between colonizers and colonized. For Catherine Hall, this relation­ ship was a power struggle: ‘The relations between colony and metropole were relations of power’.22 Given the ethnic make-up of Britain’s empire (in 1919 an estimated 100 million of the empire’s total population of 550 million were 

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Introduction white),23 such a notion became ‘colour’ coded: in war and in peace, imperial subjects with dark skin pigmentation were less well regarded than were white colonials. According to Hall, ‘Metropolis and colonies, nation and empire, were demarcated by racially defined difference: some races, it was thought, were more advanced than others’.24 The transfer of imperial power relations into the British merchant shipping industry led ship owners to ‘extend colonial levels of control and exploitation to workers in the metropole’.25 Black colonial workers serving in the merchant navy during and after the war were almost inevitably placed in a subordinate position. According to Tabili’s study of ‘workers and racial difference’, ‘the few thousand Black seamen living in Britain were only the most visible of a global and multiracial colonized population whose labor sustained Britain’s imperial power’.26 Colonial connections and power relationships were highlighted too in the names of some of the black people involved in the seaport riots. In Glasgow, two West Africans charged with rioting shared the name of ‘Tom Friday’; meanwhile, ‘Sunny John’ was found not guilty of assault and riot charges in Liverpool. In Newport, five brothers from Sierra Leone, all of whom were ship’s firemen, were all called ‘Tom Savage’. The identical names, and indeed the surname Savage, evoke the slave trading and paternalistic missionary past of coastal West Africa. An expanding empire and healthy global trading links brought black sailors in increased numbers into the metropole in the decades up to the First World War. Yet by 1919 the position was altered. Britain’s empire was shaken by the war and the end of the conflict brought incipient decline of the merchant shipping industry. Together, these factors combined to make the outbreak of the seaport riots a cause of grave concern in both colonial and metropolitan Britain. In 1919 the British empire was simultaneously expanding with the annexation of former German colonies in Africa and at the same time fragile, as the declaration of martial law in Egypt and the deaths of close to 400 political protesters at the hands of the British army under General Dyer at the Amritsar temple in India demonstrated. According to May and Cohen, ‘at home many observers pointed out that racial disturbances in England would have serious repercussions for the European presence in the colonized world’.27 In the Caribbean, British governors were acutely aware of the potential chal­ lenge to colonial rule posed by increasing black political awareness, especially when it was combined with the return of disaffected repatriated black Britons and ex-service personnel following the seaport riots. In the metropole, Colonial Secretary Lord Milner expressed similar anxiety: I am seriously concerned at the continued disturbances due to racial ill feeling against coloured men in our large sea ports. These riots are serious enough from the point of view of the maintenance of order in this country, but they are even more serious in regard to their possible effect in the colonies.28

British newspaper editorials also expressed a fear that the seaport riots could provoke disorder among the large black majority in the colonies. The South Wales 

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Introduction Daily News noted that since Britain’s post-war obligations ‘to the dark races’ were in the process of extension via mandate under the Treaty of Versailles, ‘it is all the more necessary to insist upon fair play and equal treatment to everyman, whatever his colour’.29 This viewpoint was persuasively stated in an editorial in the Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury on 11 June 1919: Careful and commonsense handling of the ‘colour’ disturbances is necessary if what at present is little more than a local disorder is not to develop into a serious Imperial problem. There would be infinite possibilities of mischief if any idea gained ground in India and Africa that the isolated conduct of riotous mobs represented the prevailing British attitude towards the black members of the Empire who are in our midst.30

Some of the more sympathetic white public reactions to the plight of black people attacked during the riots also revealed a concern for the future of the imperial/colonial relationship. Perhaps predictably, white-dominated Christian and humanitarian groups were prominent in expressing these sentiments. Local Anglican clerics raised the possible imperial repercussions of the rioting in a ­letter to Liverpool Corporation (council) in July 1919: ‘the racial riots [are] … a blot upon the fair name of the city, and a danger to the commonwealth at large … calculated to hinder the progress of Christ’s kingdom at home and abroad’.31 John H. Harris, Organizing Secretary of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society, demonstrated Britain’s imperial inter-­connectedness in an interview conducted at the height of the port rioting: You cannot prevent the black man from coming here, because this is the centre of his empire. You could no more tell him that he must not come to London, Liverpool or Cardiff than he has the right to tell you that you must not go to Lagos or Durban or Johannesburg.32

Neil Evans has perceptively described this as the ‘we are here because you are there’ viewpoint.33 The rioting around Britain’s major seaports led to feelings of metropolitan betrayal and unrewarded wartime ‘blood sacrifice’ among Britain’s black ­colonial population. One London-based black political organization, the Society of Peoples of African Origin (SPAO) and its newspaper, the African Telegraph, edited by Felix E. M. Hercules, strongly voiced such sentiments. On 14 June 1919, the SPAO staged a meeting in London’s Hyde Park in protest against the riots. A leaflet was circulated entitled ‘Has the African Any Friends?’ Addressing the crowd, Hercules, also the Society’s General Secretary, emphasized the ­common British identity of black and white workers.34 Hercules was not averse to dabbling in the populist xenophobic views towards aliens demonstrated so forcibly in the anti-alien rioting of the war years. He blamed unidentified white ­foreigners for dividing white and black British workers. The British workingman is being used as a tool by alien agitators. There are in this country dangerous foreigners well supplied with money and they are



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Introduction plotting the downfall of the British Empire. To do that they are trying to sew dissension between the British workingman and Black Britishers.35

Similar xenophobic views were held by other black British residents. An unnamed African-Caribbean resident in Glasgow questioned ‘why [should] aliens who had done nothing for the country remain here and peaceable British subjects be forced to go?’36 The SPAO’s protest against the treatment of black people in the heart of the metropole reached a peak in July 1919, when the government decided not to allow black troops to take part in London’s victory celebrations: the ‘Peace March’ of 19 July 1919. Hercules drew parallels between this decision and the government’s attitude during the riots: In the face of official silence on the absence of black troops, and the supine­ ness of the Imperial Government during the recent race riots, we can only conclude that it is the policy of His Majesty’s Ministers to ignore the services of the black subjects of the Empire.37

The resentment of black colonial subjects against their post-war treatment in Britain and growing displeasure about the uneven imperial relationship were expressed in a letter by a long-time black resident of Glasgow to the press at the height of the riots in summer 1919. The letter was published in several local newspapers. It provides further insight into the reactions of middle-class black colonials living in Britain to the rioting. We, the members of the African Races Association of Glasgow, view with regret the recent racial riots in different parts of Britain, and resent the unwarrant­ able attacks that have been made upon men of colour, without exception as one common herd of inferior beings….   Did not some of these men fight on the same battlefields with white men to defeat the enemy and make secure the British Empire? Why can’t they work now in the same factories with white men? Did they not run the risks of losing their lives by the submarine warfare in bringing food for white women and children in common with white men?   Is the treatment meted out to them now compatible with the British teach­ ing of justice and equity, or is it an exhibition of British gratitude? 38

The letter was signed by Leo W. Daniels, Secretary of the African Races Association of Glasgow (ARAG). Daniels, an African-Canadian who had lived in Glasgow since 1886, was joined on the ARAG committee by representatives from British colonies in West Africa and the Caribbean. The Association’s member­ ship consisted mainly of professionals and students.39 The ARAG, like the SPAO, represented a black intellectual response to the rioting. Evans has noted that working-class black and Arab Britons also attempted to use their British identity as a means of defence during the riots. In south Wales, colonial service personnel wore their military uniforms in an attempt to deter potential white attacks. At the funeral of Mohammed Abdullah, a victim of the Cardiff riots, a Union flag was draped over the coffin.40 

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Introduction The feeling of British national identity being under threat was made clear by a group of 44 Jamaican sailors repatriated in the wake of the port rioting. In August 1919, they petitioned the acting Governor, Colonel Bryan, to express anger at their ill-treatment while in Britain and to request financial redress for losses they had suffered: We feel aggrieved at our ill-treatment by the white people of Great Britain, they like ourselves being British and we forming an integral part of the British empire … this being so our constitutional rights and privileges were attacked.41

In June 1919, various black and Arab residents of Cardiff formed a common bond. In the midst of the rioting, they held a joint meeting to discuss the attacks upon them: A meeting was held at Cardiff docks yesterday of Arabs, Somalis, Egyptians, West Indians and other coloured races, to protest against the treatment to which they are being subjected. It was pointed out that they had done nothing to originate the disturbances…. They claim that as British subjects, they are entitled to protection, and a resolution was passed calling upon the Government to take measures with this end.42

A few days later, Mohammed Abdullah’s funeral was attended by 13 Arabs at the graveside, while several hundred ‘Negroes of all types’ participated in the general service.43 The notion of a common identity was not necessarily shared among all British colonial subjects. There were instances when colonial Britons fought each other in Britain’s seaports for privileged access to employment opportunities. On several occasions in the early twentieth century, groups of black sailors brawled among themselves for berths on merchant ships and black British sailors also turned on Chinese sailors, who they believed threatened their livelihood.44 During the 1919 riots a letter from a ‘Barbados Negro’ published in the Newport local press sought to differentiate between African-Caribbeans and West Africans in terms of the violence in the ports. The author branded ‘ignorant’ West Africans as the trouble makers. ‘There is as much difference between West Indians and West Africans as chalk and cheese…. We are accustomed to living in houses in the West [sic] not grass huts; neither did we come to England to learn the use of a knife and fork.’45 The debate regarding cultural differences between African-Caribbeans and West Africans was also raised in Glasgow by an African-Caribbean caller to the office of local newspaper, the Evening Times, during the summer seaport riots.46 Similar rivalry between the African and African-Caribbean intelligentsia was displayed in the inter-war years among West African and African-Caribbean student groups in Britain.47 In both metropole and colony in 1919, black workers challenged prevailing notions of British identity and undermined the view of black people as powerless in the imperial relationship. This was most forcibly demonstrated in the resort to riot of repatriated black sailors in the West Indies, which had a discernible 

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Introduction impact on imperial government policy on wages in the Caribbean. In metropolitan Britain, black colonial subjects contested the existing balance of power in the relationship between colonizer and colonized by their actions in travelling to Britain for work; in their membership of sailors’ unions (and, indeed, the forma­ tion of specific unions for black sailors); in their demands for true recognition of their wartime efforts; and even in battles between racialized minority ethnic groups for jobs. Yet, despite fierce resistance from black rioters to police interven­ tion evident in rioting in Liverpool and Salford and also the outbreak of post-war riots in the Caribbean, the relationship between colonizer and colonized, as that of employer and employee, remained a largely unequal one. Urban riots similar in several respects to the British seaport riots took place elsewhere around what has come to be termed the ‘black Atlantic’ as both France and North America experienced waves of violence during and immediately fol­ lowing the First World War. For Gilroy, the ‘black Atlantic’ is an all-encompassing phrase which describes three things: the area of enforced settlement of Africans through slavery; the colonial process and the reflective cultures and conscious­ ness of European settlers and the Africans they enslaved and resettled; and the interactions between subsequent groups of colonizers and the colonized.48 The black sailors embroiled in the riots in some respects exemplify Gilroy’s notion of the ‘black Atlantic’ as they criss-crossed the ocean experiencing the competing and complementary cultures and pressures of life in colonial and metropolitan Britain. Participation in the First World War reinforced the notion of the ‘black Atlantic’, as troops from British and French colonial Africa and the Caribbean enlisted to defend their empires alongside African-Americans and black British volunteers. The war also brought British imperial subjects, French colonial citizens and African-Americans to metropolitan Europe, in large numbers at the same time, for common purposes. There was awareness among the black intelligentsia of these overlapping identities. For example, in African-Caribbean Claude McKay’s 1929 novel Banjo: A Story Without a Plot, a Nigerian character named Taloufa was caught up in the Cardiff seaport riot.49 McKay portrayed Taloufa as an archetypal black colonial subject. Educated at a British mission school in Nigeria, he was taken to Britain as a servant boy by a British civil servant when aged 13. He then worked for three years in the Midlands as a servant before tiring of his existence and running away to Cardiff. Taloufa worked out of the port as a ship’s boy: ‘he was there during the riots of 1919 between colored and whites, and he got a brick wound in the head. He went to America after the riots and jumped his ship there.’50 Taloufa’s life and experience in Africa, Britain and America was the fictional embodiment of a ‘black Atlantic’ experience, with a hint of a twentieth-century triangular slave trade thrown in. McKay may well have based his fictional account of Taloufa’s life and the experience of the Cardiff rioting on incidents he had heard about while working in Britain as a journalist in 1919. In almost every urban metropolitan setting where riots broke out during and after the First World War, black people had arrived in increased numbers and, of necessity, competed with working-class white people for jobs and housing. 10

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Introduction In the international riot episodes, black troops, civilians and wartime workers became the focus of wartime and post-war dissatisfaction among sections of the urban white working class. Evans in his article ‘Red Summers 1917–1919’ has described the 1919 rioting in Britain and elsewhere in the Atlantic basin as the ‘pinnacle of a period of intensified racial conflicts across the north Atlantic world which was rooted in the established patterns of migration but which was brought to a head by the First World War’.51 The summer 1917 riots in France were a product of ‘war weariness’ among white subjects, who accused colonial workers and troops of enjoying life in metropolitan France while white French soldiers were sent to the front.52 A similar viewpoint was expressed by white British crowds and in the press during the seaport riots. The comparison between the French and British rioting can be taken further, with respect to ‘official’ responses towards colonial workers in the metropole. Horne’s study of immigrant workers in France during the First World War revealed that tensions between governors and the governed in the colonies were replicated in mainland France: The internal frontiers of colonialism … between white and native … were for the first time transported from the colonies to metropolitan France. Assumptions of the childlike and dependent status of the colonials charac­ terized their distinctive treatment by officials, as did the need to maintain certain barriers.53

A similar pattern can be detected in the relationships between British black colonials and government departmental representatives before, during and after the seaport riots. Wartime population shifts lay behind the North American rioting of 1919. According to Segal’s 1960s work on racist violence: white labour in the North, reacting strongly to Negro encroachments on the city slums and industrial plants, barred Negro workers from the unions and agitated for their dismissal from the more desirable jobs that the labour short­ age of the war years had allowed them.54

In Chicago, which witnessed the most serious North American riot of that year, an increased black population caused pressure on segregated leisure facilities. A black person swimming in a beach resort area designated for white bathers was killed by a rock thrown by a white. The precipitating cause of the Chicago riot was the racist police response to this event. A white police officer refused to arrest the person alleged to have thrown the rock, while he later arrested a black person at the behest of a white local.55 The emphasis on the cultural dimension of shared identities and common experiences among black people in the ‘black Atlantic’ world provides a valuable addition to the debate on identity and the inter-connectedness of colonial and metropolitan experience. The international framework of shared experience and the outbreak of collective protest occasioned by world war forms a wider perspective in which to place the outbreak of the seaport riots in Britain. This 11

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Introduction methodological approach is most useful in discussions on repatriation and the international consequences of the port riots in Chapter 5. However, this theory does not overturn the argument that the 1919 seaport riots were underpinned by economic and social pressures. As Stovall has noted, some historians have contested this cultural approach to ‘race’ rioting: ‘the stress on the subjective, culturally driven character of racial violence has not remained unchallenged, however, as some scholars have reemphasized the important, if not exclusive, role of material conditions in generating racial conflict’.56

Distinctiveness of port settlements In 1870, there were 110 foreign trade ports of various sizes in the United Kingdom. The development of steam shipping helped tie the bulk of the country’s trade to a small number of these ports: those that had extensive internal communications (including railways) and those with excellent dock systems. This group of major British seaports included the nine ports where riots broke out in 1919. Chief among them were London, Liverpool and Glasgow, all of which possessed modern deep-water facilities that could harbour the largest ocean-going vessels. Owing to the pull of job availability in Britain’s thriving maritime commerce, ports had high urban densities. This was an international phenomenon. By the mid-nineteenth century, seaports accounted for almost 40% of the world’s great cities (populations numbering over 100,000).57 As the work of Robert Lee has shown, Britain’s ports were distinctive urban environments, characterized by poor living standards and dominated by reliance on unskilled, ‘casual’ employ­ ment in both seafaring and on the docks.58 Large populations coupled with the constraints of dock locations and the lack of incentive for speculative house construction led to severe overcrowding in poverty-stricken waterfront areas. Seafaring and dock work were irregular forms of employment that were also poorly paid, leading to low socio-economic status for the families of workers in these occupations: ‘It was said that the most poverty-stricken home in Glasgow’s slums was that of a marine fireman.’59 Traditionally, seamen’s wages were lower than those of shore workers and from the 1890s wage rates began to ‘seriously fall behind the rate of increase of shore wages’.60 British seaports in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries were home to more ethnically diverse populations than other urban environments owing to long-distance migration for work in Britain’s global trading network and also its dominant role in the process of trans-migration, or as Lee succinctly described these developments: ‘port cities attracted human capital … from relatively faraway regions’.61 Overseas workers, the great majority of whom were seafarers, were characterized by their settlement in poor, cheap, overcrowded housing, where they were invariably segregated from long-term residents of the port: merchant sailors often had a ‘specific spatial distribution within a port city’; among long-distance migrants, this was often exaggerated by language and religious differences.62 12

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Introduction Britain’s seaports provided some of the unhealthiest urban environments and had among the lowest life expectancies in the country. Lee has drawn attention to the ‘substantial downward mobility in most port cities’, which ‘reinforced contemporary health problems: Liverpool had one of the highest mortality rates in England and there was a close link between population density and death rates in Glasgow…’.63 In 1906, the Medical Officer of Health for Liverpool reported: ‘there was not a city in this country, nay in Europe, which could produce anything like the squalor that his officials found in some of Liverpool’s backstreets’.64 In 1919, Glasgow’s infant mortality rate (IMR) was 114 deaths per 1,000 births, compared with the Scottish national rate of 101.6. In 1926, when the Scottish IMR had fallen to 83.1 and the corresponding figure for England and Wales was 70.2, the Glasgow rate remained depressingly high, at 104.65 These grim circumstances help explain why post-war social tensions evident in many sections of British society erupted into a series of full-scale riots around Britain’s major seaports. Each of the nine ports where riots took place had large import/export markets and as large urban centres they had fluid, diverse populations. Visitors and workers from Britain’s overseas colonies settled in increasing numbers in the large seaports by the early twentieth century as the volume of trade increased and the ports were adapted to accommodate increased capacity. This expansion was undertaken to keep pace with the increased demands of overseas trade, the development of local industries and changing technology, as steamships came to replace sailing ships by the second half of the nineteenth century. Increased trade through Glasgow harbour was facilitated by the deepening of the River Clyde in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, which allowed large vessels for the first time to enter the city itself, instead of loading and unloading their goods as previously lower down the Clyde, at Greenock and Port Glasgow. New docks were built throughout the period 1860–1900 to accom­ modate the growing global traffic. By 1907, Glasgow harbour covered a massive 206 acres. From the second half of the nineteenth century the port witnessed a great increase in transatlantic export traffic, carrying a broad range of industrial products from ‘factories, forge and mine’.66 By 1905, well over 1,000 steam ships regularly sailed from the port; only Liverpool and London had more.67 South Shields became the largest port on the north-east coast of England by the mid-nineteenth century, because of the proximity of the Tyne to major coal­ fields, including the St Hilda colliery, opened in the town in the early nineteenth century. The strong industrial base of South Shields helped in the development of its major port status. Other key industries in the town were ship repairing, shipbuilding, marine engineering, boiler scaling and iron founding. The attrac­ tions of plentiful employment in the expanding port ensured that by the time of the 1901 census, over 60% of houses in the port were overcrowded. The opening of the Manchester Ship Canal and port of Manchester in 1894 for the first time enabled large ships to come directly inland to the heart of the north-west. Because Manchester itself lacked the required free land, the new deep-water terminal docks were stationed in the city of Salford. One result was that Salford’s population grew markedly. In the 1890s, it increased almost twice as 13

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Introduction fast as that of Manchester and peaked at 234,000 in 1921. The sharp population rise meant that the port, which already had an unenviable record as ‘amongst the three or four unhealthiest places in Britain’,68 faced further overcrowding. The area with the worst housing and ill health was the Greengate district, where a black population had settled by the time of the First World War. Hull’s location favoured trading links to continental Europe via the North Sea, chiefly in coal, but the port was also heavily involved in the northern European passenger trade and trans-shipping overseas European migrants. Hull also had a large share of Britain’s trawler fishing. Hull’s position on an estuary allowed inland waterway connections with the coalfields of west Yorkshire and the major industrial towns of Lancashire and the Midlands. Industrial goods were exported from Hull to North and South America, the Far East and the British colonies in Africa and the West Indies. For a century from 1851, Hull’s largest employment sector was in transport, which included seamen and dock labourers as well as road and rail workers. For example, in 1911, 30.7% of the total male workforce was employed in this sector.69 This concentration of workers in a few industries led to wider social pressures. Hull, like so many thriving port cities, registered very high overcrowding in the working-class areas.70 By the mid-nineteenth century, Hull resembled a ‘gigantic slum’.71 Hull’s population doubled between 1871 and 1901, to 240,259,72 placing further pressure on already overcrowded areas, and by the end of the nineteenth century most accommodation in the oldest part of the city, down by the docks, was let in single rooms.73 London’s West India Dock opened in 1802 and by the late nineteenth century major shipping companies, including the Harrison line, traded to the Caribbean via these docks. Later Caribbean trade, including the goods carried by the Royal Mail shipping line, was carried out from the King George V Dock, opened in 1921. Tilbury Dock opened in 1886 and soon became the focus of London’s vast passenger and migrant trade. London’s complex of docks, eventually stretch­ ing for 70 miles, underwent expansion through to the early twentieth century. London was, alongside Liverpool, a giant of Britain’s overseas trade, the two ports accounting for 58% of all insured British shipping by this time. Liverpool’s deep-water facilities made it one of the leading beneficiaries of the shift away from sail to the use of steel screw steamers. Liverpool soon became the base for the main passenger companies, such as Peninsular and Oriental (P&O), and cargo liner companies such as Elder Dempster. Sailing from Toxteth dock in Liverpool, the Elder Dempster shipping line secured the main trade routes to West Africa for Britain. The three south Wales ports where riots took place owed much of their economic success to their locations, running parallel to 60 miles of coalfields. By the late nineteenth century, south Wales dominated the British, and there­ fore the world’s, coal export industry. Cardiff was the leading coal-exporting port. Daunton has described the city as the ‘coal metropolis of the world’ for the period 1870–1914.74 The Second Marquess of Bute owned Cardiff docks and invested heavily in their development. This gave Cardiff an advantage over other south Wales ports for much of the later nineteenth century. Because of 14

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Introduction its predominance in exporting coal, Cardiff was also the hub for Britain’s tramp steamer trade. This trade was vital to Britain’s shipping interests. Tramp shipping accounted for 60% of British tonnage by 1913. The growth in Cardiff ’s coal export trade meant more ships arrived having discharged their cargoes elsewhere and with a token crew, ready to take on coal and a new crew before leaving port. An estimated 30,000 crews per year were taken on in this way, which made Cardiff a magnet for sailors looking for work.75 As the least organized form of merchant seafaring, tramp steamers employed large numbers of sailors from overseas. The increasingly cosmopolitan nature of Cardiff was locally remarked upon, but was considered a necessary by-product of an expanding port city. Newport was south Wales’s leading coal-exporting port until the 1840s and developed as quickly as Cardiff for the first half of the nineteenth century. The coming of the railways, which tied many mining valleys to Cardiff, allowed that city to overtake Newport in coal shipments. However, international trade through Newport was reinvigorated in the late nineteenth century when new investment led to the construction of Alexandria (North) Dock, which was opened in 1893 and twice expanded, so that by 1914 it covered 93 acres and had the largest lock in the world.76 The hitherto small port at Barry witnessed a wave of investment in the late 1880s and 1890s by coal magnates frustrated by the failure to expand the Cardiff docks by the Third Marquess of Bute. In 1884, leading coal and ship owners gained parliamentary assent to build Barry dock and railway. The modern mechanized facilities at the vast, 73-acre Barry dock were so successful that by 1913 Barry had replaced Cardiff as the major south Wales coal port. Expansion came at a price to social conditions, as a comparatively unknown village with a population of only 478 in 1881 became a world-renowned port town with a population of close to 40,000 in the inter-war years. One consequence of their status as international trading centres was that all of these nine seaports developed settled black, Arab and Chinese populations. Although many thousands of south Asian sailors worked on British ships, their form of contract employment for round-trip voyages only (with lodging houses provided at domestic ports for short-term stays) made it less likely that Lascar sailors would permanently settle in Britain. As the hub of the metropolitan empire, London had an unbroken history of black settlement dating back to the sixteenth century. London merchants began trading with the West Indies by the mid-seventeenth century and by the early eighteenth century black slaves and sailors were recorded as resident in the Stepney district. Both the West India Dock and the later East Indian Dock were close to residential areas in the east end: respectively Limehouse and Bow. These two districts were regarded as the heart of London’s black settlement until the mid-twentieth century.77 In addition to long-established groups of sailors, entertainers and domestic servants, a black middle class consisting of students, professionals and business owners was also resident in London. By the beginning of the twentieth century, there were also black political, cultural and government representatives living in or visiting the capital. For example, political delegations from within the 15

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Introduction empire would visit London for months at a time. Among government employees, black workers within the imperial civil service, including British Guianan John Alexander Barbour-James, while often resident overseas, also kept permanent homes in London.78 In marked contrast to the middle-class lifestyle enjoyed by the Barbour-James family in the Edwardian period, there were also povertystricken black London residents. Hackney Board of Guardians reported that an African-Caribbean family consisting of husband, wife and five children received outdoor poor relief for varying periods in the three years 1905–07, until the husband was able to obtain a permanent job.79 The largest black population outside London was housed in the north-­western port of Liverpool. The initial impetus to black settlement there receded with the ending of the slave trade. A further black presence in Liverpool came via increased trade with West Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century. The city’s monopoly of West African trade paved the way for the employment of hundreds of African seamen. British companies trading in hot climates pre­ dominantly hired African sailors. They were taken on in the main for work below deck on steamships, in particular as firemen.80 The Elder Dempster Company permanently maintained a pool of black sailors in Liverpool to fill any vacancies that arose on its ships. These and other African and African-Caribbean sailors working from the port augmented the growing number of locally born black Britons, such as successful politician John Richard Archer.81 By the early twentieth century Liverpool was home to a well estab­ lished and large black population (both locally born and recently arrived). Of an estimated black settlement of 3,000 in 1911, over half lived in squalid slum housing in the central and southern parts of the city.82 Sailors of many nationalities shipped in and out of Glasgow and South Shields, both leading exporting ports. Groups of West African and AfricanCaribbean ­ sailors had settled in these ports since the end of the nineteenth century. Glasgow, as a university city, also had a resident group of black students and professionals, some of whom had formed their own organization, the African Races Association of Glasgow. Meanwhile, South Shields, as the largest coal-exporting port in the north-east, benefited from the tramp steamer trade and, like Cardiff, was a magnet for merchant sailors looking to pick up a ship. Salford’s black population settled later than in other ports around the country since it was not until the 1890s that the north-west was accessible to overseas shipping (via the Manchester Ship Canal). The port of Manchester covered 36 miles of the Ship Canal and the metropolitan berths and docks. This sprawl meant that neither Manchester nor Salford had a distinct port area.83 However, the Greengate district of Salford soon became home to the city’s black popu­ lation. One local account linked the town’s black presence to the needs of wartime, citing the arrival of West African workers from Sierra Leone, who had come ‘to this country when the mule boats were carrying soldiers’.84 Some in this group had remained in the merchant navy, while others moved into local industry. Walvin has suggested that West Africans worked in chemical and muni­ tions factories in the Greater Manchester area during the First World War.85 After 16

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Introduction the war, Salford’s Chief Constable felt their labour was no longer needed: ‘He recommends that they be returned to their respective colonies, especially so as the labouring work which they had been undertaking during the war can now be satisfactorily done by the returning soldiers and sailors.’86 The Chief Constable estimated that the city had around 60 black residents in April 1919, all living in a few streets in the Greengate district. In the port of Hull, the lack of good affordable accommodation placed ­pressure on the poorer workers in the city and many, including seafarers, fell into pauperism. Some of the black and south Asian residents of Hull were forced into the workhouse in the Edwardian period. Of 30 sailors admitted to the Hull workhouse in the years 1905–09, nine were from the West Indies and five from India. Not all black colonial residents of the port were sailors; two other African-Caribbeans, a labourer and a street trader (‘hawker’), were also admitted to the workhouse in these years.87 By 1919, Hull had a small, established black population of African and West Indian workers and their families. The dock area of Cardiff was very compact and within this district were the residential streets of Butetown. After 1870, both this area and the nearby city centre witnessed the outflow of first the middle class and then the ‘respectable’ working class to Cardiff ’s suburbs. Butetown became the chief place of settle­ ment for sailors and port workers. Daunton drew attention to the segregation of this port area from the rest of the city: there is … no denying the area’s separateness; to the inhabitants of Butetown, the area north of the Great Western Railway was another world, rarely entered. This was the red light district of boarding houses, brothels, foreigners.88

By the end of the nineteenth century Cardiff had come to house Britain’s third largest black population, after London and Liverpool. Evans noted one contem­ porary estimate of a black population of 700 in Cardiff in 1914. This population increased markedly during the war years, so that by 1919 an estimated 1,000 black sailors were out of work in the port.89 Newport’s cosmopolitan seafaring population reflected its growth in inter­ national trade. Again, Poor Law information provides evidence of colonial settlement in the port. In the years 1905–09, Newport’s board of guardians for the Poor Law assisted 18 men from India and Britain’s crown colonies; 14 of these 18 were ­ sailors who had been employed on British ships ‘for many years’.90 Barry’s remarkable growth as a coal-trading port in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries attracted migrant workers from Britain and overseas, and by the early twentieth century the town was home to people of many nationalities. Jamaican sailor James Gillespie settled in Barry in 1896. By 1919, Gillespie co-owned a fish and chip shop with his white wife (the shop was damaged during the port rioting).91 Towards the end of the nineteenth century, settlements of ‘Arab’ (i.e. Adenese and Somali) sailors were founded in the tramp steamer ports of South Shields, Cardiff and Hull. In the mid-1880s, the Peninsular and Oriental line became the first British shipping company to employ sailors out of the British port of 17

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Introduction Aden. Before this, Adenese and Somali sailors were employed on French steam­ ships, generally as ships’ firemen. Arab sailors often transferred to British ships, where the pay rates were higher, joining them at continental European ports such as Marseilles. Many of the seamen were peasant farmers; often they were ‘temporary sojourners’ who worked only a few years on British ships before returning to their village of origin to recommence a rural lifestyle. Others settled permanently and married into the local white population. An early Arab South Shields resident was boarding-house keeper Ali Said, a former sailor, who first came to the town in 1894. The Arab population of South Shields increased during the course of the First World War. In 1913, there were 20–30 Arabs settled in the East Holborn district on the South Shields waterfront.92 In 1914, the total Arab population of South Shields was less than 100, but by 1920 estimates ranged from 300 to 600, for the most part accommodated in eight Arab boarding houses. True figures for Arab residents may have been higher. In March 1919, Dr Abdul Majid,93 President of the London-based Islamic Society, claimed that thousands of Arab sailors left Aden for South Shields during the war to work on British ships. Majid calculated that 700 Arab sailors from the Tyne ports alone died during enemy action in the war.94 In 1922, 630 Arab sailors remained in the port.95 In a process similar to that seen in South Shields, Arab sailors attracted by enhanced wartime wage rates moved to Cardiff in increasing numbers during the First World War. Of an estimated 25 Arab boarding houses in Cardiff in 1918, the majority had opened since the outbreak of the war.96 Evans has suggested that there were 1,000 Arabs in Cardiff by 1916, a threefold increase from the pre-war level.97 By 1919, estimates ranged from 1,000 to 2,000 Arabs resident in Cardiff.98 In Hull, a much smaller Arab settlement, estimated in 1920 at between 60 and 100, was established.99 The number of Chinese sailors sailing from Britain’s ports increased in the years following 1868 when Alfred and Philip Holt established the Blue Funnel line in Liverpool. The Blue Funnel line (owned by the Ocean Steamship Company) was the first direct steamship line trading between Europe and China and from early on used Chinese sailors on the round-trip voyage.100 Soon, Chinese sailors were established in the line’s home port of Liverpool and in smaller numbers in Cardiff and London. However, the number of recorded Chinese residents in Britain remained small. The 1851 census had found a Chinese population of 78 for England and Wales. Fifty years later, the 1901 census recorded only 545 Chinese in England and Wales (500 of whom resided in Liverpool). These low figures may have been because Chinese British subjects were recorded alongside other colonial Britons in the census and only ‘alien’ Chinese were thus separately counted. Moreover, transient Chinese sailors may have escaped the attention of census enumerators taking census numbers in the course of a few days in spring once every 10 years. Finally, Anglo-Chinese dependants born in Britain would not have appeared in any categorization of ‘Chinese’ descent. In Liverpool, Pitt Street and its surrounding streets became an identified area of Chinese settlement, as did the London east end district of Limehouse. By the 18

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Introduction 1880s, Chinese businesses were established in Limehouse, including grocery stores, eating houses and social meeting places, known as ‘fongs’. In 1901, a Chinese laundry was opened in nearby Poplar. The business attracted a hostile reaction from some locals and was attacked by a stone-throwing crowd, forcing the owners to flee. The shop was re-opened later in the year.101 By 1919, there were 14 Chinese businesses in Limehouse.102 The resident Chinese population was augmented when Chinese sailors left their ships to register as unemployed, since once employed from a British rather than an overseas port, sailors were entitled to the same pay rates as locally born British sailors.103 Other Chinese sailors jumped ship in Britain looking for better-paid work. In 1905, there were around 1,000 Chinese sailors on British ships; by 1910, the figure was 5,954. In 1913, it was 9,286; and by 1915, there were 14,224 Chinese employed on British vessels.104 Given a workforce of approximately 200,000, this represented around 7% of sailors on British ships. Wartime labour shortages led to further increases in the numbers of Chinese sailors employed in Britain’s ports. In February 1919, the Home Office estimated the resident Chinese population in Britain at between 3,000 and 4,000.105 This number included several hundred Chinese carpenters and labourers who were employed in aerodrome construction at Hamble and Bicester. However, this work ended in early 1919, after which time these Chinese workers drifted towards areas of traditional Chinese settlement, particularly in London and Liverpool. The ports where rioting broke out relied on expanding and uninterrupted overseas trade. These ports were close to industrial heartlands and/or had good internal transport links that allowed for the rapid transfer of goods to the dock­ side. However, their success meant rapid population growth and, as a result, all were plagued by poor, overcrowded housing, ill health and waterside populations with few social aspirations. The sacrifices of the war years for port dwellers were immediately followed by a period of unemployment in the merchant marine and a general feeling of uncertainty, which permeated throughout the working-class populations in the ports. These experiences were shared among the established and expanding black, Chinese and Arab settlements in these areas.

Theories of crowd behaviour In expressing their feelings in violent terms, the crowds of rioters in Britain’s ports in 1919 were acting out a familiar scenario. The seaport riots were part of a wider social and historical phenomenon. Rioting is a form of direct action which has its roots in pre-industrial society. To resort to riot is a well established form of social protest in Britain. In common law, riot is defined as: a tumultuous disturbance of the peace by three persons or more, who assemble together of their own authority, with an intent mutually to assist one another against anyone who shall oppose them in the execution of an enterprise of a private nature, and afterwards actually execute the enterprise, in a violent and turbulent manner, to the terror of the people.106

19

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Introduction Rioting was a criminal offence; the Riot Act of 1714 made it a felony for 12 or more people to riotously assemble and not to disperse within an hour after the reading of a proclamation commanding them so to do.107 Riots often resulted in notable outcomes; they also led to court prosecutions and hence were well ­covered in personal written accounts, local newspapers and court proceedings. Rioting, particularly in the eighteenth century, has been the subject of much consideration by historians and sociologists. However, less has been written about more modern-day rioting.108 Gustave Le Bon was the first European writer to consider systematically the motivations of riotous crowds.109 Writing in the 1890s, Le Bon developed the classic view of crowds as unthinking ‘mobs’, devoid of purpose and rationality: ‘They were like the leaves which a tempest whirls up and scatters in every direction and then allows to fall’.110 Le Bon’s view was that crowds possessed unique physical and psychological characteristics, such as: impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of judgement and of the critical spirit … which are almost always observed in beings belonging to inferior forms of evolution – in women, savages and children, for instance.111

Le Bon developed the notion of the ‘collective mind’ of the mob, very different from the rational characteristics of the individuals who made it up. In the col­ lective mind, the intellectual aptitudes of individuals disappear, and irrational, unconscious actions take hold, as crowd members become suggestible to group influences, as if under hypnosis.112 Elias Canetti in the 1960s adopted Le Bon’s naturalistic description of crowd formation and action. According to Canetti, crowds were generally ‘organic’, spontaneous gatherings where only an inner core of ‘five, ten or twelve, not more’ had definite aims in their formation.113 Again, as in Le Bon’s crowd theory, for Canetti such a crowd was ill disciplined. ‘The natural crowd is the open crowd; there are no limits whatever to its growth; it does not recognise houses, doors or locks and those who shut themselves in are suspect.’114 The 1960s work of psychologist Neil Smelser also contributed to the develop­ ment of crowd theory. Smelser analysed the aims, motives and underlying values of rioting crowds during American ‘race’ riots in the first half of the twentieth cen­ tury. Together, these aspects of crowd motivations constituted what he described as ‘generalized beliefs’. This term bears comparison with Le Bon’s ‘collective mind’. In fact, there are areas of common ground between Smelser, Le Bon and Canetti: for all three, the crowd or ‘mob’ was an abstract phenomenon. None of these authors considered the individuals who formed the crowd.115 According to Smelser, ‘generalized beliefs’ were a determinant in the out­ break of collective violence.116 Canetti took this a stage further in his description of a ‘persecution complex’ among rioters: ‘one of the most striking traits of the inner life of a crowd is the feeling of being persecuted; a peculiar angry sensitive­ ness and irritability directed against those it has once and forever nominated as enemies’.117 For Smelser, in order for violence to break out there must be an immediate cause to bring these beliefs to the fore: ‘precipitating factors give the generalised beliefs concrete, immediate substance’.118 20

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Introduction A precipitating factor may confirm or justify existing generalised fears or hatreds. Many racial outbursts have originated in the report – true or false – that one of the groups in question has committed some act which is in keeping with its threatening character. Stories of crime, sexual abuse, mischievous activity, unpatriotic displays, etc., have stirred whites into aggressive actions against Negroes.119

In order to identify the motives of rioting crowds, Smelser posed two key ques­ tions: ‘which groups have reason (in their own minds at least) to attack ­others?’ and ‘what kinds of social situations drive persons to scapegoating?’120 These questions can be meaningfully applied to the events of the 1919 British seaport riots. A large cross-section of the white working class, including ­demobilized white service personnel and, specifically, white merchant sailors, felt they had valid reasons for attacking black people as a focus for their post-war frustrations. In Smelser’s theory, people’s perceptions and awareness of their position (real or imagined) are of paramount importance in determining whether a riot will take place. In Britain, members of the host population feared a wartime challenge to their economic and social status as wartime necessity precipitated a more numerous black presence in the seaports. The traditional theories of riot discussed so far were completely overturned by the work of Marxist historians of crowd theory. George Rudé established the notion of the ‘crowd in history’, acting as a rational body, using violence not simply for its own sake but in order to provoke a solution to grievances.121 This is a simplified description of Rudé’s complex argument based upon the realiza­ tion of the importance of economic factors and underlying social motives and beliefs in causing riots. E. P. Thompson also questioned the traditional notion that described ‘mobs’ staging ‘riots of the belly’. The equation put forward by traditional writers on crowd theory was simple: increased food prices plus hunger equalled riot. Marxist historians of pre-industrial riots instead stressed the crowd’s belief in the justice of their activity in keeping food prices down. Far from being mindless, Thompson suggested that such riots laid the foundation for the development of popular radicalism.122 Hobsbawm took this argument further. He described crowd protest in the eighteenth century as ‘collective bargaining by riot’.123 Hobsbawm regarded the riots staged by pre-industrial crowds not as aimless violence, but deliberate actions taken in order to force a change in immediate circumstances. In the case of the food riot, this was to bring down the price of bread in particular, a staple item of the eighteenth-century diet. There was the occasional overlap between the work of traditional crowd theorists and the new wave of Marxist crowd historians. An aspect of Rudé’s theory shared with the psychologist Smelser is that riots need a ‘trigger’ for violence to occur: A racial incident between a Negro and a white may spark a race riot. But unless this incident occurs in the context of a structurally conducive atmosphere (i.e. an atmosphere in which people perceive violence to be a possible means

21

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Introduction of expression), and in an atmosphere of strain (i.e. an atmosphere in which people perceive the incident as symbolic of a troubled state of affairs), the incident will pass without becoming a determinant in a racial outburst.124

Smelser’s ‘precipitating factor’ was echoed in Rudé’s notion of a small incident acting as a ‘trigger’ for a larger disturbance.125 While acknowledging the need for such a ‘trigger’ for violence, Rudé’s theory makes clear that the deeper cause was the more important: ‘We must distinguish between the “trigger” and the underlying cause’.126 Consideration of the 1919 seaport riots give credence to Smelser’s (and, in part, Rudé’s) model of violence following on from a ‘precipitating factor’ against a background of ‘generalized beliefs’.127 Direct job competition on occasion provided the ‘trigger’ for rioting in the ports. In Glasgow, South Shields and Hull in 1919, and Newport and Salford in 1921, riots broke out as groups of sailors competed face to face in the shipping offices for berths on merchant ships. In other cases, popular racist prejudice which led to white hostility to ethnically diverse sexual relationships was evident in some of the disorder. In London, a riot occurred in April 1919 at a café where a group of local white men attacked an Arab male who employed white women. The white crowd accused the women of consorting with their Arab customers. In Cardiff, a riot was precipitated by the violent reaction of a white crowd to the sight of a group of black men and white women returning from a day out in a hired carriage. In Newport, the riot began after the alleged insult of a white ‘lady’ by a black man. While these immediate, racist, responses played a part in the disorder, the underlying causes of the riots (as in Rudé’s theory) were economic. In South Shields a shop owned by an Arab was attacked; and in Newport a chip shop jointly owned by a local white woman and her African-Caribbean husband was wrecked. Nevertheless, in two of the incidents just mentioned in connection with racism as a precipitating factor in the riots, there were also clear economic motives behind the violence: in London it was an Arab-owned café which was attacked, while in Cardiff the ability of black men to afford the carriage hire in which to ‘parade’ their white female companions also provoked white workingclass resentment. (The wider racist aspects of the riots are considered below.) In this context, the models of collective action put forward by Rudé and Hobsbawm, which identify pre-industrial rioting in France and Britain as a form of social protest by the powerless, targeted at other vulnerable groups in society rather than against the untouchable ruling orders, have much resonance with the origins of the 1919 seaport riots. The riots in 1919 broke out in poverty-stricken port communities and were often staged by poorly unionized workers. Faced with a shrinking industry in which employers had the upper hand, and lacking the resources to challenge shipping magnates directly, white British sailors, joined by other port dwellers, turned against those even more vulnerable in the industry: black sailors, who were regarded as unfair job competitors. Since the only beneficiaries of working-class fractionalization within the industry were the ship owners, a Marxist structuralist interpretation of the events is persuasive. 22

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Introduction However, other historical models also inform this consideration of the 1919 riots. More modern approaches to the history of crowds have generally revised Marxist crowd theory. Holton, Harrison and Rogers all criticized Rudé for his focus on aggressive crowds and his somewhat arbitrary neglect of other types of crowd behaviour.128 Both Rogers and Harrison considered further examples of crowd behaviour or other ‘mass phenomena’ in their work. In his examination of eighteenth-century crowds, culture and politics, Rogers suggested Rudé’s methodology was flawed, in that it tended to divorce the crowd from its deeper historical context.129 Tilly’s study of collective violence across continental Europe from early modern times to the twentieth century also stressed the merits of a broader contextual approach.130 The longer-term causes of unrest in the ports will be considered over the next two chapters. A broad approach is also used by Miskell in her analysis of anti-Irish rioting in nineteenth-century Wales. She viewed rioting as an extension of other patterns of protest used to regulate local forms of behaviour. Miskell states that anti-Irish riots in Wales were the product of the belief that the Irish were responsible for taking jobs ‘rightfully belonging to local people’ and working for lower pay, thereby forcing down wage rates.131 Similar concerns over jobs and wages were expressed by ‘locals’ during the 1919 seaport riots. Localism was an important factor in the 1919 rioting in terms of the wider history of riots in Britain, in which ‘foreigners’ were often the objects of attack, in what was a communal activity. Hobsbawm noted: ‘a constant factor is perhaps the hostility to foreigners; that is non-townsmen. An instinctive kind of municipal patriotism seems to be a constant characteristic of the classical “mobs”.’132 Black people in Britain in 1919 were perceived by sections of the white population as ‘foreign’, despite their often common national identity and despite evidence of many having been born or having resided in Britain for years.133 At a time of stress, when xenophobia had become almost a way of life after over four years of constant anti-German and anti-alien propaganda, those deemed ‘foreign’ by virtue of dark skin pigmentation were identified as legitimate targets for the expression of post-war grievances. Tilly’s work on the politics of contention in the nineteenth and twentieth cen­turies suggested that riots often had successful outcomes.134 Tilly’s view is pertinent to the rioting that took place around the time of the First World War. ‘Successful’ wartime mass protest, such as the widespread anti-German riots which speeded up the implementation of the government’s internment policy, was fol­ lowed in 1918/19 by riots among soldiers in army camps awaiting ­demobilization. Their protests ‘succeeded on the whole’, according to Rothstein.135 Such incidents provided a useful example for those who resorted to direct action in the ports with the aim of removing the perceived ‘threat’ of black workers to their employ­ ment prospects. The government decision to launch a scheme of paid repatriation for black colonial sailors in June 1919, at the height of the port rioting, provides some evidence for a successful outcome for white rioters in the ports. Marxist crowd historians, particularly Rudé and Hobsbawm, generally excluded twentieth-century riots from their theoretical framework, despite the apparent 23

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Introduction parallels between modern riots and the Marxist model devised for riots in pre-industrial times. This is because in Marxist analyses riots tend to serve as rational expressions of social, economic and political grievances by the voice­ less ‘lower orders’ in society against the ‘ruling class’. With the mature onset of industrial society in the 1830s and 1840s, trades unionism and campaigns for working-class voting rights replaced such crowd activity. According to Rudé, ‘in industrial society, the disturbances most prone to be historically significant take the shape of strikes and other labour disputes, or of public mass meetings and demonstrations conducted by political organisations’.136 What had been ‘collective bargaining by riot’ was replaced by more politically motivated strike activity by trades unions against capitalist employers. This distinction drawn in Marxist riot historiography between pre- and postindustrial collective action, with riots in the earlier period and strikes in the later, has been challenged by more modern historians, including Stevenson, Harrison and Waddington.137 Harrison questioned the orthodoxy of the transition from riot to more ‘modern’ forms of protest by the 1840s. He believed that Rudé and Hobsbawm invoked a self-fulfilling prophecy: ‘since riotous protest should barely exist in the modern state, examples of it are not actively sought out; and when they do crop up, they are dismissed as backward’.138 Yet Rudé acknowledged areas of similarity between pre- and post-industrial riots. More modern instances of collective behaviour on a par with the pre-industrial crowd considered by Rudé included the anti-alien rioting in Britain during the First World War.139 These, as already mentioned, had some similar aspects to the port rioting of 1919. However, Rudé explicitly rejected the incorporation of more modern riots within his theoretical framework.140 Although strike activity may have replaced rioting as the main form of col­ lective protest among the working class in industrial societies, rioting did not stop. The seaport riots of 1919, alongside the anti-German and other wartime anti-alien riots, can easily be identified as continuation of the older form of col­ lective social action. Rioters in the ports, deprived of a strong, well organized response, because of the weakness of the sailors’ unions, used riot as a means of negotiation with the ship owners and, indirectly, with the government. In his overview of public disorder in twentieth-century Britain, Waddington surveyed a range of riots. He considered early-twentieth-century riots both between competing crowds of white people and those made up of various racialized minority ethnic groups. He also examined clashes later in the cen­ tury between black people and the police.141 Waddington’s model of analysis included a structuralist element similar to that suggested for pre-industrial riot by Rudé and others. Waddington convincingly identified common features in both periods of the last century, whereby ‘inequalities of power, material resources and life chances between different groups in society … form the objective basis of conflict’.142 The 1919 seaport riots by white workers, seen as a response to the belief that black sailors were taking jobs, houses and women, provide further earlytwentieth-century examples of such crowd action. Sections of the white working 24

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Introduction class in some of the major ports perceived that a wartime change had taken place in the balance of social and employment prospects of black and white people, and this belief met one of the preconditions for a violent response. Despite several convincing aspects of Marxist crowd history, this survey of the work of a range of historians and other writers has demonstrated that an assessment of the 1919 seaport riots must be made in the light of theories based on crowd activities across a range of historical periods.

Racism From the second half of the nineteenth century onwards, racist views were more commonly expressed among all sections of British society than in any previous period. The feeling of common brotherhood engendered during the popular anti-slavery campaigns of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had largely evaporated, as new pseudo-scientific theories of ‘race’ produced a distorted evolutionary scale. Black people were subjected to a growing sense of white superiority. This was tied to a feeling of condescension different in degree to the earlier paternalist/humanitarian concern for enslaved blacks. In a sense, the earlier feeling was dictated by class distinction as much as anything. By the second half of the nineteenth century, however, many working-class white people shared in the jingoistic disdain for foreigners, with black people often regarded as the most ‘alien’ of all. In his study of ‘race’ and class during the Victorian era, Lorimer put for­ ward a tripartite argument for the transition of racism from a pursuit of the ruling class to a mass reaction of many in the working class to anything regarded as ‘foreign’.143 The first element in this was the fresh impetus Darwin’s mid-­nineteenth-century discoveries on the ‘descent of man’ gave to racist anthropologists. Anthropological research had led to the establishment (from the eighteenth century or even earlier) of a ‘scale of humanity’ which supported the theory of the natural ‘superiority’ of the white ‘race’. This was based on such ‘findings’ as variations in the size of skulls between the ‘races’, and the alleged lack of develop­ment in the ‘darker races’ (as the jargon of the time put it) after puberty.144 The second element in the growth of popular racist thought was the vindication the belief in the innate inferiority of the ‘darker races’ gave to Britain’s growing imperial conquests. In this way, autocratic rule was not only a necessity but also a blessing to peoples who were unfit to govern themselves. The final element in the spread of racism was the increased use of stereotyping to define black people.145 Be it on stage as a carefree minstrel, in travelling exhibitions presenting re-creations of ‘savage’ African village life, or in deroga­ tory press reporting as ‘chocolate-coloured coons’,146 black people were grouped together in caricature for the delectation of the white majority. Racist views were also commonly aired on the subject of ethnically diverse relationships. West Indian poet and author Claude McKay, who was in Britain at the time of the seaport riots, stated: ‘My experience of the English convinced 25

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Introduction me that prejudice against Negroes had become almost congenital among them. I think the Anglo-Saxon mind becomes morbid when it turns on the sex life of coloured people.’147 This aspect of racist thought was voiced among white people in all classes. White working-class rioters in 1919 expressed their distaste for sexual relations between black and white people. The press reports on the riots often echoed these sentiments. In the early twentieth century, members of the black intelligentsia found that when it came to the question of their ­marriage into a white family, their so-called privileged position in British society counted for little. Trinidadian Henry Sylvester Williams, a qualified barrister and a London borough councillor, was not considered good enough by an army captain from Gillingham to marry his daughter, Agnes Powell. Their marriage went ahead despite the objections.148 White music student Jessie Fleetwood Walmsley found similar family opposition when she gave notice of her inten­ tion to marry the talented black composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, whom she had met at the Royal College of Music in London. ‘My feelings were outraged when measures were adopted to separate us, vile suggestions were made to me and horrid threats hurled right and left.’149 Close connections with the London Missionary Society did not prevent Jamaican doctor Harold Moody and his white wife, Mabel, who was a nurse, encountering opposition from Mabel’s family to the marriage. His biographer also mentions that Moody’s own family was opposed to the marriage.150 Similar opposition to marriage between black and white was stated by Leo W. Daniels, the African-Canadian Secretary of the African Races Association of Glasgow during the seaport rioting: ‘I do not believe in inter-marriages between low class whites and blacks anywhere’.151 It was not merely at a personal level that opposition was displayed to black–white sexual relations. Sir Frederick Lugard,152 the prominent imperial administrator and champion of indirect rule for colonial peoples, writing in 1921, summed up what had become the generally accepted white attitude on this issue: ‘the idea of marriage between his women-folk and men of a coloured race is to him nauseous’.153 Similar racist attitudes were displayed in ‘colonial circles’ during the 1919 riots, as Lugard’s old school chum Sir Ralph Williams, former Governor of the Windward Islands, was moved to inform The Times: It is an undeniable fact that to almost every white man and woman who has lived a life among coloured races, intimate associations between black or coloured men, and white women is a thing of horror. And yet this feeling in no sense springs from hatred between the races.154

Black British intellectuals sought to counteract such racist opinions. Sir Ralph Williams’s letter prompted a swift response from Felix E. M. Hercules: I do not believe that any excuse can be made for white men who take the law into their own hands because they say that they believe that the association between the men of my race and white women is degrading. Sir Ralph Williams and those who think like him should remember that writing in this way gives a stimulus to these racial riots and can only have one ultimate result, the

26

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Introduction downfall of the British Empire…. If Sir Ralph Williams thinks that the problem can be solved by sending every black man or his unit forthwith back to his own country, then we should be compelled to see that every white unit is sent back to England from Africa and from the West Indian islands in order that the honour of our sisters and daughters over there may be kept intact.155

This last sentence refers to the double standard applied by white ‘empirebuilders’ who could speak of the horror of black men having sexual relations with white women but who were strangely silent on the subject of white male colonialists doing the same with black women and girls. Racist viewpoints were apparent in the comments of some of the white rioters and their supporters, as well as in official pronouncements on the riots; hence this aspect of the riots merits consideration. However, although such views were expressed during the seaport riots, racism was not the cause of the violence. To argue this would be to fall into the traditional ‘race relations’156 view of events, that is, of their being determined by considerations of divergent ethnicity above all else, including the pressing economic and social motivations of those involved. An explanation of the riots based on the presence of racist antipathy among sections of white British society does not account for why these riots occurred only in ports, nor why they took place in 1919. The riots were a prod­ uct of general post-war circumstances and the particularly poor employment situation within the merchant shipping industry. Divisions within the seagoing workforce were manufactured by the restrictive practices imposed by the weak sailors’ unions to retain and encourage their (white) membership. A counter-argument to the ‘race relations’ approach taken by many sociolo­ gists since the Second World War in the debate about host responses to colonial migrants and immigrants has stressed the relative economic status of immigrant workers as crucial to understanding their position in society. The theory put forward by Marxists Castles and Kosack was that immigrants gained admission to developed countries because they agreed to take jobs that local workers would not. Therefore, for Castles and Kosack the basic determinant of immigrants’ status in any host society was the function they played in the socio-economic structure of that society: Immigrant workers belong to the working class. But within this class they form a bottom stratum, due to the subordinate status of their occupations…. There is a tendency among indigenous workers not to perceive immigrants as members of the same class, but rather as an alien competing group. Prejudice hinders communication and prevents the development of class solidarity.157

This is a convincing argument, which still has resonance in the present day as migrant guest workers and native disadvantaged groups, such as unskilled women, fill the lowest-status jobs in service industries. In relation to a ­longer-term historical perspective, a class analysis rather than a ‘race relations’ problematic is a much more persuasive theoretical tool to use in considering the 1919 seaport riots in Britain. 27

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Introduction

Note on historiography and sources used In spite of the serious and widespread nature of the seaport riots and their wider impact around the British empire – for example, in the revenge attacks launched by repatriated African-Caribbean sailors on white sailors and businesses in the West Indies in the months following the riots – they have remained largely overlooked by ‘mainstream’ historians of the period.158 The riots have, however, been discussed by a number of writers of black and immigration history.159 Literature on the history of immigration to Britain, including many case ­histories of immigrant and ethnic populations, far outweighs the limited range of writing on the 1919 riot. Panayi, in particular, has written extensively on issues of ethnic identity or ‘ethnicity’.160 This wider literature has shown that, in the late nineteenth century, the arrival of growing numbers of eastern European immigrants, many of whom were Jews, provoked a debate among anti-alienists about the extent to which British ‘national identity’ was being diluted. This debate and the broader ‘aliens question’ continued into the early twentieth century and was much in evidence during anti-alien attacks on Germans and eastern European Jews during the First World War. Concerns for a challenge to British national identity by so-called ‘alien’ incomers were also expressed during the seaport riots, when the focus shifted to African, African-Caribbean, Arab, Chinese and south Asian people in Britain in the years 1919–21. Some writers have sought to examine ‘meanings’ of national identity evi­ denced during the 1919 seaport riots by contrasting the general attitudes of white and colonial black British residents towards their relative positions in the British imperial hierarchy. Rowe stated that ‘while whites viewed blacks as for­ eign, different and inferior, blacks viewed themselves as citizens and defenders of the British Empire’.161 Holmes noted that ‘the incidents in the ports were … a reflection within a metropolitan context of the racialism that had developed as a result of British imperial and colonial rule’.162 Writing on the Liverpool riot­ ing, May and Cohen commented: ‘The Liverpool events vividly demonstrate the intimate link between the origins of the metropolitan country in her colonial Empire’.163 While the outbreak of the 1919 seaport riots has sometimes been measured against constructed ‘meanings’ of national identity, this book utilizes the expressed opinions of black working-class and middle-class British residents on their status and imperial obligations.164 The broader issue of what may be crudely described as ‘race’ and labour has been addressed by several historians.165 Works by Lunn and Tabili have con­ sidered the often racist campaigns and actions of the leading sailors’ union, the National Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union, in its attempt to limit the job opportuni­ ties for black and Asian sailors and the relationship between colonial workers and trades unions in the merchant shipping industry over long periods.166 Lunn has indicated that such broad consideration of union activity should aim to reflect local as well as national views and policy.167 This book examines local interpretations of the racist policies of the National Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union, in particular via the outbreak of riots in the merchant seamen’s hiring 28

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Introduction yards in Glasgow and South Shields in 1919, Hull in 1920, and Salford and Newport in 1921. The sources used reflect the broad range of themes which are considered in this book. Local dimensions to the rioting in the nine ports are incorporated via local archival sources, including legal proceedings, council papers, police records and press accounts. Government responses to the riots, chiefly through the creation of the paid repatriation scheme for black British colonial sailors, are discussed with reference to a range of internal discussions and official documents, which were examined at the National Archives in Kew, London. Departmental papers consulted include those produced by the Board of Trade, the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the Ministry of Shipping and, most useful of all, the Colonial Office. Contemporary issues of newspapers were accessed at local archives and at the British Newspaper Library, Colindale, London. Other contemporary periodicals were also consulted at the newspaper library, includ­ ing: the black press; the sailors’ trades newspapers the Seaman and the Marine Caterer; the ship owners’ publication, Fairplay; various papers from the socialist press; and the jingoistic journal John Bull. Personal accounts of the riots have also been used. These include published autobiographies, eyewitness descriptions and a fictional account in a contemporary work by Claude McKay.168

Chapter outline Chapter 1 sets out the inter-locking causes of the seaport riots. These included the high level of post-war unemployment in the merchant navy and the tension caused in overcrowded ports by the arrival of increased numbers of black people to work and settle. The chapter also considers the social dislocation brought about by the end of the war and the problems created by four and half years of conflict, including the serious housing shortfall. The actions and protests of organizations representing ex-service personnel are discussed in Chapter 1, as are the parallel outbreaks of rioting in France and North America. Chapter 2 focuses on the events of the seaport riots, and draws out common and contrasting themes in the rioting that occurred across Britain. Chapter 3 then analyses the make-up of the rioting crowds, and includes analysis of the gender, ages, birthplaces and occupations of rioters and others associated with the riotous outbreaks. That chapter also explores the stated motivations of rioters on both sides, particularly with regard to job competition and attitudes towards relationships between black and white people. Chapter 4 examines police procedures during the riots and considers the court cases that followed. Chapter 5 examines British government responses to the riots, in particular the scheme of paid ‘repatriation’ that was launched in June 1919. Chapter 6 considers the short- and longer-term consequences of the seaport riots, including the situation faced by black British workers and their fami­ lies in the inter-war period and the government response to continued high 29

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Introduction ­ nemployment in the ports, which saw many black Britons reclassified as ‘aliens’ u in order to limit their job opportunities.

Notes 1 It should be noted that many of the primary sources used to research this book provided little specific information on nationality, hence where such detail is miss­ ing or in cases where groups of people of various nationalities were involved, the term ‘black’ is used to describe people from Africa, those of African-Caribbean birth and persons of African descent. For people from Asia, the terms used are ‘Chinese’ where this can be identified and ‘south Asian’ for those from the Indian subconti­ nent. Readers may also need to know that all sailors from the Indian subcontinent were identified in contemporary accounts as ‘Lascars’. The term ‘Lascar’ had its roots in the Urdu name for an army or camp, lashkar, and had developed through usage of the term ‘gun-lascar’ for artillery men used onboard Royal Navy ships in the eighteenth century. Sailors from territories in East Africa, the Horn of Africa and south-west Arabia, including the then British port of Aden, the protectorate of Aden and Somalia (Somaliland) are referred to by nation where known. This type of information is frequently unknown, and in these instances the contemporary catch-all term ‘Arab’ is used. 2 See Chapter 1 for more on these wartime riots. 3 J. White, ‘The Summer Riots of 1919’, New Society, 57 (3 August 1981), p. 261. 4 See House of Commons Debates, vol. 116, 26 May 1919, col. 991. 5 Neil Gordon Orr, ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning: Peace Day in Luton 1919’, Family and Community History, 2(1) (May 1999), p. 17. 6 For the London Aldwych riot see The Times, 10 March 1919, p. 10, 17 March 1919, p. 8; for the Edinburgh Gayfield Square riot see the Glasgow Herald, 10 July 1919, p. 3 and the Bulletin (Glasgow), 7 July 1919, p. 2. 7 Press accounts of the time frequently commented on the involvement of service and ex-service personnel in the seaport riots. See Chapter 2 for some examples. 8 J. Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War (London: Reaktion Books, 1996), pp. 22 and 252. 9 J. Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face to Face Killing in Twentieth Century Warfare (London: Basic Books, 1999), p. 207. 10 The Times, 13 June 1919, p. 5. Contemporary newspaper reports often used the term ‘negro’ without capitalization. This term was, at the time, a neutral description for black people. 11 In 1847 the house of Don Pacifico, a Portuguese trader resident in Athens, was burned down during an anti-Semitic riot. Don Pacifico made an inflated damages claim to the Greek authorities, which was dismissed. He then claimed British nationality through his birth in Gibraltar and requested British assistance. Foreign Secretary Palmerston used Don Pacifico’s damages claim as an excuse for a show of force against the Greeks. The port of Piraeus was blockaded and Greek ships were seized to make good the claim for losses made by Don Pacifico. Forced to respond to fierce criticism of British naval actions against independent Greece from France and from Cabinet colleagues, Palmerston set out before Parliament what became a defining concept of Victorian British foreign policy. 12 Speech by Lord Palmerston (Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston) to the House of Commons, 24 June 1850, ‘On Affairs in Greece’, reproduced in W. J. Bryan, ed., The World’s Famous Orations. Great Britain II – 1780–1861 (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1906), located at www.bartelby.com/268/4/18.html.

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Introduction 13 British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act 1914, p. 33. 14 L. Colley, ‘Britishness and Otherness: An Argument’, Journal of British Studies, 31 (October 1992), pp. 324–25. 15 Colley, ‘Britishness and Otherness’, p. 311. 16 R. Lapiere, ‘Race Prejudice: France and England’, Social Forces, 7 (1918), p. 111, cited in C. Holmes, John Bull’s Island: Immigration and British Society (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), p. 106. 17 See S. O. Rose, ‘Sex, Citizenship, and the Nation in World War II Britain’, in C. Hall, ed., Cultures of Empire: Colonizers in Britain and the Empire in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. A Reader (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 247. See also S. O. Rose, Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Britain 1939–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 9. 18 T. Kushner and D. Ceserani, The Internment of Aliens in Britain (London: Frank Cass, 1993), p. 12. 19 T. Kushner, ‘Anti-Semitism and Austerity: The August 1947 Riots in Britain’, in P. Panayi, ed., Racial Violence in Britain in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1996), p. 153. 20 K. Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. xii. 21 See C. Hall et al., Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the British Reform Act of 1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 51. 22 C. Hall, ed., Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830– 1867 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002), p. 8. 23 Liverpool Courier, 12 June 1919, p. 3. 24 Hall et al., Defining the Victorian Nation, p. 182. 25 L. Tabili, ‘We Ask For British Justice’: Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 3. 26 Tabili, ‘We Ask For British Justice’, p. 2. 27 R. May and R. Cohen, ‘The Interaction Between Race and Colonialism: A Case Study of the Liverpool Race Riots of 1919’, Race and Class, 16 (October 1974), p. 113. 28 The National Archives (TNA), CO 323/814, 282–83, Lord Milner, ‘Memorandum on the Repatriation of Coloured Men’, 23 June 1919. 29 South Wales Daily News, 14 June 1919, p. 4. 30 Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury, 11 June 1919, p. 3. 31 Liverpool Record Office, Central Library, Liverpool, Liverpool Watch Committee Minute Book, Min/Wat 1/56, Letter from the Clerk of Liverpool Presbytery, Church of England, to Liverpool Corporation, 8 July 1919. 32 Report from the Daily Graphic reprinted in the Liverpool Courier, 12 June 1919, p. 3. 33 N. Evans, ‘Across the Universe: Racial Violence in the Post-war Crisis in Imperial Britain 1919–1925’, in D. Frost, ed., Ethnic Labour and British Imperial Trade: A History of Ethnic Seafarers in the United Kingdom (London: Frank Cass, 1995), p. 28. 34 Hercules was also Associate Secretary of the African Progress Union. He was an outspoken critic of the British government during the seaport riots and later toured the Caribbean to raise support for the SPAO. See P. Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 1984), pp. 313–14. 35 Report of the SPAO meeting in the Liverpool Courier, 16 June 1919, p. 8. 36 Evening Times (Glasgow), 19 June 1919, p. 1. 37 African Telegraph (London), 3 (July–August 1919), p. 243. 38 Daily Record and Mail (Glasgow), 25 June 1919, p. 8. 39 The ARAG affiliated with the West African Students Union in 1928. The latter

31

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Introduction London-based organization was formed in 1925. For more information, see I. Geiss, The Pan-African Movement (London: Methuen, 1974), p. 299. 40 N. Evans, ‘The South Wales Race Riots of 1919’, Llafur, 3 (spring 1980), p. 20. 41 TNA, CO 318/349, Enclosure in government despatch, 1 October 1919: Petition by 44 signatories to Colonel Bryan, acting Governor of Jamaica, 29 August 1919. For further discussion of this petition, see R. Smith, Jamaican Volunteers in the First World War: Race, Masculinity and the Development of the National Consciousness (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 143–44. 42 South Wales Echo, 14 June 1919, p. 1. 43 Western Mail (Cardiff), 19 June 1919, p. 7. 44 See Chapter 2 for discussion of the violence between black and Chinese sailors in Hull in 1919. 45 South Wales Argus, 14 June 1919, p. 4. 46 Evening Times, 19 June 1919, p. 1. 47 The longevity of such divisions is discussed in the journal of the League of Coloured Peoples, The Keys (London). See issues 2(2) (October–December 1934), p. 22, and 4(2) (October–December 1936), p. 16. The Keys: The Official Organ of the League of Coloured Peoples was reprinted in a single volume with an introduction by Roderick J. MacDonald (Millwood, NY: Kraus Thomson Organization, 1975). 48 See P. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso Books, 1993), p. 2. 49 McKay was born in Jamaica in 1889. He lived in London from the end of 1919 to 1921. He died in 1948. 50 C. McKay, Banjo: A Story Without a Plot (New York: Harper Brothers Publishers, 1929), p. 101. 51 N. Evans, ‘Red Summers 1917–1919’, History Today, 51(2) (February 2001), p. 28. 52 Evans, ‘Red Summers’, p. 31. 53 J. Horne, ‘Immigrant Workers in France During World War One’, French Historical Studies, 14(1) (spring 1985), p. 80. 54 R. Segal, The Race War: The World-Wide Conflict of Races (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), p. 230. 55 A. D. Grimshaw, ‘Actions of the Police and the Military in American Race Riots’, Phylon, 24(2) (1963), p. 272. 56 T. Stovall, ‘The Colour Line Behind the Lines: Racial Violence in France During the Great War’, American Historical Review, 103 (June 1998), p. 739. 57 W. R. Lee, ‘The Socio-economic and Demographic Characteristics of Port Cities: A Typology for Comparative Analysis’, Urban History, 25(2) (1998), p. 147. 58 See Lee, ‘The Socio-economic and Demographic Characteristics of Port Cities’; and R. Lawton and R. Lee, Population and Society in Western European Port-Cities, c. 1650 to 1939 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002). 59 E. Shinwell, Conflict Without Malice (London: Odhams Press, 1955), p. 49. 60 F. J. Lindop, ‘A History of Seamen’s Trade Unionism to 1929’ (MPhil thesis, University of London, 1972), p. 44. 61 Lee, ‘The Socio-economic and Demographic Characteristics of Port Cities’, pp. 165–66. 62 Lee, ‘The Socio-economic and Demographic Characteristics of Port Cities’, pp. 157, 166. 63 Lee, ‘The Socio-economic and Demographic Characteristics of Port Cities’, pp. 163–64. 64 Quoted in T. Lane, Liverpool: Gateway of Empire (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1983), p. 93.

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Introduction 65 J. Jenkinson, Scotland’s Health 1919–1948 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 169–72. 66 W. H. Fraser and I. Mavor, eds, Glasgow, Vol. 2 – 1830 to 1912 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 63. 67 Fraser and Mavor, Glasgow, p. 74. 68 T. Bergin, D. N. Pearce and S. Shaw, eds, Salford: A City and Its Past (Salford: City of Salford, 1975), p. 117. 69 J. Bellamy, ‘Occupations in Kingston upon Hull 1841–1948’, Yorkshire Bulletin of Economic and Social Research, 4 (1952), p. 39. 70 Lee, ‘The Socio-economic and Demographic Characteristics of Port Cities’, p. 164. 71 E. Gillet and K. A. MacMahon, A History of Hull (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 281. 72 R. Brown, Waterfront Organisation in Hull 1870–1900 (Occasional Papers in Economic and Social History No. 5) (Hull: University of Hull Publications, 1972), p. 1. 73 Gillet and MacMahon, A History of Hull, p. 327. 74 M. J. Daunton, Cardiff: Coal Metropolis, 1870–1914 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1977), p. 2. 75 Daunton, Cardiff, p. 182. 76 G. A. Jackson, The History and Archeaology of Ports (London: World’s Work, 1983), p. 130. 77 M. Banton, The Coloured Quarter: Negro Immigrants in a British City (London: Jonathan Cape, 1955), p. 22. 78 J. P. Green, Black Edwardians: Black People in Britain 1901–1914 (London: Frank Cass, 1998), pp. 70–73. 79 Colonial Office, Report of a Parliamentary Committee on Distressed Colonial and Indian Subjects (Cd 5133) (London: HMSO, April 1910), appendix V, statement from Hackney Board of Guardians, p. 94. 80 Firemen spent their working lives below deck loading coal into the furnace to keep a full head of steam in the engine. 81 John Richard Archer became Britain’s first black Mayor, for the London borough of Battersea in 1913. He also served as a councillor for the area and was an agent for the Labour Party. He was an active pan-Africanist campaigner and a President of the African Progress Union. See Chapter 3 for a discussion of Archer’s intervention in the seaport riots. 82 During the 1919 riots, a local newspaper estimated that 2,000 West Africans and West Indians were living in Liverpool. This estimation did not include any consider­ ation of the numbers of British-born black people in the city. See Liverpool Courier, 11 June 1919, p. 4. 83 D. A. Farnie, The Manchester Ship Canal and the Rise of the Port of Manchester (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980), p. 17. 84 Salford Reporter, 15 March 1919, p. 3. 85 J. Walvin, Black and White: The Negro and English Society, 1555–1945 (London: Allen Lane, 1973), p. 205. 86 Salford Reporter, 15 March 1919, p. 3. 87 Colonial Office, Report of a Committee, minutes of evidence, appendix 5, pp. 96–97. 88 Daunton, Cardiff, p. 143. 89 Evans, ‘The South Wales Race Riots of 1919’, pp. 5, 12. 90 Colonial Office, Report of a Committee, appendix 5, submission from Newport Board of Guardians, p. 99. 91 See Chapter 2 for more on James Gillespie. 92 R. I. Lawless, ‘Muslim Migration to the North East of England During the Early Twentieth Century’, Local Historian, 27(4) (1997), p. 227.

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Introduction 93 Indian-born Dr Abdul Majid was a London-based barrister. See Chapter 3 for a discussion of his visit to South Shields following the February 1919 riot. 94 Shields Gazette and Shipping Telegraph, 2 March 1919, p. 2. 95 TNA, CO 725/21/8. The figure was cited in a 1930 report on ‘destitute coloured seamen’ from the chief superintendent, mercantile marine office, North Shields (sic), to the Mercantile Marine Department, Board of Trade, 29 July 1930. 96 R. I. Lawless, ‘Recruitment and Regulation: Migration for Employment of “Adenese” Seamen in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’, New Arabian Studies, 11 (1994), p. 89. 97 Evans, ‘The South Wales Race Riots of 1919’, p. 8. 98 See Chapter 2 for more on the growth of Arab settlement in Britain during the First World War. 99 Hull Daily Mail, 21 June 1920, p. 4. 100 The number of Chinese residents in Liverpool in 1881 was recorded as 15; by 1911 the figure was 502. See I. G. Law and J. Henfrey, A History of Race and Racism in Liverpool (Liverpool: Merseyside Community Relations Council, 1981), p. 124. 101 D. Jones, ‘The Chinese in Britain: Origins and Development of a Community’, New Community, 7(3) (winter 1979), p. 319. Chinese laundries were also attacked in Cardiff and Liverpool during the 1911 strike by the National Seamen’s and Firemen’s Union because of the identification of Chinese sailors as strike breakers. See Chapter 2 for more on civil disorder involving Chinese people during 1919. 102 J. Seed, ‘Limehouse Blues: Looking for Chinatown in the London Docks 1900–1940’, History Workshop Journal, 62(1) (autumn 2006), p. 63. 103 A. Shang, The Chinese in Britain (London: Batsford Academic and Educational, 1984), p. 9. 104 All figures taken from A. Marsh and V. Ryan, The Seamen: A History of the National Union of Seamen 1887–1987 (Oxford: Malthouse Press, 1989), p. 71. 105 TNA, HO 11843/139147, HO internal memorandum on Chinese labour, 12 February 1919. 106 Cited in J. Stevenson, Popular Disturbances in England 1700–1870 (London: Longman, 1979), p. 506. 107 Stevenson, Popular Disturbances, p. 6. 108 Historians who have looked at British twentieth-century crowds riots include: G. Gaskell and R. Benewick, The Crowd in Contemporary Britain (London: Sage, 1987); R. Quinalt and J. Stevenson, eds, Popular Protest and Public Order: Six Studies in British History 1790–1920 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1974); and R. J. Coles, ‘The Moral Economy of the Crowd: Some Twentieth Century Food Riots’, Journal of British Studies, 18 (autumn 1978), pp. 157–76. 109 Le Bon trained as a doctor in Paris in the 1860s, but earned a living as a writer on scientific and political subjects. He was deeply conservative and highly critical of left-wing political movements. Le Bon’s thinking on rioting was influenced by the science of the day, hence his biological analysis of the irrational ‘mob’ mentality as a physical phenomenon. Le Bon’s view of the crowd was not one dimensional; he acknowledged certain qualities among crowds, principally bravery and sacrifice. See G. Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (London: Ernest Benn, 1896), pp. 26, 29–30. For more on Le Bon’s career see Robert A. Nye’s introduction to G. Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (Transaction Publishers, 1999), pp. 10–11. 110 Le Bon, The Crowd, p. 42. 111 Le Bon, The Crowd, p. 40. 112 Le Bon, The Crowd, pp. 26, 29–30.

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Introduction 113 E. Canetti, Crowds and Power (London: Victor Gollancz, 1962), p. 16. 114 Canetti, Crowds and Power, p. 16. 115 Smelser only briefly discusses the composition of crowds. N. J. Smelser, Theories of Collective Behaviour (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), pp. 253, 260–61. 116 Smelser, Theories of Collective Behaviour, p. 16. 117 Canetti, Crowds and Power, p. 22. 118 Smelser, Theories of Collective Behaviour, p. 17. 119 Smelser, Theories of Collective Behaviour, pp. 249–50. 120 Smelser, Theories of Collective Behaviour, p. 241. 121 See G. Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958) and The Crowd in History 1730–1848: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England (New York: Wiley, 1964). For use of the Rudé model using eighteenth-century events in the United States, see David Grimsted, ‘Rioting in Its Jacksonian Setting’, American Historical Review, 77 (1972), p. 379. 122 E. P. Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present, 58 (1971), p. 77. 123 E. J. Hobsbawm, ‘The Machine Breakers’, Past and Present, 1 (1952), p. 66. 124 Smelser, Theories of Collective Behaviour, p. 269. 125 Rudé, The Crowd in History, p. 244. 126 Rudé, The Crowd in History, p. 245. 127 Smelser also acknowledged that ‘generalized beliefs’ could be exacerbated by wartime conditions. See Theories of Collective Behaviour, p. 243. 128 See R. J. Holton, ‘The Crowd in History: Some Problems in Theory and Method’, Social History, 3(2) (1978), pp. 219–34; M. Harrison, Crowds and History: Mass Phenomena in English Towns, 1790–1835 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 11–12; and N. Rogers, Crowds, Culture and Politics in Georgian Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 12. 129 Rogers, Crowds, Culture and Politics, pp. 8–9. 130 C. L. Tilly, ‘Major Forms of Collective Action in Western Europe 1500–1975’, Theory and Society, 3(3) (autumn 1976), pp. 365–75. 131 L. Miskell, ‘Reassessing the Anti-Irish Riot: Popular Protest and the Irish in South Wales, c. 1826–1882’, in P. O’Leary, ed., Irish Migrants in Modern Wales (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004), p. 107. 132 E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1974), p. 112. 133 Among long-term black residents in Britain was the Slaven family, who had lived in London since 1895. The Slavens applied for repatriation to the West Indies in 1920, by which time Slaven had lived 25 years in Britain. See Chapter 5 for more on the Slaven family. 134 See C. L. Tilly, The Contentious French (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 3–4; and C. L. Tilly and R. Tilly, The Rebellious Century 1830–1930 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 285. 135 A. Rothstein, The Soldiers’ Strikes of 1919 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1980), p. 105. 136 Rudé, The Crowd in History, p. 5. 137 See, for example, Stevenson, Popular Disturbances, passim; Harrison, Crowds and History; and D. Waddington, Contemporary Issues in Public Disorder: A Comparative and Historical Approach (London: Routledge, 1992). 138 Harrison, Crowds and History, p. 18. See also Holton, ‘The Crowd in History’, p. 224. 139 ‘It would be ridiculous, of course, to press this general distinction too far. Strikes were frequent enough in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries…. Race riots today are not unlike religious riots of an earlier period…. Again, in 1914, German

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Introduction bakers’ shops in the east end of London were pillaged and wrecked as they might have been in Paris in the Revolution.’ Rudé, The Crowd in History, p. 6. See also G. Rudé, Paris and London in the Eighteenth Century (London: Fontana, 1969), p. 34. 140 ‘The overlap between periods is, then, considerable and extends into fields that are as much the concern of the historian as the sociologist, yet, in my view, they are not sufficient to invalidate the general distinction that I am seeking to establish.’ Rudé, The Crowd in History, p. 6. 141 Waddington, Contemporary Issues in Public Disorder, p. 14. 142 Waddington, Contemporary Issues in Public Disorder, p. 92. 143 D. Lorimer, Colour, Class and the Victorians: English Attitudes to the Negro in the MidNineteenth Century (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1978). 144 P. D. Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action 1780–1850 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967), pp. 364–79; C. Bolt, Victorian Attitudes to Race (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971), p. 17; Lorimer, Colour, Class and the Victorians, pp. 12–14; Fryer, Staying Power, pp. 165–81; Paul B. Rich, ‘Doctrines of Racial Segregation in Britain, 1900–44’, New Community, 12(1) (winter 1984/85), p. 75. 145 For more on this topic see J. M. Mackenzie, Propaganda and Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), p. 212; and J. M. Mackenzie, ed., Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), passim. 146 This racist phrase appeared in the ‘pertinent and otherwise’ column under the heading ‘a change of colour’ in the Bulletin, 26 July 1919, p. 5. 147 C. McKay, A Long Way From Home (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1970), p. 76. 148 O. C. Mathurin, Henry Sylvester Williams and the Origins of the Pan-African Movement 1869–1911 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976), p. 35. 149 J. Coleridge-Taylor, A Memory Sketch, or Personal Reminiscences of My Husband – Genius and Musician, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, 1875–1912 (Bognor Regis: John Crowther, 1943), p. 20. 150 D. A. Vaughan, Negro Victory: The Life Story of Dr Harold Moody (independently pub­ lished, 1955), p. 33; MacDonald, The Keys, p. 5. 151 Letter from Daniels to the Evening Citizen (Glasgow), 27 June 1919, p. 4. 152 Frederick Dealty Lugard (1858–1945) was educated at Rossall and Sandhurst. Lugard, who fought in the Afghan War (1879–80), moved from the military to a career in British overseas government. He served as Administrator of Uganda, 1889–92, Commissioner for the Hinterland of Nigeria and Lagos, 1893–98; High Commissioner in Chief for Northern Nigeria, 1900–06; Governor and Commissioner for North and South Nigeria simultaneously, 1912–13; and Governor-General for unified Nigeria, 1914–19. He served from 1922 to 1936 as a member of the Permanent Mandates Commission for the League of Nations. 153 F. D. Lugard, ‘The Colour Problem’, Edinburgh Review, 233(476) (April 1921), p. 282. 154 Sir Ralph Williams, letter to The Times, 14 June 1919, p. 8. 155 F. E. M. Hercules, letter to The Times, 18 June 1919, p. 8. 156 In the ‘race relations’ approach, violent reactions based on difference in skin pig­ mentation are seen as sufficient explanation for outbreaks of rioting and extreme prejudice directed by elements of the white host society against black and Asian populations. A solution to the violence is seen in the eventual ‘assimilation’ of these racialized ethnic minorities into wider British society. For a discussion of the limita­ tions of the ‘race relations’ approach to the history of black settlement, see K. Lunn, ‘Race Relations or Industrial Relations? Race and Labour in Britain 1850–1950’, in

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Introduction K. Lunn, ed., Race and Labour in Twentieth Century Britain (London: Frank Cass, 1985), pp. 1–2. See Banton, The Coloured Quarter and White and Coloured: The Behavior of British People Towards Immigrants (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1959) for general surveys of black settlements in Britain using the ‘race relations’ approach. 157 S. Castles and G. Kosack, Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 6–7. 158 A rare exception is J. Stevenson, British Society 1914–45 (London: Penguin, 1988), p. 98, but even this contains only a passing reference to the riots. 159 See Evans, ‘The South Wales Race Riots of 1919’; N. Evans, ‘The South Wales Race Riots of 1919: A Documentary Postscript’, Llafur, 3(4) (1983), p. 79–85; Evans, ‘Across the Universe’; Fryer, Staying Power, pp. 300–16; Holmes, John Bull’s Island, pp. 95–109; May and Cohen, ‘The Interaction Between Race and Colonialism’; A. Murphy, From the Empire to the Rialto: Racism and Reaction in Liverpool, 1918–1948 (Birkenhead: Liver Press, 1995), pp. 13–42; M. Rowe, ‘Sex, Race and Riot in Liverpool, 1919’, Immigrants and Minorities, 19(2) (2000), pp. 53–70; Walvin, Black and White, pp. 202–15; White, ‘The Summer Riots of 1919’. For in-depth accounts of the 1919 seaport riots, see J. Jenkinson, ‘The Race Riots in Britain: A Survey’, in R. Lotz, and I. Pegg, eds, Under the Imperial Carpet: Essays in Black History 1780–1950 (Crawley: Rabbit Press, 1987), pp. 182–207; and J. Jenkinson, ‘The 1919 Riots’, in P. Panayi, ed., Racial Violence in Britain in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1996), pp. 92–111. 160 P. Panayi, Immigration, Ethnicity and Racism in Britain 1815–1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), pp. 76–101. 161 M. Rowe, ‘Sex, Race and Riot in Liverpool, 1919’, p. 66. 162 Holmes, John Bull’s Island, p. 109. 163 May and Cohen, ‘The Interaction Between Race and Colonialism’, p. 112. 164 A chapter of mine on the Glasgow riot examined the colonial origins of the black British workers attacked. See J. Jenkinson, ‘The Glasgow Race Disturbances of 1919’, in K. Lunn, ed., Race and Labour in Twentieth Century Britain (London: Frank Cass, 1985), pp. 53–54. 165 See for example K. Lunn, ed., Race and Labour in Twentieth Century Britain (London: Frank Cass, 1985), in particular his chapter, ‘Race Relations or Industrial Relations?’; Tabili, ‘We Ask For British Justice’; D. Frost, ed., Ethnic Labour and British Imperial Trade: A History of Ethnic Seafarers in the United Kingdom (London: Frank Cass, 1995); and D. Frost, Work and Community Among West African Migrant Workers Since the Nineteenth Century (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999). 166 See Lunn, Race and Labour, pp. 10–17; and Tabili, ‘We Ask For British Justice’, pp. 81–112. 167 Lunn, Race and Labour, p. 17. 168 As previously mentioned, Claude McKay’s 1929 novel Banjo includes reference to an attack on one his characters, Taloufa, during the Cardiff riots. McKay, Banjo, p. 101.

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C hapter 1

The wider context of the seaport riots

Present discontents [are] … not the work of agitators but the products of age-long expectations accelerated by the developments of war. (J. H. Thomas, MP and leader of the Railwaymen’s Union, 1919)1 You were fortunate at times, if you could find, out of a crew of sixteen men, two of them who could understand English. Of course, ports differed in this matter. In some, the great majority of the men were British; but in ports like Cardiff, on the Tyne, and in many other places the majority were foreigners of every nationality. (Joseph Havelock Wilson, 1925)2

Numerous immediate and inter-locking factors contributed to the outbreak of the 1919 riots. Many of these were affected in some way by the experiences and consequences of war. For the British working class, war service was part of a bargain struck with the state. When the promised benefits (including better housing and more job opportunities) were not forthcoming in the postwar years, there was a flood of public demonstrations, often organized and led by associations of ex-combatants. Mass demobilization threw millions of returned war veterans unregulated into the job market. An influx of returning sailors occurred just as the merchant shipping industry fell into recession, as the heightened demands of war gave way to a return to plying long-disrupted trading routes. One result of the increased competition for jobs in the merchant navy was the reinvigoration of the long-standing campaign against the employ­ ment of overseas labour by the main seamen’s unions. The increased tension in the major seaports caused by the worsening unemployment situation and the actions of the seamen’s unions left these overcrowded, impoverished centres of settlement ripe for mass protest. Rioting in the ports in 1919 was part of a wider wave of dissent and violence among sections of the working class left disillusioned by their peacetime pros­ pects. Rioting was common around Britain during the war and throughout 1919. 38

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The wider context of the seaport riots The influence of successful wartime riots, for example the anti-German rioting which continued throughout the war years, showed that concessions could be won from government by an organized, widespread show of violent dissent. This chapter begins by considering the pressures placed on British society by the programme of mass demobilization that followed the end of the First World War, before examining episodes of violent mass protest and rioting which broke out in many of Britain’s towns and cities in 1919. It then looks at the history of overseas labour in the merchant navy, before considering wartime develop­ ments, particularly with regard to the actions of the largest sailors’ union, the National Seamen’s and Firemen’s Union (NSFU). The final part of the chapter places Britain’s seaport riots in the context of rioting elsewhere in the world in the years between 1917 and 1922, much of it involving war veterans.

Demobilization difficulties and post-war housing and employment issues The demobilization of millions of ex-combatants led to complications in the employment market, pressure on housing and general social upheaval. For many months after the war, troops were held in camps pending demobiliza­ tion and, for some, repatriation. Inevitably, there were also many weapons in circulation and hundreds of thousands well trained in their use. In Britain’s ports, demobilized Royal Navy personnel sought to move back into their previ­ ous employment, usually in the merchant navy. During the war, employers had looked elsewhere for labour, hiring thousands of British black, Chinese, south Asian and Arab sailors. The months immediately after the end of the November 1918 Armistice were, unsurprisingly, an unsettled time in British social and economic history. At the war’s end, the British armed forces consisted of slightly less than 6 mil­ lion personnel and 625,000 officers. Demobilization averaged 37,000 troops per week in November and December 1918.3 The rate was soon increased and in the five months from November 1918 to March 1919, 2,105,404 ‘other ranks’ were demobilized from the British imperial armed forces.4 By May 1919, 2.5 million men and women had been discharged from the Army alone and there were 300,000 disabled ex-combatants out of work.5 By December 1919, nearly 4 million personnel had been released from service. Such rapid demobilization had an impact on access to housing and unemployment levels. The shortage of housing, particularly in Britain’s large industrial cities (many of them seaports), was a problem of long standing. The wartime scarcity of ­materials and pressing patriotic priorities for builders and developers exacer­bated the issue. By the end of the war, Britain had an estimated shortfall of 600,000 homes. Given the increased atmosphere of xenophobia of wartime mentioned in the Introduction, it should be no surprise to learn that the problem was soon given an anti-alien ‘spin’. It was alleged in Parliament that the post-war housing crisis was being made worse by ‘alien purchasers’ who forced rent-paying locals out of 39

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The wider context of the seaport riots their homes. In March 1919, the Home Secretary, Edward Shortt,6 responded to a question on housing pressures in the Commons from Brigadier-General Croft. The Brigadier-General alleged that numerous Russians were buying up property in the east end of London and in Westcliff on Sea in Essex and then evicting the local residents. Shortt replied that although Russian Jews had been buying east end property for years, there was no evidence that this trend was on the increase. He also said that there was no evidence that alien purchasers were responsible for turning British subjects out of their houses.7 In London, Chinese settlers were accused of taking housing from locals. In June 1919, a Chinese man and his white British wife were accused by local white residents in Poplar of renting housing at an inflated rate after a recently demobilized white man had been refused the property. The resentment led to a riot as the house and its residents were attacked. The police had to fight to prevent the violence spilling over into a general attack on all Chinese residents in the area. Acute housing shortages in Cardiff were considered by police and the press to have been a factor in the rioting at the port. Between 1915 and 1918, half as many houses were built in Cardiff as were built in a normal prewar year. Black colonial wartime incomers were blamed for causing the housing shortage, when in fact they experienced similar problems to those facing white residents.8 The following chapter will examine evidence of hostile white reac­ tions to the ‘incursion’ of black settlers into traditional areas of white residence during the seaport riots. After years of full employment, and indeed shortage of labour in key war­ time industries, by April 1919 the number unemployed had reached 1,093,000. The employment of any aliens (or those assumed to be aliens) at a time when demobilized British ex-service personnel were looking for work provoked public and political concern. For example, in the Commons in April 1919, a Ministry of Labour official was forced to defend government policy on the employment of aliens. Backbencher Sir F. Hall posed the question ‘in view of the unemployment now existing, [will] the Government … take steps to prohibit the employment of aliens in Government and private employment until British labour has been fully absorbed?’ Labour MP George James Wardle, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour, outlined a range of government measures already in place to limit or exclude aliens from job vacancies.9 Despite the scaremongering about alien job-seekers, the post-war problem of unemployment was not caused by the presence of a small number of foreign guest workers in the job market; instead, much of it was transitional, having arisen from demobilization, although there were also longer-term structural weaknesses within the economy. The problem of unemployment had been tem­ porarily reversed by April 1920, when there was a shortage of labour in most industries, although this was not the case in the merchant marine.10 The general labour boom was short-lived. By March 1921, unemployment figures reached 15%. Following the coalminers’ strike between April and June 1921, the unemployed figure rose to 22% of all insured British workers. Even after the miners’ return to work, unemployment levels remained at 16–17%. In the years from 1921 to 1939, 40

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The wider context of the seaport riots the average rate of unemployment was 14%. These figures contrast unfavourably with an average unemployment rate of 4.8% in the period 1881–1913.11 In 1918, trades union leaders met to develop a strategy to combat the widespread unemployment which was projected to follow the cessation of the war. They advocated the introduction of shorter working hours to spread avail­ able work around existing and returning workers. The Scottish Trades Union Congress suggested the passage of new legislation to enforce a maximum work­ ing week of 40 hours, to take effect when demobilization began: That this Conference, for the purpose of reabsorbing Sailors and Soldiers into civil life, and giving greater leisure to the working classes, demands the reduction of hours by legislative enactment to a maximum of 40 hours per week, preferably 5 days a week of 8 hours each.12

Faced with government unresponsiveness, the ‘40 hours’ movement developed into a coordinated strike campaign.13 The strike began in Glasgow on 27 January 1919, and spread to other parts of Britain. At its peak, on 29 January, the general strike involved 70,000 Glasgow workers in engineering, shipbuilding, railway, electrical and dock work. Sailors and shore workers who were members of the British Seafarers’ Union also joined the protest. Many thousands more workers around Scotland and Tyneside also struck in support of a reduced working week. In Belfast, representatives of 26 unions joined the general strike committee and shipbuilders struck for a 48-hour week on 25 January. The strike was ended there on 24 February, following the deployment of troops in what has been described by Mitchell as ‘a virtual military occupation’.14 Industrial relations were volatile after the war. During 1919, 2.4 million ­workers were involved in strike action in Britain (2.7 million went on strike in defeated Germany in the same year). The Cabinet’s strike committee feared that such widespread strike action could lead the country towards revolution. There were even calls for a ‘Citizen Guard’ to be set up to deal with the potential ‘­dangers’ of a sustained general strike.15 In early January 1919, the author of a Secret Service report passed to Prime Minister Lloyd George ominously warned: I now find myself convinced that in England Bolschevism [sic] must be faced and grappled with, the efforts of the International Jews of Russia combated and their agents eliminated from the United Kingdom. Unless some serious consideration is given to the matter, I believe that there will be some sort of Revolution in this country and that before 12 months are past.16

At a Cabinet meeting held on 30 January, on the eve of a further protest in Glasgow over the 40-hour working week, there was similar unease at the potential for political uprising among the striking workers. With Lloyd George absent in France at the Versailles peace talks, Bonar Law chaired the meeting: ‘Mr Bonar Law said that he thought it vital for the War Cabinet to be satisfied that there was sufficient force in Glasgow to prevent disorder…. It was certain that, if the movement in Glasgow grew, it would spread all over the country.’17 Secretary of State for Scotland, Liberal MP Robert Munro, whose Scottish Office 41

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The wider context of the seaport riots and influence were based at Whitehall, further alarmed his Cabinet colleagues with his assessment of the situation: ‘it was a misnomer to call the situation in Glasgow a strike – it was a Bolshevist rising’.18 A mass demonstration of strikers was held outside the City Chambers at George Square, Glasgow, on Friday 31 January to hear the government’s reply to the strike committee’s telegraphed proposal for a convention to discuss the employment question. The government was in no mood to conciliate and regarded the demonstration as a political gathering which threatened public order. Radical trades unionists such as Emanuel Shinwell, who presided over the Glasgow trades and labour council and chaired the workers’ strike committee, and Willie Gallacher, the Marxist organizer of the shop stewards movement in the engineering industry (who had also been prominent in the wartime Clydeside industrial disputes) were among the leadership. There was also support for the strike among ex-service groups. On the basis of collected oral testimony, Foster has stated that ‘large numbers’ of demobilized people were among the 60,000strong crowd.19 The Glasgow Federation of Discharged Soldiers and Seamen supported the strike action. However, given the presence of striking skilled and unskilled workers and interested onlookers, the George Square crowd represented a cross-section of ‘ordinary’ Glasgow residents. The meeting descended into a riot, provoked by police actions.20 Police on horseback and on foot mounted a baton charge on the crowd, injuring 34 people, some of them bystanders unconnected to the protest meeting. Nineteen police officers were also injured. Members of the crowd fled, while others fought back, bringing the centre of Glasgow to a standstill as running battles spread out from George Square to surrounding streets. That evening, the Cabinet ordered the despatch of 12,000 troops, 100 lorries and six tanks into Glasgow city centre, in a show of force designed to restore order. The government’s severe response to the strike and consequent public pro­ test underlined its fear of Bolshevik influence spreading among the British working class, especially on the workers on ‘Red Clydeside’. Its response indeed owed much to the wider context of serious wartime industrial unrest throughout Britain and the example of revolutionary upheaval elsewhere. For example, aside from the widespread ‘40 hours’ dispute, there were soldiers’ strikes around the country and widespread violence across the globe in the months just before and after the war’s end. The events of ‘Bloody Friday’ were far more eye-catching than the riot involv­ ing West African sailors and a large crowd of white people which had taken place at Glasgow harbour a week earlier. The proximity of the George Square protest to the harbour riot was more than coincidental. The two events were explicitly inter-connected through the activities of members of the leadership of the ‘40 hours’ strike movement. For example, Shinwell also fronted the Glasgow branch of the British Seafarers’ Union (a union which barred black members); although a political moderate, he advocated direct action in the most inflammatory terms in the days leading up to both the harbour riot and the mass strike protest. He may have been influenced by the success of violent anti-alien wartime protests 42

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The wider context of the seaport riots and successful soldiers’ strikes. He and other strike leaders such as Gallacher sought to encourage unskilled workers, including seamen, to take part in the sort of strike action that had been the province of the skilled workforce on wartime Clydeside. Both Shinwell and Gallacher were arrested for their role as strike leaders on ‘Bloody Friday’. However, Shinwell’s later conviction for ‘incite­ ment to riot’ was both for his presence as a strike leader at the George Square demonstration on 31 January and for his speeches days earlier at James Watt Lane, outside the mercantile marine yard, where the Glasgow port riot broke out. During these waterfront speeches, Shinwell dragged the well worn debate among white British merchant sailors about the ‘unfair’ competition provided by overseas labour into a wider industrial setting. Shinwell offered dissatisfied white British merchant seamen at Glasgow harbour an opportunity to voice their concerns about workers from overseas undercutting their wages and threatening their job opportunities as part of the wider strike action; in return, the rioting at the harbour and the threat of more in the succeeding days drew additional public attention to the ‘40 hours’ campaign. Shinwell addressed a meeting of over 600 sailors at the mercantile marine yard a few hours before the harbour riot broke out on 23 January. He drew atten­ tion to the large number of ‘British’ sailors who were already unemployed and the large number yet to be demobilized, who would find it difficult to secure employment aboard ship: ‘This he attributed to the refusal of the Government to exclude Chinese labour from British ships, and it was essential, he said, that action should be taken at once’ (emphasis added).21 Although there is no direct evidence that his words incited the rioting at the harbour, it did serve two pur­ poses to his advantage: the widespread violence at the port made local shipping employers more reluctant to hire Chinese and black British sailors; and, more broadly, it highlighted the volatile state of workers in Glasgow at this period, a factor which, for Shinwell, may have suggested itself as a good bargaining tool in negotiations with the government during the ‘40 hours’ campaign. In an interview given to a local evening newspaper the day after the harbour riot, Shinwell hinted that further violence was likely at the harbour: ‘Last night when I arrived at the Broomielaw, large crowds were hanging about, and I had con­ siderable difficulty in restraining them from taking further action’.22 In a further interview he specifically connected the harbour riot to the hiring of overseas sailors in Glasgow, by stating that ‘some of the best ships’ out of Glasgow were employing black and Chinese labour, while a number of recently demobilized (white British) Royal Naval reservists were unable to obtain berths.23 In the days following the harbour riot, Shinwell continued to speak out at ­sailors’ meetings against the threat to jobs due to the employment of ‘Asiatic’ labour on British ships, but he also broadened the nature of the protest meetings. The Scottish press reported that the topic had been brought into the ‘40 hours’ strike campaign. The Scotsman noted that if ‘such labour’ could be cleared from British ships, it would provide more job opportunities for British sailors: ‘On this subject considerable feeling exists – as was manifested by the riotous incidents in the Broomielaw on Thursday last’.24 The day before the general strike ended 43

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The wider context of the seaport riots in violence on ‘Bloody Friday’, Shinwell presided over a third meeting of sailors at Glasgow harbour in a week, where he ‘urged them to take effective steps to prevent the employment of Chinese labour on British ships’.25 Although sailors and also shore workers from the British Seafarers’ Union joined the 40 hours campaign, their presence was overshadowed by the tens of thousands of skilled workers who dominated the strike movement. In addition, despite his firebrand seafront speeches, Shinwell’s role during the course of the dispute was largely as a figurehead. Instead, the Clyde workers’ committee which had presided over the wartime engineering strikes was again prominently involved during the 40 hours dispute. In fact, Nan Milton described the strike as the tail end of wartime protest activities by the Clyde workers’ movement.26 Yet the support of Shinwell’s union members was courted by the strike leadership. Gallacher joined with Shinwell on 28 January to address ‘seagoing’ members of the British Seafarers’ Union and other unionized sailors at the harbour to per­ suade them to take part in the ‘40 hours’ strike. The tenor of this meeting was no different from the ones addressed only by Shinwell; again, the tactic was to import into the broad strike campaign the ‘old demand’ that black and Chinese crews be expelled from British ships.27 Hence, while Shinwell’s role in the general strike should not be exaggerated, it is clear that the strike committee viewed the support of the white sailors as useful in widening the protest movement and was none too particular as to how such involvement was secured. Gallacher, like Shinwell, was arrested for his role in the campaign and was later given a three-month jail sentence (compared with Shinwell’s five-month term). Shinwell in particular was vilified by ship owners for leading seagoing members of the British Seafarers’ Union into the ‘40 hours’ strike. The Shipping Federation newspaper Fairplay commented on the strike movement in reaction­ ary and racist terms: your leading or presiding genius is – or was – the branch secretary of a local seaman’s union, who is not himself a seaman, but a tailor – and a Jew tailor at that. This is what Clyde labour has come to and this is what the Clyde Shipbuilding employers are asked to negotiate with and recognise.28

The anti-Semitic comments directed at Shinwell reflect the pervasiveness of anti-alien sentiment in British society at this time.

The military influence on post-war rioting It was a sign of the times that service and ex-service personnel played a promi­ nent part in social unrest, mass protest and rioting across Britain in the 12 months following the Armistice. Individuals in uniform or sporting service ribbons would be visible in any gathering of people in the weeks and months after November 1918, given the large-scale demobilization which was then tak­ ing place. A sizeable presence of ex-service personnel was noted in the ‘Bloody Friday’ riot in Glasgow in January 1919 and the participation of those in uniform 44

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The wider context of the seaport riots was also frequently highlighted in police and press coverage of the seaport rioting.29 The involvement of troops and recently demobilized ex-combatants in these riots should be placed in the broader context of peacetime demobiliz­ ation. Rather than conforming to a tendency towards violence due to recent wartime experience, it appears self-evident that any gathering of thousands of people in early 1919 would have a significant presence of service and ex-service personnel, given the ongoing mass demobilization. However, identifying war veterans as the prime movers in the port rioting owing to their military training and experience of conflict was simply a convenient explanation for the violence, one which avoided an analysis of the wider motivations of the rioters. Ex-service personnel were not the only groups conveniently pigeonholed in this manner. Other sections of the crowd picked out in contemporary accounts of the port riots were knots of women and children, who were portrayed as ‘bystanders’ (the word ‘innocent’ comes as an easy partner here). Finally, a faceless ‘hooligan element’ was apportioned blame for the most mindless acts of violence against racialized minority ethnic populations, their homes and businesses.30 Press reports may well have overemphasized the role of ex-combatants in their coverage of the seaport riots, yet it is clear that rioting and street distur­ bances were sometimes caused by the difficult transition from war to peacetime conditions. For example, in January 1919 soldiers awaiting demobilization went on strike all over Britain, demanding speedier release from the armed forces. In March, American soldiers and navy personnel became involved in a fight after a police officer challenged a crowd ‘shooting the dice’ outside the American YMCA hostel at Aldwych in London. The numbers involved swelled to 800 as Australian, New Zealand and Canadian soldiers joined American troops in an attack upon Bow Street police station. Eight or nine rioters were injured following a police baton charge. Two Canadians and one American were later convicted and fined 40 shillings (£2) for their part in the riot.31 Another American subject, James Ross Campbell, then serving with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, was convicted of police assault and given six months’ hard labour.32 In Edinburgh in July 1919, the arrest of a soldier by the military police in Gayfield Square led to the assembly of a crowd of up to 1,000 civilians, soldiers and sailors, who then fought with the civilian police force and freed the prisoner from custody. The Edinburgh police, assisted by military police, re-arrested the soldier and baton-charged the crowd. Five people were injured in the riot. Four white British soldiers and sailors were fined for their part in the incident.33 There were also serious riots involving Canadian troops stationed at army camps around Britain in 1919. At Kinmel Park army camp in Rhyl in March, five men (three rioters and two soldiers on picket duty) were killed during riots which were later attributed to the frustrations caused by delays in the sailing of repatriation ships. There were also hints of wider political motivations. A group of rioters carried a red flag during the fighting and this incident echoes the disruptive influence attributed to the successful Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917 by the government during the ‘40 hours’ strike protests in January 1919. According to an account in The Times, the rioters used active service tactics 45

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The wider context of the seaport riots when attacking the camp, even to the extent of hanging out a white flag when surrendering.34 Delays in repatriating Canadian service personnel precipitated a riot at Whitley camp in June 1919. The same month witnessed another riot of Canadian soldiers stationed at Epsom military camp. Rioting erupted after two Canadian soldiers were arrested at Epsom railway station for causing a disturbance as they left the London train. When the police refused to release the soldiers, troops from the camp attacked the local police station. During the fighting, police sergeant Green was fatally injured. Eight Canadian soldiers were ­initially charged with his manslaughter.35 Seven of the accused later stood trial on assault charges; of these, five were convicted and given 12-month prison sen­ tences and two were found not guilty.36 In June 1919, there was a series of demonstrations by British soldiers in army camps refusing to accept further service overseas. The Workers’ Dreadnought (the weekly newspaper of Sylvia Pankhurst’s Workers’ Socialist Federation) highlighted the action of 3,000 soldiers at Belmont camp, Surrey, who refused to be sent abroad and who had taken control of the camp, and so had neither parades nor punishment. The same day, 200 soldiers refused to embark for overseas service at Dover. Twenty-four hours later, 200 Gordon Highlanders in Aberdeen refused to go to India. The next day, a further 160 troops at Brockton camp staged a demonstration against the receipt of orders despatching them to India.37 One reason for the strong identification of combatants with violent protest was the formation and activities of a host of associations of ex-combatants at the end of the First World War. Most of the new groups had recognized political affiliation. The National Association of Discharged Sailors and Soldiers, set up in 1916, had links to the Liberal Party. The National Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers (NFDDSS), which followed in 1917, had Labour sym­pathies.38 Such groups built upon and accentuated the importance of long-term bonding between ‘chums’ during the war. The pressure group activities of such organizations spread into (sometimes violent) demonstrations. In the months after the war, ex-service groups pro­ tested to the government over: demobilization issues; war gratuities; housing shortages; unemployment; pension and disability allowance payments; and for more prominent recognition of war service. Feelings of injustice among excombatants formed a common thread in many violent episodes during 1919, ranging from the army camp riots, throughout the port riots, to the Luton ‘peace riot’; the same feelings touched on many smaller-scale disturbances and incidents around the country in that year. Bourke has reinforced this point: ‘lack of appreciation for their sacrifices and numerous frustrations experienced upon re-entering civilian society often led veterans to act aggressively’.39 The NFDDSS staged a coordinated campaign, which included a series of demonstrations throughout the country in 1919 and 1920, to protest over a range of issues affecting ex-service personnel. Hundreds of simultaneous demon­ strations were staged around the country on 26 May 1919. The most striking of these was the ‘monster’ demonstration in London.40 A mass meeting at Hyde 46

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The wider context of the seaport riots Park was followed by a march on the Houses of Parliament. The procession was turned back by a police cordon when it approached. At this, some members of the crowd attacked the police with bricks and blocks of wood, and others used scaffolding from a nearby road repair to bring down mounted police. The police then baton-charged the crowd and eventually succeeded in dispersing it. Home Secretary Edward Shortt was forced into a somewhat conflicting statement on the demonstration and its violent aftermath in the House of Commons later that day: There was this afternoon, unfortunately, a somewhat serious situation as between a procession of discharged soldiers and sailors and the police. I cannot agree that for a moment that the cause of the unfortunate situation was … the lack of work, or that it had anything to do with it, or had anything whatever to do with a legitimate grievance. The cause of the unfortunate situ­ ation was that the men … acted under the control of wild spirits who were amongst them, instead of under their own proper leaders…. I do not know … what the meeting at Hyde Park was about. I have not seen the resolutions, and have … no definite knowledge what it was, but, of course, that it was dissatisfaction by discharged soldiers and sailors at not being able to get back into their places in civil life one has no doubt.41

Further protests by ex-service groups were timed to coincide with the official peace celebrations in the summer of 1919. In July 1919 a protest in Luton by the local branch of the NFDDSS about the arrangements for the peace celebrations led to a riot which came to a spectacular conclusion with the torching of the town hall. The Luton ‘peace riot’ was portrayed in contemporary reports as a protest by ex-combatants following the familiar brutalization thesis. However, Orr’s detailed analysis has shown that the incident went beyond its portrayal as a protest war veterans: ‘closer analysis … indicates that wider grievances were important such as housing, unemployment and the post-war position of women’.42 Orr notes that Luton had a shortage of 2,000 houses by 1919.43 In the lead-up to the event, local protests were voiced about the arrangements for the town’s peace celebrations. For example, only 240 ex-combatants were to be allowed to participate. In addition, although there were 500 places avail­ able, no women were to attend the civic banquet. This decision was reached despite the war work of many thousands of women in the town (including 8,000 employed in a single firm). In protest, the local branch of the NFDDSS pulled out of the official celebrations. The right-wing Comrades of the Great War also criticized the arrangements. The local council then made matters worse by refusing the NFDDSS permission to use a public park to hold an alternative ‘special service’. A local newspaper criticized the council stance as ‘sadly out of touch with the people’.44 On the day of the celebration, as the civic party entered the town hall for the banquet following the reading of the King’s ‘peace proclamation’ by Lord Mayor Henry Impey, members of a crowd outside demanded to know why the council had refused the Federation permission to stage its own celebration. 47

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The wider context of the seaport riots Receiving no explanation, the crowd rushed the building, overcame the police on duty, forced the door and stormed in, broke windows, wrecked rooms and threw the contents into the streets. The town hall was then set alight. It was burned down, causing £250,000 of damage. A large police force weighed in to disperse the crowd, many of whom resisted by throwing back at the police a barrage of glass bottles obtained in a raid on a nearby chemist shop. Several police officers were injured by flying glass. The fire brigade, called out to extinguish the fire, turned their hoses on the crowd in an attempt to break it up. They were finally dispersed by a detachment of Royal Engineers summoned from nearby Bedford.45 Trouble flared in Luton again the next night, and there were similar, smaller disturbances (consisting mainly of attacks on local police stations, as crowds sought to free individuals arrested by the police for their part in disorders) in Wolverhampton, Swindon, Hull and Coventry during this long weekend of national ‘peace celebrations’.46 Various explanations for the disorder at Luton were put forward in press accounts. There were allegations that troops from a nearby military camp played a part in instigating the violence. The establishment press believed there was some radical political motivation behind the riot. The account of the riot in The Times reported that a man had been seen waving a red flag from one of the windows of the town hall.47 There are slight indications that feelings of antialienism may have been brought to the surface during the rioting at Luton. A hairdresser’s shop in the town was attacked and it was alleged the shop owner was of ‘foreign extraction’. In an article in the Workers’ Dreadnought, Pankhurst used the occasion of the Luton ‘peace riot’ to call for a communist uprising: The serious riot in Luton … appears to have been a spontaneous outburst of indignation on the part of the people who objected to the callous treatment of the soldiers who fought and suffered in the war, and the refusal of the Corporation to allow the discharged soldiers the use of the park for a memorial service to the men who fell. Communists make ready for the moment when the workers can and must take control!48

The Worker’s Dreadnought drew a similar picture of the potential for class war during the seaport riots. The violence and the search for work that provoked the riots were described as a by-product of capitalism. An article published in June 1919 concluded by stating that, under socialism, the rivalry between groups of black and white workers would be removed: The Seamen’s and Firemen’s Union has placed its ban upon the employment of Negro seamen, so they are ashore and cannot get away. They are attacked and if they retaliate they are arrested! Is this fair play? The fight for work is a product of capitalism: under socialism race rivalry disappears.49

Further large-scale protests by ex-service groups were held in November 1919 and spring 1920. While the government criticized the associated violence, it appears the point had been made. According to White, ‘ex-servicemen’s ­riotous 48

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The wider context of the seaport riots protests had some effect. The government, trapped by its own propaganda, was forced to increase pensions and to legislate for positive discrimination over jobs.’50 The government also began to include representatives of ex-combatants’ organizations on policy consultative committees dealing with veterans’ issues. In 1920, the Standing Joint Committee for Ex-Service Questions was established, which included such representatives. Four representatives of the NFDDSS were also given places on the central committee advising the Ministry of Pensions. At the same time as these organizations attempted to influence the coalition government, right-wing nationalists sought to capitalize upon the ongoing sense of grievance among ex-service personnel. Right-wing groups flourished in the later war years, including the National Party, set up in 1917. After the war, a group with overt leanings towards the alienated veterans, the Comrades of the Great War, was established by business mogul (and future Tory MP) Patrick Hannan.51 The coalition government was wary of such organized protest during and immediately after the war. In 1918, when there was a shortage of soldiers at the Front, approximately 175,000 troops were held in Britain for ‘national defence’; according to Millman, this large force was kept at the ready in order to ‘suppress civil dissent’.52 Violent wartime dissent in Britain included numerous clashes between pacifist organizations (which often included members of the Independent Labour Party) and so-called ‘patriot’ groups (with a service, and later ex-service, element often in evidence). As noted with regard to comments on ‘Red Clydeside’, another strand in the organized wartime dissent consisted of major strike action that occurred periodically throughout the war and involved crucial wartime industries such as munitions, engineering, the railways and shipbuilding. Such strike action was often portrayed on the right of British politics as ‘unpatriotic’ and, in response, industrial ‘patriot’ organizations were formed. Pronounced imperialist and wartime Cabinet member Lord Milner (who after a short stint as Secretary for War was directly involved in the 1919 port riots in his next post, as Colonial Secretary), founded the British Workers’ League in May 1918. It soon had 221 local branches around the country and for a short time became an influential organization of the radical right. In the 1918 general election, the League, now going under the name of the National Democratic and Labour Party, put up 26 candidates under the slogan ‘Britain for the British’. Nine of its candidates were elected, including two who defeated the sitting Labour MPs and well known pacifists Arthur Henderson and Ramsay MacDonald. The attempt to rouse exservice personnel and the ‘patriotic’ working class into a party which was pro-imperialist and anti-labour was short-lived, however. None of the party’s candidates was successful in the 1922 election. Associations of ex-combatants continued their protests in the early 1920s, as unemployment levels remained high among recently demobilized veterans. For example, in March 1920 a local newspaper reported that 600 former soldiers were still ‘walking the streets’ of Glasgow looking for work.53 In addition to the existing associations, a new, politically radical organization was formed: the National Union of Ex-Service Men. Its aim was to form ‘sailors’, soldiers’ 49

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The wider context of the seaport riots and workers’ councils, with a view to taking over the means of production, distribution and exchange and thereby freeing the workers from wage slavery and exploitation’.54 Government fear of revolutionary tendencies among workers and ex-combatants demonstrated by the formation of such groups paved the way for the restriction of firearms in Britain for the first time. The Firearms Act of June 1920 licensed the possession of handguns and rifles. DeGroot noted the worried comment of a Home Office official around this time: ‘in the event of rioting, for the first time in history, the rioters will be better trained than the troops’.55 The distinctive ex-combatant associations gradually lost impetus within a few years of the end of the war. The NFDDSS newspaper, the Bulletin, established in early 1919, was defunct by late 1920. Finally, in 1921, the four main organizations merged to form the British Legion.56

Overseas sailors, anti-alienism and the seamen’s unions Life in the merchant naval service traditionally featured lengthy periods of overseas service, harsh working conditions, disrupted lifestyle, low pay, contract work and intervals of unemployment. It was an unappealing lifestyle for those who wished to put down permanent roots; because of this, sailors of many different nationalities and ethnicities worked and lived together in port areas. Increased trade and technological developments provided for the employment of cheaper and less skilled labour as the nineteenth century progressed. The development of steamships, which required workers fit for hard manual labour below decks as firemen and trimmers,57 meant that a new generation of workers was needed for the merchant navy, with little in the way of seafaring tradition. This change was exacerbated by the rapid growth of the ‘tramp’ steamer trade, which entailed vessels going to wherever the next cargo could be picked up rather than plying designated routes. These changes in the industry encouraged ship owners to employ increasing numbers of sailors from overseas. Employers claimed that overseas labour was cost-effective, and also more sober and less troublesome than white British labour. In 1850, 5,700 foreign sailors were employed on British ships and by 1900 the figure was 36,893.58 At the end of the nineteenth century, overseas sailors accounted for 34% of firemen and 29% of stewards on Britain’s merchant ships engaged in overseas trade.59 In most British ports, shipping companies could afford to keep a per­ manent pool of alternative labour, some from around the British empire and some of it ‘foreign’.60 North European and Chinese sailors initially predominated among overseas sailors employed in the merchant navy. For example, Lawless has estimated that around a third of seagoing labour in South Shields in the late nineteenth century were northern Europeans, from Scandinavia, the Baltic, Germany and the Low Countries.61 But by the early twentieth century, these workers were increasingly supplemented by south Asian, Arab, African and African-Caribbean sailors. The majority of these four groups were British sub­ jects, as were some of the Chinese sailors. 50

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The wider context of the seaport riots Ship owners differentiated in the payment and conditions of service for vari­ ous groups of sailors, for whom they had distinctive contracts, or ‘articles’. White Britons, white Europeans and the majority of black British sailors were employed under ‘standard articles’ and received equivalent pay rates on British merchant ships. Lascar sailors and other overseas colonial sailors employed directly by shipping companies (such as the Elder Dempster line, which directly recruited sailors from West Africa) under specific guidelines or ‘foreign articles’ received wage rates 20–50% less than the standard rate. The Royal Mail line directly recruited African-Caribbean sailors on similar unequal terms. Chinese sailors, too, were paid less than the standard rate. This wage under-cutting by employers had played a part in the outbreak of rioting in Cardiff during the course of a 1911 seamen’s strike. Violence directed against Chinese homes and businesses during the riot, according to Evans, set ‘a sad precedent for the exploitation of ethnic differences in a situation of economic conflict’.62 The 1911 strike led the ship owners to agree to an increase in standard article rates, which was eventually granted in 1913. Under the new arrangements, wages for white firemen went up from £3.10s (£3.50) to £5. However, the wages for sailors directly recruited overseas were reduced. For example, the wages of West African firemen directly employed by the Elder Dempster line were reduced from £3.10s to £2.10s.63 Wages for all sailors, including those employed under foreign articles, were enhanced during the First World War. Average monthly wages rose from £5.10s in 1914 to £9 in 1916 and sharply rose to £14.10s in 1918.64 Nevertheless, pay differentials remained which amounted to an average saving of £3 a month per person for shipping companies which hired overseas sailors outside British ports.65 For example, wage levels for those sailing out of north-east ports were £10 for ‘Britishers’ and £6 for ‘Chinamen’ in 1916.66 In London the equivalent rates were £9 and £6.10s, and for Liverpool they were £8.10s and £6, respec­ tively. By June 1919, rates for those on standard articles had risen to an average £15 a month for firemen and £14.10s for sailors, while foreign rates were £12 and £11.10s. On the outbreak of war in August 1914, 9,000 enemy ‘alien’ sailors were sum­ marily removed from British merchant ships. This is illustrated by the sudden disappearance of Germans and Austrians from the intake at the Glasgow Sailors’ Home. Table 1.1 shows that in 1914, 100 German and Austrian sailors stayed at the home, but no one of either nationality stayed at the home again until a single German did so in 1921. Within two days of the declaration of war the merchant marine lost a further 8,000 workers as British-born merchant sailors joined the armed forces. The 15% shortfall created when British merchant sailors joined the Royal Navy and enemy nationals were interned, deported or prevented from serving in the merchant marine was largely filled by British colonial labour from south Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and China.67 No overall figures for the number of British colonial sailors employed on British vessels were produced, although one recent estimate suggested that colonial workers in the industry in 1919 totalled ‘a few thousand’, in a labour force of around 200,000.68 This new influx of workers was viewed with suspicion by many among the organized white 51

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The wider context of the seaport riots Table 1.1  Nationalities of sailors accommodated at the Glasgow Sailors’ Home in selected years 1914–29 1914

1915

1916

1917

1918

1919

1920

1921

1922

1923

1929

British African  Caribbean Lascars Africans Chinese Asiatic Arabs/Arabians Malays Colonials* Americans Norwegians Danes Germans Austrians French Spaniards Portuguese Dutch Swedes Finns Greeks Italians Maltese Russians Chileans Japanese Belgians Javanese Brazilians Egyptians Swiss Turks Bulgarians Mexicans Serbs Peruvians Estonians Goanese Romanians South Africans Billeted British   soldiers Indian

2,706 2,889 2,733 2,004 4,005 3,172 3,628 2,642 1,987 1,805 2,589 29 21 26 8 0 0 0 0 2 2 18

Annual total

4,089 4,052 4,055 4,249 5,025 5,818 5,683 4,411 3,188 2,910 4,704

277 3 74 0 7 7 30 68 100 59 30 70 76 32 1 0 52 0 0 8 2 140 0 4 0 10 0 3 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

90 9 3 0 8 12 38 21 290 52 0 0 31 14 1 0 86 0 6 4 6 182 3 115 0 0 0 0 6 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 108

0

0

146 1,749 3 1 59 13 11 0 14 6 12 1 17 9 36 25 219 82 35 46 0 0 0 0 146 184 18 1 6 5 0 0 51 37 0 0 7 2 33 1 7 6 199 22 0 2 32 26 0 0 0 0 0 0 29 5 0 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 187 0 0

0

889 1,540 1,210 1,285 0 0 0 0 25 195 112 80 0 0 0 0 8 5 0 0 0 7 7 0 0 36 12 12 23 87 70 8 0 175 168 75 0 18 5 21 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 47 249 84 1 0 12 17 40 0 0 0 2 0 29 138 111 0 47 91 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 9 0 96 37 62 0 15 10 8 0 7 12 9 0 0 0 26 26 18 695 0 2 37 14 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 18 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 30 3 0 0 0 0 0 0

0

0

1

653 0 34 0 0 0 0 11 90 0 2 0 16 29 20 94 26 4 1 4 8 1 1 191 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0

715 1,576 0 5 2 68 0 0 4 6 0 17 0 0 29 8 153 109 0 8 79 46 0 0 10 10 10 10 5 4 17 19 12 16 6 0 1 34 2 0 13 10 14 16 0 0 17 2 12 16 0 0 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 26 0 88 0 1 1 0 0 0 0

0

*There is no additional information available on the nationalities of those listed simply as ‘­colonials’ in the annual returns. All figures taken from annual reports of the Glasgow Sailors’ Home, Glasgow City Archives, Mitchell Library, Glasgow, TD 932/8/1–48.

52

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The wider context of the seaport riots British seafaring workforce, who took the view that employers were intent on using the wartime shortage of merchant sailors as a ruse to flood the industry with cheap overseas labour.69 The most significant rise among sailors from overseas admitted to the Glasgow Sailors’ Home during and after the war was among Lascar seamen, whose numbers rose from 146 in 1916 to 1,749 in 1917. The figures of Chinese sailors admitted to the home declined after 1914, only to increase sharply in 1919. The numbers of West African and African-Caribbean sailors staying did not markedly increase during the war. However, this may have been due to the presence of an alternative, nearby black sailors’ boarding house. This boarding house was occupied by at least 30 West African sailors at the beginning of 1919. During the Glasgow riot in January, a large white crowd attacked both the Glasgow Sailors’ Home where black sailors took temporary refuge and the nearby black sailors’ lodging house.70 The oldest and largest seamen’s union, the NSFU, traditionally adopted an ambivalent stance to the presence of sailors from overseas on British ships. On its foundation in 1894, the NSFU sought to exclude all ‘foreign’ (i.e. non-white British) labour of less than four years’ standing from its membership, by intro­ ducing a sliding scale of entrance fees for those who had sailed on British ships for less than this period. The NSFU’s admission fee for foreign sailors with no previous experience on British ships was set at the prohibitively high level of £20. The decision to admit ‘foreign’ labour even under strict conditions was not universally popular among white British members. This stance was a pragmatic one. According to the leadership of the NSFU, if ‘foreign’ sailors were union members it would reduce the chances of their being exploited as strike ­breakers and wage under-cutters by the shipping companies. The NSFU’s President, Joseph Havelock Wilson,71 put the number of ‘foreign’ sailors in 1894 at around 40,000, and ‘if we excluded such men from membership, the ship ­owners would not be slow to avail themselves of the services of foreigners as against the Britishers’.72 The NSFU strategy of inclusion appeared successful. By 1902, Havelock Wilson claimed that 40% of union members were ‘foreign’ born.73 Occasionally the union supported the actions of such groups. For example, a strike by black sailors in Cardiff in 1911 gained NSFU support.74 Despite the grudging acceptance of overseas workers as union members, so long as ship owners used certain sections of the labour force to keep wages down, there could be no question of worker solidarity throughout the industry. It made econ­ omic sense for employers to secure the services of workers as cost-­effectively as possible. In addition to lower rates of pay, further savings could be made through food allowances, which were twice as high for British sailors as for Chinese and Lascar sailors. Havelock Wilson led his union in a prolonged crusade against the hiring of Chinese and south Asian workers in the industry. Throughout his time as Liberal MP for Middlesbrough (1892–1910), he campaigned against their employment in the merchant navy. In 1906, during a debate on the Merchant Shipping Act (Amendment) Bill, he attempted to introduce the same food allowances for Lascar 53

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The wider context of the seaport riots sailors as for white ‘Britishers’. However, his effort was ruled out of order by the Speaker because Lascars were specifically excluded from general provisions regu­ lations.75 However, under pressure from Havelock Wilson, the Bill was amended to include a requirement for competency in English for sailors on British vessels. He alleged that ‘a large number of seamen on board British ships were foreigners who could not speak English very well, and many of them could not speak English at all’.76 Three years later, he turned a Commons debate on the payment of fair wages in government contracts into an attack on Chinese sailors: ‘I should not object to the Chinamen coming provided they were paid English wages’.77 White NSFU members and other sailors took the campaign against Chinese workers onto the dockside. In 1908, white British sailors in London repeatedly prevented Chinese sailors from signing on at the shipping office in the East India Dock Road. A fight ensued between the two groups and the police escorted Chinese sailors back to their Limehouse boarding houses.78 In Glasgow, seamen’s unions staged protests and demonstrations against Chinese and Lascar labour in 1904, 1907, 1908, 1912 and 1914.79 While the first national strike among merchant sailors in 1911 secured a wage rise and official recognition of their union by the Shipping Federation,80 ship owners still took advantage of differential wage rates by hiring foreign crews overseas. During the war, the seamen’s unions continued to criticize this hiring policy. Chinese sailors were the chief targets for unionized sailors’ protests. The NSFU newspaper, the Seaman, portrayed Chinese workers not as crucial wartime labour but as law-breakers with questionable loyalty to Britain’s cause. For instance, in 1916, the author of the regular ‘Man at the Wheel’ column in the paper posed the rhetorical question ‘Who are these law-breaking Chinese who carry on opium dens, gambling dens and disorderly houses…?’ The answer was nothing less than ‘potential German spies’.81 In the same year, Havelock Wilson moved a motion at the Trades Union Congress calling for the repatriation of all Chinese who could not prove their British nationality.82 In summer of 1916, NSFU protests against the continued presence of Chinese labour on British ships in London docks descended into violence. The windows of Chinese shops and homes in Limehouse were damaged, although no one was hurt.83 Verbal and physical attacks on Chinese workers in Britain were reined in following China’s declaration of war on Germany in August 1917. In February and March 1919, representatives of the Board of Trade were questioned in Parliament about the continued employment of Chinese on British ships at a time of growing unemployment for British sailors.84 Restrictions were eventually placed on the employment of non-British Chinese on British ships six months after the end of the war. In April 1919, the Board of Trade agreed to a suggestion of the National Maritime Board (NMB) to refuse registration for those Chinese sailors unable to prove British nationality (i.e. those sailors born outside of Hong Kong and Singapore).85 In the same month, the NMB, under NSFU pressure, agreed to give ‘British’ subjects preference for shipping jobs over ‘alien’ Chinese and black sailors.86 In this climate of anti-Chinese agitation, the deportation of 50 Chinese sailors from Birkenhead in June 1919 was greeted 54

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The wider context of the seaport riots with great glee in the pages of the Seaman. The paper’s account of the episode stated that the group initially refused to board ship. One man threw a half brick, which hit a police officer on the head. ‘The police authorities then saw that it was time to take drastic steps and without much more trouble, they soon had all the “John Chinamen” on board.’87 The Chinese workforce in Britain was not without representation. Both the Chinese Seamen and Firemen’s Union, set up in Liverpool, and the Chinese ambassador spoke out against the attempts to force Chinese workers out of Britain. The union stressed the wartime sacrifices of Chinese seamen on British merchant vessels in the face of enemy torpedo attacks. The Chinese ambassador in a visit to the Foreign Office reported 300 Chinese fatalities on British ships during the war and drew attention to the possible commercial repercussions for Britain of mass deportations of Chinese.88 Yet Chinese people were still victim­ ized. For example, a large crowd of white people took advantage of the Liverpool police strike in August 1919 to launch an attack on the ‘Chinese quarter’. Three Chinese businesses in the Cleveland Square/Paradise Street area were attacked. Four men, including two white British sailors and a Swedish ship’s fireman, were later arrested and charged for their part in the attack.89 By autumn 1919, arrangements were in place to offer Chinese workers who agreed to leave Britain voluntarily a resettlement allowance of £7 and a large transport ship with accommodation for 1,100 Chinese was made available. However, few volunteers stepped forward and the police forces of Liverpool and London found it logistically impossible to fulfil their role of shepherding 800 and 300 Chinese respectively on to this vessel. Since the alternative was for the Home Secretary to issue individual deportation orders for hundreds of ‘alien’ Chinese in Britain, it was decided to ‘abandon … the scheme for the present’.90 The trades union movement’s campaign against Chinese labour evident in the actions of the NSFU continued after the war. In September 1919, the Trades Union Congress passed a resolution against the continued employment of Chinese ­workers and demanded that ‘immediate steps be taken to abolish all underpaid Asiatic labour in the mercantile marine, and that preference of employment be given, first to white, and secondly to British coloured, in prefer­ ence to Chinamen’.91 The last part of the resolution, with Chinese workers placed below ‘British coloured’ workers in preference, rang hollow after the months of rioting in the ports in which British black and Arab workers were attacked. In fact, other unions spoke out about the employment of black workers in the merchant shipping industry during the riots. In June 1919, the Cardiff branch of the National Union of Railwaymen passed a resolution viewing ‘with alarm’ the rioting in the seaports and called upon the government to ‘do their duty by the coloured men in this country and send them back to their homeland’.92 The mass deportation plan for Chinese workers in Britain proposed in September 1919 may well have been revived, since several newspapers reported a sudden massive drop in Chinese settlements around the country towards the end of 1920. For example, the Manchester Guardian reported that London’s Chinese population of 1,200 had been reduced to less than 150.93 This may 55

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The wider context of the seaport riots well have been a temporary ‘expulsion’, as by the time of the 1931 census the Chinese population of London was 1,194.94 The protests by the union movement against Chinese, south Asian, and also black and Arab workers were part of a wider hostility towards ‘aliens’ within sections of British society. Throughout the 1890s and into the early twentieth century, campaigns against alien immigration and employment were mounted in sections of the press, within the organized labour movement and in Parliament among campaigning MPs.95 In the face of the back-bench campaign and trades union protests, a Royal Commission on Alien Immigration was established in 1903. The Commission was motivated by concerns about the impact of eastern European immigration on British society and the economy. In 1905, after a failed Bill in 1904, the Conservative government was successful in passing the Aliens Act.96 Its main purpose was to exclude ‘undesirable and destitute aliens’ and those with no visible means of support. The Act was enforced by the examination of passengers arriving on designated ‘immigration ships’, that is, vessels with more than 20 immigrant steerage passengers. The incoming Liberal government interpreted the 1905 legislation loosely. For example, only 21 deportations of undesirable aliens took place in 1906. However, the Act set a precedent. During the tense atmosphere in the opening days of the war, the Aliens Restriction Act was passed in a single day in August 1914. Both ‘friendly’ and ‘enemy’ aliens aged over 16 were required to register with the police. The Act was directed at restricting the movements of enemy ‘aliens’ – Austrians, Germans and Italians – thousands of whom were interned and/or deported.97 The political debate and legislative action on immigration to Britain acted as a backdrop to early twentieth-century examples of anti-Semitic and antiChinese violence. Protest increased in the xenophobia of wartime. A series of violent attacks on Germans took place between August 1914 and July 1917.98 Anti-German hostility peaked in the ‘Lusitania riots’ of May 1915, which were described by Panayi as ‘the most widespread disturbances in twentieth-century Britain’,99 with 866 arrests and more than 250 injured. Wartime anti-German riots became broadly anti-alien in nature. Properties belonging to Scandinavians, Italians, Russians and particularly Chinese people were damaged alongside the widespread destruction of German-owned businesses.100 In 1917, eastern European Jews were subjected to riotous attacks in Leeds and in the east end of London following local accusations that they attempted to avoid military service. According to Stubbs, ‘In the eyes of patriotic Britons, the Jews were triply damned as aliens, as socialists, and finally as shirkers’.101 Anti-alien rioting brought ‘success’ to the crowds of white rioters. Wartime anti-alien protests had the desired effect of speeding up the government pro­ gramme of mass internment and deportation of enemy aliens. After the ‘Lusitania riots’, the Aliens Restriction Act of 1914 was enforced more rigorously, with the ‘wholesale internment or repatriation of alien enemies’.102 According to Kushner and Ceserani, the use of mass internment in 1915 represented ‘the surrender of a Liberal government to xenophobic public opinion that articulated stereotypes of the foreigner as conspirator, criminal and degenerate’.103 In a similar vein, rioters 56

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The wider context of the seaport riots in the seaports were also ‘rewarded’ when the government stepped up its policy of repatriation for black colonial Britons during the wave of riots in June 1919. Although not directly linked, the wartime anti-alien riots and the 1919 seaport riots demonstrated the xenophobic tendencies among sections of the white British population and a degree of complicity among government officials.

The merchant navy in war and peace At the declaration of war, 193,500 sailors served in the British merchant navy.104 Of this number, 14,661 lost their lives as the result of enemy action and 2,500 merchant ships were sunk. While there are no precise figures available for the number of black, south Asian and Arab British casualties, it is likely that, pro­ portionally, fatalities among these groups would have been comparable or even higher than white. This is because the majority of these workers were firemen and trimmers, employed below decks, in the engine room. For example, the Liverpool shipping company Elder Dempster, trading mainly to West Africa, employed white Britons as deck crew and black British West Africans below decks in the engine room or as catering crew.105 Merchant seamen stationed below deck were clearly more vulnerable to enemy torpedo attacks than those working on deck. The death toll for merchant sailors during the First World War represented a high mortality rate for civilian non-combatants, and the mortality figure of close to 15,000 does not include losses among merchant seamen serving under the white ensign (i.e. under Royal Navy auspices).106 In 1917, state regulation ­belatedly acknowledged the role of the merchant navy. By this measure, the wartime coalition government recognized the merchant service, although it employed civilians, as an arm of the state. The same government regulation also allowed for the voluntary adoption of a standard uniform for merchant sailors, identical in style to that for the Royal Navy. Only the badges of rank were dif­ ferent. Partly because of this long delay in official recognition, there remained a strong sense among merchant seamen that their war service was under-valued. Standard merchant seamen’s wage rates rose sharply during the war; however, this was more than offset by the increased threat to life from the activities of enemy ships and submarines. The cost of living also rose in wartime. Merchant sailors resented the massive wartime profiteering among ship owners. In the first full year of the war, freight charges increased by amounts ranging from 75% to 230%, depending on destination. Although ship owners were required to pay 50% of surplus profits towards war costs, average profits increased over 1913 figures by 575%. After the war, ship owners sought to preserve profit margins where possible. They pursued well chosen methods in this attempt, including imposing wage cuts and hiring lower-paid foreign crews. From the employers’ perspective, the boom in shipping continued in the short term after the Armistice. The position of merchant sailors was different. Mass demobilization, the return of former enemy European sailors and an inflow of workers from now 57

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The wider context of the seaport riots defunct war industries increased competition for jobs. Although initially experi­ encing a boom, the industry soon faced post-war recession. In the months following the Armistice, many thousands of former merchant sailors returned from the armed forces, and in particular from the Royal Navy, looking to resume work in the merchant fleet. The merchant navy had itself temporarily expanded during wartime with the recruitment of sailors from allied nations and from around the British empire. This inevitably led to increased peacetime competi­ tion for jobs. The admission figures for the Glasgow Sailors’ Home provided for selected years from 1914 to 1929 in Table 1.1 show the years 1918–20 to have been its busiest period. From 1918, the numbers of north European ­ sailors, especially Dutch and Norwegian, rose, as did the numbers of Chinese. The high number of Lascar sailors shipping out of Glasgow in the years from 1917 to 1919 was maintained, with some dips, throughout the 1920s. Scandinavian sailors who, as shown in Table 1.1, continued to use the home in wartime with the exception of 1918, returned in greater numbers after the war, much to the resentment of black British sailors, because of the comparative ease with which they found employment.107 Membership levels in the largest sailors’ union, the NSFU,108 for 1919 and 1920 were the highest recorded in a century from its foundation in 1887 down to its centenary in 1987.109 This indicates that the immediate post-war period was a time of an extremely large workforce in the shipping industry, swollen by a combination of wartime circumstances and demobilization. The National Union of Ships’ Stewards, Cooks, Butchers and Bakers also enjoyed a peak in membership levels in these years.110 The high membership levels in the seafaring unions reflects the fact that the union movement as a whole was going through a period of high membership. Trades union membership over the 40-year period 1900–39 peaked in 1919 and 1920.111 However, high membership levels did not mean that the sailors’ unions were in a strong bargaining position. The unions were unable to preserve the wartime financial gains of merchant sailors in the face of post-war curtailment of the industry and employer intransigence. Far from building on the success of the 1911 national strike, by the end of the war, the NSFU yielded to the shipping employers’ proposed pay freeze. Yet, in the war years, the NSFU was the most influential of the sailors’ unions, because of its representation on the NMB. The NMB was set up in late November 1917 to allow for joint regulation of the industry. It had representation from the Ministry of Shipping, the Shipping Federation and the sailors’ unions. In 1919, the NMB was made a permanent body; however, a crucial change in the scheme was the withdrawal of government from the Board. The Shipping Federation thereafter enjoyed a free hand in the NMB. Wartime concessions to the NSFU and its membership proved to be temporary. In mid-1920, a national wage claim from the sailors’ unions for a £5 per month increase was rejected against a background of congestion in the ports, coal shortages and a decline in the artificially high wartime freight rates. Under the continuing leadership of its founder, Joseph Havelock Wilson, the NSFU felt it was better to agree in a 58

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The wider context of the seaport riots responsible manner to demands for wage reductions rather than risk losing union representation altogether on the NMB and in particular in its role as supplier of labour for the industry. This weak stance left many members feeling dissatisfied at their lot and disillusioned by lack of national union activity on their behalf. Against a background of trade depression, the ship owners were in a position to dictate wage levels with little or no union resistance. For example, in April 1921, amid a further slump in the industry, owing partly to the shortage of fuel due to an ongoing coal strike, sailors unions’ representatives accepted a reduc­ tion in standard wage rates of £2.10s per month. Havelock Wilson defended his acceptance of the wage reduction by stating that with 40,000 merchant sailors unemployed and 4 million tonnes of shipping lying idle he had little alternative to accepting the owners’ demands. Further wage reductions were accepted in 1922 and 1923. In total, shipping employers successfully lowered wages by £5 per month in this period. This was not entirely out of step with the experience of other workers. Average wages among manual workers fell by around a third between 1921 and 1924. However, the manner of meek acceptance of employers’ demands was a source of bitterness to NSFU members, many of whom had joined the union simply in order to gain work by means of a paid-up union card. The compliant behaviour of the NSFU left many merchant sailors feeling powerless. It was in part from this feeling that the seaport riots broke out in 1919 and again in 1920 and 1921. The ire of organized sailors was not turned on employers or returning white European sailors (some from former enemy nations), who added to the competition for jobs in the industry, but towards black and Arab British sailors who had settled in increased numbers around Britain’s ports during and immediately after the First World War. In a mastery of understatement, the NSFU newspaper, the Seaman, noted at the height of the port riots that ‘The coloured seaman is not popular with his white fellow workers’. However, the article went on to condemn the violence then taking place: ‘broken heads, whether they are white or black, solve no difficulties, but rather make fresh ones’.112 The anger among merchant sailors at increased job competition and their fear of high unemployment levels and wage cuts may have been warranted. In only two of the years between 1920 and 1939 did unemployment among sailors fall below 20%. Yet merchant sailors in 1919 could not know that 20 years of depression lay ahead for their industry.

Global unrest and rioting on the ‘Atlantic fringe’ c. 1917–19 The fear of politically motivated violence in the immediate post-war period was a global phenomenon. Unrest worldwide between 1917 and 1919 provides a wider context in which to place the British seaport riots, as well as the sub­ sequent outbreak of rioting involving sailors repatriated to the Caribbean.113 The successful Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917 provided governments around the world with the spectre of state overthrow. The attempted revolts 59

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The wider context of the seaport riots of the ‘Spartakist’ movement in Berlin, the establishment of soviets in Bavaria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and the socialist revolt in Austria, although all ultimate failures, fuelled the worldwide fear of Bolshevism. In Britain, concern was expressed in Parliament in March 1919 that alien sailors might themselves be covert Bolsheviks or secretly importing Bolshevik propaganda into Britain. A back-bench MP asked Home Secretary Shortt what action he was going to take ‘in view of the present Continental unrest … to stop this alien peril’.114 Riots took place across the world during 1919. In Melbourne, Australia, in July a crowd including returned soldiers and sailors attempted to rush the local military barracks. During the incident two stray shots were fired, killing a returned soldier. The police eventually restored order and many arrests were made, including of service personnel. Days later, hundreds of returned troops invaded the state offices, breaking windows and causing damage to the building. The crowd demanded that the Premier, Mr Lawson, release or remit the fines of all those prosecuted for the riot. According to one British press account, some ‘toughs’ mingled with the soldiers and the Premier was struck on the head with a stick.115 In France, feelings of hostility to colonial workers among some sections of the working class were combined with a much wider feeling of war weariness and a crisis in morale within French society in 1917/18. Many sections of white French society believed that French colonial workers were ‘enjoying an easy life while French men went to the front’.116 Workers from France’s African and Arab territories who came in their tens of thousands to work in munitions factories and other wartime industry were viewed with resentment by sections of the host population: ‘why are we fighting? So that Chinese, Arabs or Spaniards can marry our wives and our daughters and share out the France for which we will all, sooner or later, get ourselves killed at the front.’117 Similar comments were made in Britain during the 1919 port riots. Trades union opposition to colonial ­workers was another feature common to the riots in Britain and France. The leading French trades union, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), campaigned to restrict the number of wartime ‘foreign’ workers and demanded that they be paid the same as French labourers, to prevent them from lowering wages.118 According to Horne, during the wartime French riots imperial power relation­ ships were transferred to mainland France: ‘The internal frontiers of colonialism, between the governor and the governed, white and native (they remained indigènes, even when in France) were for the first time transported from the colonies to metropolitan France.’119 French colonial workers during the First World War were seen as outsiders to the ‘national community’.120 An example of this was the system of regulating French colonial African and Arab workers in outof-town barracks, to segregate them from the local populations. This system was used, albeit not universally, for French colonial workers from 1916 to 1918. Disorder broke out at state arsenals and private munitions factories in Tarbes, Toulouse and Saint-Médard, near Bordeaux. These disturbances involved white French, French Indo-Chinese and Chinese workers, and ‘one or two immigrants’ were killed.121 The wave of rioting in France in mid-1917 often involved French 60

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The wider context of the seaport riots troops. Rioting at Dijon in June 1917 was triggered by an argument between a drunken French army sergeant and a Moroccan worker. The fight spread and a white crowd, estimated at 1,500, attacked the nearby barracks for Moroccan workers. Many people were injured in the riot, but no one was killed. In the same week there was a riot in Le Havre against Moroccan dock workers. Some 1,300 Moroccans lived and worked at the port. Their presence caused local resentment in the weeks before rioting broke out as they competed for jobs and scarce housing. On 17 June, an exchange of insults between a Moroccan and a white French worker precipitated a street battle in which white workers and soldiers fought groups of Moroccans. By the time military and police authorities ended the fighting, at least 15 people were dead and many more injured. After the Le Havre riot, local authorities closely regulated Arab workers. They were moved into out-of-town barracks, where ‘native’ cuisine and entertainment were provided and from which white French women were excluded.122 Six weeks later, a fight at a flea market at Brest between white French and colonial Arab workers escalated as white French soldiers joined in the crowd to launch an attack on the nearby colonial workers’ barracks. Three Arab workers were killed outright and two others were mortally wounded as the soldiers bayoneted and fired randomly at workers there.123 The 1917 French riots attracted little public interest and few arrests were made. Investigations into the riots were invariably conducted by military authori­ ties. These investigations found that French colonial workers were invariably victims of aggression from local whites. No arrests whatsoever were made following the Dijon, Le Havre and Brest riots, although 20 people died in these incidents. Instead of pursuing the perpetrators, military investigators stressed the importance of isolating French colonial workers from the surrounding population.124 Similarly, albeit perhaps under military orders, there was little discussion of the summer riots in the public sphere. Remarkably, there was no reference in the French press to the riots.125 After the war, the employment of colonial workers in mainland France was swiftly ended. Trades unions were opposed to colonial workers staying beyond the end of the war and this view was shared among police and government authorities. As in Britain, repatriation was used to end the stay of colonial workers in the metropole. Unlike in Britain, strong-arm tactics were used. North Africans in particular were rounded up after the war in police raids. By 1921 only about 25,000 colonial and Chinese workers remained in France, many illegally.126 Stovall has compared the French wartime riots with American ‘race’ riots of the same period. In both sets of riots, the large-scale movement of racialized minority ethnic groups into new areas of settlement drew a violent response. Similar pressures on housing and employment were in evidence during the seaport riots. Another riot which displayed these features occurred within the British empire, in Canada in September 1918. At Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, ­members of the African-Caribbean population were attacked after a dispute between two competitors, a Barbadian and a white Italian, at a local cycling event in the town. This seemingly small incident triggered widespread ­violence. 61

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The wider context of the seaport riots An area of black residence in the town was attacked by a white crowd and prop­ erty was damaged. A Barbadian was shot and killed and others were wounded. The town’s Mayor, O’Neil, read the Riot Act to the white crowd and sent in troops to quell the disorder. The first company of troops O’Neil called in joined in with the white rioters, however; a second company was able to disperse the crowd without further trouble. Nova Scotia’s British Governor believed that the root cause of the violence in Glace Bay was economic: ‘there is general ­antipathy against the coloured people in the community because of their industry and thrift and the consequent progress they have made’.127 Thirty-three black people and no whites were arrested. All but three of the black people arrested were later released without charge. This isolated incident at Glace Bay, in its sequence of events, police and court reaction and in its deeper motivations, is remarkably similar to the general pattern of events during the British port riots which broke out a few months later. In America, the outbreak of a wave of ‘race’ riots during 1919 was in part a symptom of wartime economic developments and post-war social stresses. These disturbances were on a much larger scale than the seaport riots in Britain – but they, like their British counterparts, owed much to the fear of economic competi­ tion on the part of the host population. As in Britain and France, reaction to the supposed black threat to white primacy could not be contained in the workplace. Trades union ‘bars’ and campaigns for the replacement of black with white ­workers were not enough to appease the violently disaffected in the aftermath of the war;128 as a consequence, white crowds seized control of whole cities for days on end, shooting and burning, assaulting and looting. When black people decided to defend themselves, the violence escalated during the months of 1919 famously described by James Weldon Johnson as the ‘Red Summer’.129 The first serious rioting of this nature broke out in 1917. On 2 July, a riot in East St Louis, Illinois, led to the killing of 39 African-Americans and nine whites, including two police officers. Rioting broke out following months of intense friction and sporadic clashes between white residents and the growing AfricanAmerican population of the city. The black population had risen from 6,000 to 13,000 between 1910 and 1917. The East St Louis Central Trades and Labour Union protested to the Lord Mayor and city council against black migration into the city and the potential use of African-Americans by ­employers, including the Aluminum Ore Company, to drive down wages.130 Marcus Garvey spoke out against the riot in Negro World, saying it was a result of white opposition to black people moving from south to north.131 During the riot, white crowds invaded black neighbourhoods, causing thousands of dollars worth of property damage, with little intervention from the city police. Troops from the National Guard called in to quell the violence allowed their weapons to be taken from them, to be used by the crowd to fire on black people.132 ‘The fact that law enforcement was worse than non-existent accounted for much of the loss of human life.’133 In Houston, Texas, in August 1917, members of the third battalion of the 24th Infantry, which, instead of being sent to Europe, had been sent to the town to do guard duty at the construction of camp Logan, rioted following weeks of white 62

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The wider context of the seaport riots violence and insults against them. This was brought to a head when two AfricanAmerican soldiers were arrested and one was beaten by two white police officers. A distorted story reached the camp that the second soldier, Corporal Charles W. Baltimore, had been killed (in fact both men were released without charge and one of the white police officers involved was suspended). Many black troops at the camp agreed to take action against the police force to avenge Baltimore’s ‘murder’. They raided the ammunition tents and marched into Houston in a military column. Two hours later, 15 local people, including four police officers, were dead (another died later) and four black troops had been killed. At the trial that followed, 118 African-American soldiers were charged with mutiny, murder and other offences relating to the riot; 110 were found guilty and 29 were given the death penalty. According to Haynes, the events of the Houston riot of 1917 set the scene for the widespread rioting of the ‘Red Summer’ of 1919.134 The wartime pattern of increased African-American migration to industrialized northern cities placed additional strain on already overstretched housing stock, and transportation and public facilities. The increased presence of black labour in wartime was, of course, also apparent in the employment of colonial black sailors in the British merchant navy during the First World War. African-American migration to the northern states continued after the war but, as in Britain in the merchant shipping industry, an economic decline was precipitated by the end of war. This coincided with an increase in the labour supply with the demobilization of hundreds of thousands of white and African-American troops. There were 26 ‘race’ riots in America in 1919, including those in Charleston, South Carolina, Elaine, Arkansas, Knoxville, Tennessee, Omaha, Nebraska, and Longview, Texas.135 One hundred and twenty people were killed during these riots. The most severe rioting took place in Washington, DC, and Chicago in July. In Washington, where seven people were killed, dissatisfaction among returning troops was a major cause of the violence: Newspaper reports of Negroes assaulting white women whipped the irrespon­ sible elements of the population into a frenzy, although it early became clear that the reports had no basis in fact. Mobs consisting primarily of white sailors, soldiers and marines, ran amuck through the streets of Washington for three days, killing several Negroes and injuring scores of others. On the third day the Negroes retaliated when hoodlums sought to invade and burn the Negro section of the city. The casualty list mounted, but before order was restored the number of whites killed and wounded had increased considerably due to the belated, but stern action which the Negroes took.136

The level of violence in Chicago far exceeded anything that occurred else­ where in the ‘black Atlantic’ world in this troubled year. The African-American population of Chicago increased from 44,000 in 1910 to 110,000 in 1919. White hostility and violence followed as African-Americans moved into what had previ­ ously been white-dominated residential areas. In the period from July 1917 to July 1919, a white bombing campaign directed at black residences in the city was conducted largely unchecked by the Chicago police. 63

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The wider context of the seaport riots Racist white policing helped precipitate the riot. A black person was stoned and drowned after he swam into a ‘white-only’ area at Lake Michigan beach on 27 July 1919. A white police officer refused to arrest a white person identified as throwing the rock. The same police officer then arrested a black person on the complaint of a white person.137 During the five days of rioting that followed this incident, armed whites drove around the city shooting at African-American residents. Black people fought back, some acting as snipers to shoot at the armed cars driving through their neighbourhoods. Twenty-three black and 15 white people were killed in the violence. The Chicago police force struggled to restore order, and killed 22 of the rioters (7 black and 15 white). In total, 342 blacks and 178 whites were injured. The rioting was ended with the despatch of troops to the city. Part of the reason for the severity of the 1919 riots was the determination with which African-Americans resisted white attacks on them. This may have been connected to years of pent-up resentment at the apparently unchecked outbreaks of lynchings. In the years from 1913 to 1920, 528 African-Americans were lynched. In the year following the war, more than 70 black people were lynched, some of them still in military uniform. Military service overseas had been an enlightening experience for African-American troops. More than 360,000 of them served in the First World War. Postings to Europe gave them a taste of life in countries (principally France) where segregation and discriminatory practices were not built into everyday life. It also forcibly brought home the difference in attitudes between local white people and their own commanding officers. John Hope Franklin commented upon the reaction of African-American troops to their wartime racist treatment: Complaints flooded into the War Department that Negroes were continu­ ously insulted by white officers. They referred to Negroes as ‘coons’ and ‘niggers’, and ‘darkies’, and frequently forced them to work under unhealthy and laborious conditions. Many Negro soldiers contended that white officers made it extremely difficult for them to advance and that they indiscriminately assigned them to labour battalions even when they were qualified for other posts requiring higher skills.138

There were similarities between the unfair wartime treatment meted out to African-American troops and to African-Caribbean soldiers of the British West Indies Regiment. Although trained for front-line battle, both sets of troops were made to perform labour battalion duties. Both groups also found it next to impossible to obtain promotion beyond the rank of sergeant, despite promises to the contrary by the American government and British colonial officials during recruitment. Faced with such biased treatment, African-Caribbean troops revolted in Italy in 1918.139 Further widespread disorder occurred in the Caribbean in 1919 following the return of demobilized troops and sailors repatriated from Britain in the wake of the seaport riots. Wartime influences were also apparent in an episode of rioting in South Africa that is worth considering in this review of wartime and post-war global unrest. 64

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The wider context of the seaport riots During the war, a shortage of workers in the mines in the world’s largest gold fields was filled when employers moved unskilled African workers into skilled jobs at a lower wage. White mine workers were convinced that the owners, having set this precedent in order to maintain profits, were set to replace them permanently with lower-paid, black employees. The 1922 strike and later rebel­ lion came about as white goldmine workers, mainly from Britain and Australia, many of them ex-service personnel, combined in order to defeat an attempt by mine owners to reduce wages and abolish two paid holidays in the mines. Again, as with the British port riots of 1919, the South African gold strikes of 1922, although involving severe violence against black co-workers, were ‘a struggle … to have some control over the overweening power of employers’.140 The strikes began in January 1922 and remained solid and calm for the first month. However, when the government sided with employers and supported a strike-breaking movement, the miners protested violently and some strikers were killed. As the strike reached its final phase, in March 1922, at the commencement of a general strike, African mine workers were targeted and some killed as the organized strike action collapsed, to be overtaken by an unsuccessful attempt at a militarystyle insurrection launched by militants in the strike movement.141 While it is invidious to see all the riots discussed in this section as having identical causes, there are some patterns that can be traced, as shown by Evans in his article on the ‘Red Summers’ of 1917–19: Despite the differences in circumstances on either side of the ocean, social strains arising from the Great War, and a hostile reaction to rapidly expanding black populations were common to both Europe and the United States.… Other issues, such as the nature of policing, the differing responses of the press, and the local political situation must also be considered.142

Conclusion This chapter has sought to provide a wider social, economic and political con­ text for the seaport riots of 1919. The belief that the great sacrifices of the war years had been futile was shared by millions of people, as post-war shortages in housing and increased competition in the job market were the first results of mass demobilization. One of the first ‘peace dividends’ was the discovery of a new ‘voice’ among discharged soldiers and sailors. The frequent episodes of rioting around Britain in 1919 serve as an indication of the social dislocation experienced throughout the country as the working class in particular sought to adjust to peacetime existence. Ex-service personnel were prominent in violent protests around Britain during 1919. These ranged from street altercations to the Luton ‘peace riot’ of July 1919. It is argued here that the wider frustrations within British society evident in the rioting that broke out in 1919 were, for a time, specifically focused on the black, Chinese and Arab populations of many of Britain’s seaports. In making the point that the port riots were part of a broader demonstration of unrest immediately following the First World War, it should 65

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The wider context of the seaport riots also be noted that a perception that wartime sacrifice was going unrewarded was held as much by the black British working population as by the white. The seaport riots arose in part from the weak level of trades union organiz­ ation. After the war, black colonial British merchant sailors were faced with attempts to ban their employment on British ships as a by-product of a much wider campaign against ‘Asiatic’ and other alien labour. Even at a time of peak membership levels, the power and influence of the largest of the sailors’ unions, the NSFU, was negligible. The lack of independence the union experienced is exemplified by leader Joseph Havelock Wilson’s toadying towards the employerdominated NMB. Britain’s inter-war economic difficulties, which hit merchant shipping particularly early and lasted for almost 20 years, also serve as a back­ drop to the rioting. The anti-alien sentiment in sections of British society so evident in the wartime anti-German rioting re-emerged at the time of the seaport riots. This underlying element, when combined with wartime social dislocation, the influ­ ence of ‘patriot’ politics, broad economic tensions, the specific difficulties of the shipping industry and the weak level of unionization in that industry, together provided the spur for three years of sporadic rioting in Britain’s ports. Colonial workers in France were also involved in riots, albeit they were invari­ ably the targets for white French aggression and war weariness. Similarly, in America, African-American troops and workers arriving in increased numbers in northern towns and cities during and after the war were met with widespread, fierce and sustained aggression. Social tensions overlaying employment fears, many of them linked to wartime developments, featured in all these episodes of riot in the ‘black Atlantic’ world (and in the 1922 South African riots). These issues were also to the forefront during the riots around Britain’s seaports in 1919.

Notes 1 J. H. Thomas, speech at the National Industrial Conference, 27 February 1919, reported in the Scotsman (Edinburgh), 28 February 1919, p. 5. 2 J. Havelock Wilson, My Stormy Voyage Through Life (Newcastle: Co-operative Printing Society, 1925): pp. 78–79. 3 Rothstein, The Soldiers’ Strikes of 1919, p. 18. 4 Glasgow Herald, 26 March 1919, p. 9. 5 House of Commons Debates, vol. 116, 26 May 1919, cols 991–92. 6 Edward Shortt (1862–1935) was educated at Durham School and University. Trained as a barrister, he was the Liberal MP for West Newcastle from 1910 to 1922. He was Chief Secretary for Ireland 1918–19 and was Home Secretary 1919–22. 7 House of Commons Debates, vol. 114, 31 March 1919, col. 910. 8 Evans, ‘The South Wales Race Riots of 1919’, p. 13. 9 In response to Hall’s question, Wardle stated that no aliens were being considered for civil service work. Regarding private employers, Wardle stated that very few of the workers who had been hired during wartime remained in the country, since the Ministry of Labour had arranged for the repatriation of the vast majority since the war’s end. For those aliens employed in Britain before the war, the Ministry had

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The wider context of the seaport riots advised local labour exchanges not to offer vacancies to them unless no suitable British applicant was available and in no circumstances to allow aliens to apply for a vacancy outside their registered location. See House of Commons Debates, vol. 114, 1 April 1919, col. 1062. 10 The annual report of the Glasgow Sailors’ Home for the year ending December 1920 stated: ‘There is no little distress among officers and men of the mercantile marine owing to the great difficulty of finding employment’. Glasgow City Archives, Mitchell Library, Glasgow, TD 932/8/47. 11 Note that until 1913, unemployment figures were based on the percentage of trades’ unionists out of work (mainly skilled and semi-skilled workers). From 1920, figures were expressed as a percentage of those workers covered by unemployment insurance, that is, receiving less than £250 per annum in wages. This included most manual workers and unskilled workers. All figures from S. Pollard, The Development of the British Economy 1914–1990 (London: Edward Arnold, 1992, 4th edn), p. 122. 12 Minutes of Glasgow Trades Council, December 1918, Mitchell Library, Glasgow, quoted in I. Maclean, The Legend of Red Clydeside (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1983, reprinted 1999), p. 113. 13 For more on the strike campaign, see Maclean, The Legend of Red Clydeside, pp. 112–38. 14 D. Mitchell, ‘Ghost of a Chance: British Revolutionaries in 1919’, History Today, 20(11) (November 1970), p. 759. 15 C. Andrew, Her Majesty’s Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (New York: Viking Penguin, 1986), pp. 238–39. 16 The document appears in Lloyd George’s papers, MSS F/33/2/3, dated 9 January 1919. It is quoted in Andrew, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, p. 232. 17 See documents in H. McShane, Glasgow 1919: The Story of the 40 Hours’ Strike (Glasgow: Molendiner Press, 1974), and TNA, Cab 23/9, War Cabinet 522, Cabinet minutes, 30 January 1919. 18 TNA, Cab 23/9, War Cabinet 523, Cabinet minutes, 31 January 1919. 19 J. Foster, ‘Strike Action and Working Class Politics on Clydeside 1914–1919’, International Review of Social History, 35 (1990), p. 55. 20 ‘Suddenly the police staged what could only be described as a riot and charged the crowd.’ C. Harvie, No Gods and Precious Few Heroes: Scotland 1914–1980 (London: Arnold, 1981), p. 22. 21 Evening Times (Glasgow), 24 January 1919, p. 1. 22 Evening Times, 23 January 1919, p. 1. The central Glasgow harbour area is known locally as the ‘Broomielaw’, after the long street which runs adjacent to the River Clyde. 23 Evening News (Glasgow), 24 January 1919, p. 5. 24 Scotsman, 29 January 1919, p. 8. See also Evening Times, 28 January 1919, p. 1. 25 Bulletin (Glasgow), 31 January 1919, p. 10. 26 For more on this view see N. Milton, John Maclean (London: Pluto Press, 1973), p. 193. 27 Evening Times, 28 January 1919, p. 1. 28 Fairplay (London), 6 February 1919, p. 322. 29 Some of these accounts are discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. 30 See Chapter 3 for a discussion of the involvement of ‘hooligans’ in the seaport riots. 31 All sums of money are given in the text with the post-decimalization equivalent. In value, £1 in 1919 is equivalent of £21.21 in today’s currency (2009). 32 The Times, 10 March 1919, p. 10, and 17 March 1919, p. 8.

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The wider context of the seaport riots 33 Glasgow Herald, 10 July 1919, p. 3; Bulletin, 7 July 1919, p. 2. 34 The Times, 21 March 1919, p. 17. 35 The Times, 19 June 1919, p. 9, and 28 June 1919, p. 4; Glasgow Herald, 19 June 1919, p. 5, 20 June 1919, p. 11, and 21 June 1919, p. 5. 36 Bulletin, 24 July 1919, p. 3. 37 Workers’ Dreadnought, 21 June 1919, p. 1365. 38 G. J. DeGroot, Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War (London: Longman, 1996), p. 266. 39 Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing, p. 347. 40 G. Wootton, The Politics of Influence: British Ex-servicemen, Cabinet Decisions and Cultural Change, 1917–1957 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 125. 41 House of Commons Debates, vol. 116, 26 May 1919, col. 991. 42 Orr, ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’, p. 17. 43 Orr, ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’, p. 17. 44 Luton News, 17 July 1919. 45 The Times, 21 July 1919, p. 9, and 22 July 1919, p. 9. 46 See The Times, 23 July 1919, p. 10, and 24 July 1919, p. 9. Accounts of the Luton riot also featured prominently in the regional press. See, for example, reports in the Bulletin, 23 July 1919, p. 2, and 26 July 1919, p. 3. 47 The Times, 22 July 1919, p. 9. 48 Workers’ Dreadnought, 26 July 1919, p. 1412. 49 Workers’ Dreadnought, 21 June 1919, p. 1368 50 White, ‘The Summer Riots of 1919’, p. 261. 51 G. C. Webber, The Ideology of the British Right, 1918–1939 (London: Croom Helm, 1986), p. 17. 52 B. Millman, ‘British Home Defence Planning and Civil Dissent 1917–1918’, War in History, 5(2) (1998), p. 211. 53 Glasgow Herald, 5 March 1920, p. 6. 54 TNA, CAB 24/95/321–22, Cabinet minutes, 11 December 1919. 55 DeGroot, Blighty, p. 266. 56 B. Millman, Managing Domestic Dissent in First World War Britain (London: Frank Cass, 2000), p. 210. 57 A coal trimmer loaded and arranged the coal on a ship so that the vessel remained balanced in the hold, very necessary during storms. 58 Lindop, ‘A History of Seamen’s Trade Unionism’, p. 20. 59 Frost, Work and Community, p. 77. 60 Lindop, ‘A History of Seamen’s Trade Unionism’, p. 3. 61 Lawless, ‘Muslim Migration’, p. 227. 62 Evans, ‘The South Wales Race Riots of 1919’, p. 7. 63 Law and Henfrey, A History of Race and Racism in Liverpool, p. 21. 64 Marsh and Ryan, The Seamen, p. 80. 65 Marine Caterer, 9(13) (June 1919), p. 204. 66 Marsh and Ryan, The Seamen, p. 80. 67 Lindop, ‘A History of Seamen’s Trade Unionism’, p. 114. 68 Tabili, ‘We Ask For British Justice’, p. 50 69 C. E. Fayle, The War and the Shipping Industry (London: Oxford University Press, 1927), p. 261. 70 The Glasgow Sailors’ Home was situated at the corner of Broomielaw Street and James Watt Street. The black sailors’ lodging house was situated at 118 Broomielaw. The mercantile marine office where the riot began was in James Watt Street. See Chapter 2 for further detail on the Glasgow riot.

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The wider context of the seaport riots 71 Joseph Havelock Wilson (1859–1929) was born in Sunderland. He was educated at the Boys’ British School and then worked as a sailor. In 1887 he founded the National Amalgamated Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union in Sunderland. It collapsed through financial difficulties in 1894. Later that year he formed the National Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union. He was elected as Liberal MP for Middlesbrough, 1892–1900 and 1906–10. He was then elected as a Coalition Liberal for South Shields, 1918–22. 72 Havelock Wilson, My Stormy Voyage, pp. 127–28. 73 Lindop, ‘A History of Seamen’s Trade Unionism’, pp. 129–30. 74 See K. Lunn, ‘The Seamen’s Union and “Foreign” Workers on British and Colonial Shipping, 1890–1939’, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, 53(3) (winter 1988), p. 10. 75 House of Commons Debates, vol. 165, 15 November 1906, col. 231. 76 House of Commons Debates, vol. 165, 15 November 1906, cols 266–67. 77 House of Commons Debates, vol. 2, 10 March 1909, col. 449. 78 Seed, ‘Limehouse Blues’, p. 70. 79 E. W. MacFarland, ‘Clyde Opinion on an Old Controversy: Indian and Chinese Seafarers in Glasgow’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 14(4) (October 1991), pp. 493–515. 80 The Shipping Federation was the employers’ organization for the industry. It was set up in 1890 to defend the employers’ position after the successful London dockers’ strike of 1889. 81 Seaman, 16 June 1916, n.p. The ‘Man at the Wheel’ was S. G. Le Touzel, London district secretary for the catering section of the NSFU. 82 Seaman, 22 September 1916, n.p. 83 Seed, ‘Limehouse Blues’, p. 71. 84 See House of Commons Debates, vol. 112, 17 February 1919, col. 605, and vol. 113, 12 March 1919, cols 150–52. 85 Lunn, ‘The Seamen’s Union and “Foreign” Workers’, p. 6. 86 Tabili, ‘We Ask For British Justice’, p. 94. 87 Seamen, 20 June 1919, n.p. 88 TNA, HO 11843/139147, Home Office internal memoranda, 20 and 26 June 1919. 89 Liverpool Courier, 8 November 1919, p. 3. 90 TNA, HO 11843/139147, Home Office memorandum, 12 September 1919. 91 Seaman, 19 September 1919, n.p. 92 Western Mail (Cardiff), 11 June 1919, p. 6. 93 TNA, HO 11843/139147, Home Office newspaper cutting from the Manchester Guardian, 13 December 1920. 94 Seed, ‘Limehouse Blues’, p. 62. 95 For more on the history of anti-alienism in the period, see Holmes, John Bull’s Island, pp. 95–114, and C. Holmes, A Tolerant Country? (London: Faber, 1991), pp. 23–28. See also the body of work by Tony Kushner, for example T. Kushner and K. Lunn, eds, The Politics of Marginality: Race, the Radical Right and Minorities in Twentieth Century Britain (London: Routledge, 1990); and T. Kushner and D. Ceserani, eds, Traditions of Intolerance: Historical Perspectives on Fascist and Race Discourses in Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989); and Kushner and Ceserani, The Internment of Aliens in Britain. 96 For a discussion on British ‘anti-alienism’, see J. A. Garrard, The English and Immigration 1880–1910 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971). 97 Panayi has noted that internment affected over 30,000 people in wartime Britain, most of whom were German. Deportation and repatriation by the war’s end had reduced the British German population from 57,500 in 1914 to 22,254 in 1919. See P. Panayi, ‘Anti-German Riots in Britain During the First World War’, in P. Panayi, ed.,

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The wider context of the seaport riots Racial Violence in Britain in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1996), p. 65. 98 For more on these riots see Panayi, ‘Anti-German Riots’. 99 Panayi, ‘Anti-German Riots’, p. 70. 100 Panayi, ‘Anti-German Riots’, p. 76. 101 J. O. Stubbs, ‘Lord Milner and Patriotic Labour 1914–1918’, English Historical Review, 87 (1972), p. 753. 102 Panayi, ‘Anti-German Riots’, p. 89. 103 Kushner and Ceserani, The Internment of Aliens in Britain, p. 12. 104 Figures given in C. P. Hopkins, National Service of British Seamen 1914–19 (London: Routledge, 1920), p. 3. Charles Plomer Hopkins was an Anglican priest. A former port chaplain at Calcutta, he became honorary treasurer of the NSFU and was a close colleague of Havelock Wilson. 105 T. Lane, The Merchant Seaman’s War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), p. 23. 106 Fayle, The War and the Shipping Industry, p. 322. 107 See Chapter 2 for some examples of anti-Scandinavian hostility demonstrated by black sailors in Liverpool and Cardiff during the 1919 port riots. 108 Joseph Havelock Wilson permanently established the NSFU, the largest sailors’ union, in 1894, after his earlier union of the same name failed shortly after its formation in 1887. In 1926, the NSFU’s title was changed to the National Union of Seamen. Other sailors’ unions at this time were the National Union of Ships’ Stewards, Cooks, Butchers and Bakers (1910–21), and the British Seafarers’ Union (1911–21), a break-away organization from the NSFU. 109 The 1919 figure, of 97,413, was surpassed only once, in 1957, when a membership of 97,517 was recorded. The 1920 figure, of 99,321, has never been bettered. See Marsh and Ryan, The Seamen, pp. 306–7. 110 The union’s membership figures were 3,624 in 1910, 9,885 in 1912, 18,203 in 1914, 18,684 in 1916, 24,030 in 1918, 24,030 (again) in 1919 and 25,970 in 1920, thereafter falling sharply, to 9,800, after its unsuccessful strike in 1921. The British Seafarers’ Union (which was excluded from the NMB) had no similar membership surge. Its membership levels were 6,173 in 1912, 6,989 in 1914, 5,933 in 1916, 5,233 in 1918, 5,491 in 1919, 5,079 in 1920 and 4,343 in 1921. All figures from Marsh and Ryan, The Seamen, pp. 308–9. 111 Selected trades union membership levels in the period were as follows: 1901, 2,025,000; 1911, 3,139,000; 1914, 4,145,000; 1917, 5,499,000; 1918, 6,533,000; 1919, 7,926,000; 1920, 8,348,000; 1921, 6,633,000; 1922, 5,625,000; 1926, 5,219,000; 1927, 4,919,000; 1933, 4,392,000; 1939, 6,298,000. All figures from H. Pelling, A History of British Trade Unionism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), pp. 261–63. 112 Supplement to the Seaman, 20 June 1919, p. 7. 113 See Chapter 5 for more on disorder in the Caribbean during 1919. 114 Parliamentary question by Commander Sir Edward Nicholl, MP for Penrhyn and Falmouth, House of Commons Debates, vol. 114, 27 March 1919, col. 576. 115 Bulletin, 23 July 1919, p. 3. 116 Evans, ‘Red Summers 1917–1919’, p. 31. 117 Extract from a Le Havre police report, May 1917, quoted in Horne, ‘Immigrant Workers in France’, p. 85. 118 Stovall, ‘The Color Line Behind the Lines’, p. 748. 119 Horne, ‘Immigrant Workers in France’, p. 84. 120 Stovall, ‘The Color Line Behind the Lines’, p. 741.

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The wider context of the seaport riots 121 Horne, ‘Immigrant Workers in France’, p. 84. 122 Stovall, ‘The Color Line Behind the Lines’, p. 757. 123 Horne, ‘Immigrant Workers in France’, pp. 84–85. 124 Stovall, ‘The Color Line Behind the Lines’, p. 756. 125 Stovall, ‘The Color Line Behind the Lines’, p. 757. 126 T. Stovall, ‘Colour-Blind France? Colonial Workers During the First World War’, Race and Class, 35(2) (1993), p. 52. 127 TNA, CO 20/294, Governor of Nova Scotia to Colonial Office, Report on riot at Glace Bay, 30 October 1918. 128 Segal, The Race War, p. 229. 129 J. Weldon Johnson, Along This Way (New York, 1935; reprinted Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990), p. 341. See also the view of William M. Tuttle Jr: ‘Having helped as soldiers and war workers to win the war for world-wide “democracy” blacks entered the year 1919 with aspirations for a larger share of democracy at home. Tensions mounted – and racial violence erupted – as these aspirations collided with the general white determination to reaffirm the black people’s pre-war status on the bottom rung of the racial ladder.’ W. M. Tuttle Jr, ‘“Violence in a Heathen Land”: The Longview Race Riot of 1919’, Phylon, 33(4) (1972), p. 324. 130 E. M. Rudwick, Race Riot at East St Louis July 2 1917 (New York: Atheneum, 1972), p. 27. 131 Robert A. Hill, ed., The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, vol. 1 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983), p. 220. 132 Grimshaw, ‘Actions of the Police and the Military’, p. 272. 133 R. V. Haynes, A Night of Violence: The Houston Riot of 1917 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1976), p. 58. 134 Haynes, A Night of Violence, p. 318. 135 See Grimshaw, ‘Actions of the Police and the Military’, pp. 272–81, for more on the Elaine and Omaha riots. For the Longview riot see Tuttle, ‘“Violence in a Heathen Land”’, pp. 324–33. 136 J. H. Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1947), p. 472. 137 Grimshaw, ‘Actions of the Police and the Military’, p. 272. 138 Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, p. 451. 139 See W. F. Elkins, ‘A Source of Black Nationalism in the Caribbean: The Revolt of the British West Indies Regiment at Taranto, Italy’, Science and Society, 34(1) (spring 1970), p. 99, for more on the revolt in Italy. 140 J. Krikler, White Rising: The 1922 Insurrection and Racial Killing in South Africa (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. ix. 141 Krikler, White Rising, pp. ix, xii. 142 Evans, ‘Red Summers’, p. 33.

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C hapter 2

Chief events of the riots

The seaport riots began in January 1919 and continued around the country intermittently for most of the year. Glasgow saw the first riot, followed by South Shields in February, and there were disturbances in Salford in March and April. London witnessed serious, sporadic rioting between April and August 1919. There was disorder in Hull in May. June was the peak month of port violence, with the most severe riots of the year in Liverpool and Cardiff. There were also riots in Newport and Barry in June. Further riots occurred in 1920 and 1921; however, for the sake of clarity, these later outbreaks are discussed in Chapter 6, which deals with the longer-term consequences of the 1919 rioting. This chapter describes the chief events of the riots in the nine seaports. The key themes outlined in the introductory chapter and discussed in general terms in the previous chapter were in evidence as the riots unfolded. In many of the ports, the quayside implementation of the seamen’s unions’ policy of barring black, Arab and Chinese sailors from British merchant ships played a part in the out­break of rioting. The impact of mass demobilization was also evident in the disorder, via the prominent role played by service and ex-service personnel. The strain placed on dockside communities by housing shortages has been outlined as a general post-war issue and competition for accommodation was a factor in many of the port riots. The racism evident in sections of British society is also assessed, particularly through white hostility to sexual relation­ ships between black and white people. While the emphasis is on identifying a pattern in the events and extracting the common themes from the riots, local aspects of the disorders will also be considered.

The unions’ ‘colour’ bar A common aspect in many seaport riots was the direct involvement of the sea­ men’s unions in the outbreak of disorder. In some cases, opposition among the 72

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Chief events of the riots organized seamen’s movement to black, Arab and Chinese labour became the trigger for rioting as the general union policy of favouring white British sailors was locally implemented via decisions taken by individual union representatives in the merchant shipping hiring yards in the ports. In Glasgow, the British Seafarers’ Union, allegedly a more ‘radical’ organization than the longer-established NSFU, staged a series of meetings against overseas labour from 23 to 30 January 1919. At the meetings, Emanuel Shinwell, the Glasgow branch leader, urged government action to tackle growing un­employment among British sailors. In particular, Shinwell spoke out against the employment of ‘Chinese labour’ on British ships. He clearly identified Chinese sailors as the cause of white British unemployment, as the local press reported: A meeting on the question of Chinese labour on British ships, and its rela­ tion to the unemployment of British seamen, was held this morning at James Watt Street, Glasgow. Over 600 men were present. Councillor Shinwell, of the British Seafarers’ Union, who addressed the meeting, directed attention to the large number of British seamen and firemen who were at present unemployed and the large number being demobilised who would find it difficult to secure employment aboard ship.1

Within a few hours of this meeting the Glasgow harbour riot occurred. The riot began close to the site of the meeting, namely the yard of the mercantile marine office in James Watt Street, where sailors gathered for their chance to be signed on to vessels then in port. While waiting to see if they would be hired, compet­ ing groups of black and white sailors jostled and shouted insults at each other. This baiting descended into a pitched battle and the windows of the shipping office were smashed in the mêlée. The fighting spilled out of the yard onto the street.2 More than 30 black sailors fled the yard, pursued by a large crowd of white sailors. During the riot, white bystanders joined the crowd, which grew to several hundred strong. The violence was fierce as running battles broke out. The rioters used guns, knives, batons and makeshift weapons such as stones and bricks picked up from the street. The black sailors initially ran towards the nearby Glasgow Sailors’ Home, on the corner of James Watt Street and Broomielaw Street. The white crowd smashed the windows of the home and then invaded it as the fighting continued. Local people, presumably business owners since the sailors’ yard was surrounded by shipping warehouses and commercial premises, telephoned the police to request assistance for the two or three beat officers in the harbour area. Fifty additional officers were soon on the scene. The large police force cleared the two sets of rioters out of the Sailors’ Home. The black sailors next fled along the broad street parallel to the River Clyde into their own boarding house, at 118 Broomielaw Street. White rioters sought to force the sailors back into the street by smashing the windows with missiles, surrounded the building and then attacked it. In response, some of the black sailors fired shots down at the crowd. Police later found a revolver with three spent cartridges under a bed and five live cartridges lying in the hallway in the boarding house. Three men were seriously injured in the course of the riot. Two 73

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Chief events of the riots were white sailors: Duncan Cowan, who was shot, and Michael Carlin, who had been stabbed. West African sailor Tom Johnson was also stabbed. Cornered in their boarding house, the black sailors offered no resistance when the police entered the premises. However, to restore order, the police took them into ‘protective custody’ and swiftly removed them from the scene. None of the large crowd of white rioters involved in the attack was arrested. The black sailors, all British colonial subjects from Sierra Leone, taken from the boarding house by the police were subsequently charged with riot and weapons offences. Indications of police bias in their handling of the riot were later played up in court by the sailors’ defence lawyer, David Cook. He argued that it was ‘peculiar’ that although a black sailor had been wounded no white person had been arrested either for that offence or for playing any part in the rioting.3 Unlike Cowan and Carlin, who were taken directly to hospital, Johnson, despite suffering from wounds to the back and leg, was arrested, taken to court and formally charged with shooting offences. His injuries, later described in his hospital record as ‘gaping’ wounds, were ignored or dismissed as irrelevant by the police and the white crowd. Johnson was removed in a police van, to the obvious pleasure of the white crowd, who showered abuse on him as he was driven away for a court appearance.4 Local press reports displayed little sym­ pathy for Johnson, who was described in racist terms: ‘…a darkie from Sierra Leone, who speaks little English, complained of having been stabbed, but his wound was not serious’.5 In contrast to the immediate arrest of the wounded Johnson and the large group of black sailors, only one white person, Patrick Cox, was arrested (later), for an alleged assault on a police officer during the riot. The court cases which followed these incidents in the Glasgow harbour riot will be discussed in Chapter 4. In an interview conducted by a reporter from the Glasgow Evening News with Shinwell the day after the riot, he suggested that the violence had not neces­ sarily ended: ‘Last night when I arrived at the Broomielaw, large crowds were hanging about, and I had considerable difficulty in restraining them from taking further action’.6 Shinwell believed the riot started because a number of recently demobilized Royal Navy reservists were unable to obtain berths from Glasgow, yet ‘some of the best ships’ were leaving with black and Chinese labour aboard.7 A possibility raised by this interview is that the Glasgow harbour riot was ‘staged’ to draw government attention to the white sailors’ campaign against the employ­ ment of Chinese sailors. Of course, the views of Shinwell have to be taken with a large pinch of salt. There is strong evidence against the riot being staged to put pressure on the government. Despite the calls to clear Chinese labour off British ships, only one Chinese person was attacked during the riot. Instead it was black British colonial subjects who were chased from the shipping yard and beaten in the street. However, Shinwell referred to the resentment caused by white sailors in Glasgow over the recent arrival of black sailors from Cardiff coinciding with the appearance of Chinese sailors from Liverpool. A few days later another article on the riot in the Evening News stated that ‘evidently some Chinese sailors had also arrived in Glasgow at the same time, and the black 74

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Chief events of the riots men got the benefit of any ill-feeling directed against the Chinese’.8 The recent arrival in Glasgow of the West African sailors from Cardiff was later confirmed by the black sailors’ defence lawyer during the riot trials. Further disorder broke out in mid-1919, coinciding with the port rioting in Liverpool and south Wales. On 20 June, a note from the Ministry of Shipping to the Colonial Office predicted further ‘trouble’ from black workers in Glasgow: ‘These men are causing much uneasiness and seamen at the port are very disturbed in consequence’.9 Two armed black sailors reportedly involved in the June disturbance on the Broomielaw later appeared before the marine police court for remittance to the higher sheriff court. One, unnamed, was charged with a serious assault on a white man and with ‘presenting a loaded revolver’. It has not been possible to discover his fate. The other black sailor, John Robert Bell, was spotted by police dropping a revolver in the street and was charged ‘with carrying a loaded revolver within the special area of the harbour without permission of the competent naval authority’.10 He was fined £5 (or 10 days’ imprisonment) for possessing a revolver and six cartridges.11 As in Glasgow in January, the rioting at South Shields in February 1919 arose from a dispute in the local shipping office. On 4 February, nine Arab firemen were signed on to form the ‘stoke hold’ (engine room) crew by the engineer of the Trewellard, straight from their boarding house. The firemen arrived at the marine office via the local NSFU branch, where they had first gone to pay off their lapsed union dues, before boarding ship. Wartime agreements had ensured that all merchant seamen had to be NSFU members before they could sail. It may have been some time since any of these men had been employed, because all nine each paid £2 to the NSFU. Members of the NSFU had to pay 1 shilling (5p) per week in or out of work, but should this fall far into arrears a flat rate of £2 was charged. Ironically, while the Arab firemen ensured their union membership was in order, two union officials intervened to replace the Arab crew with an all-white crew. Another union was also involved. The Shields Gazette and Shipping Telegraph graphically described the role in inciting the violence played by former soldier John B. Fye,12 an official of the National Union of Ships’ Stewards, Cooks, Butchers and Bakers: While they were in the office, the defendant, John Fye, who was the delegate of the Cooks’ and Stewards’ Union, came down and said to the crowd, ‘Don’t let these Arabs sign on the ship…’. He then shouted, ‘Come on you black bastards, you are not going to join the ship’.   ‘That language’, said Mr Smith, the defence lawyer for the Arabs, ‘used to a crowd anxious to get employment, and used by a union official, was likely to incite the crowd. It was actually the dropping of the match into the keg of gunpowder.’13

James Gilroy, a local NSFU official, also warned the engineer of the Trewellard against employing the Arabs. Gilroy told the engineer, ‘If you take those Arab firemen you will get no sailors and there will be bloodshed outside’.14 On hearing 75

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Chief events of the riots this, the engineer went outside and hired eight white Britons and one Swede. When the white replacement crew entered, the Arabs quietly quit the shipping office. They left their union books behind them in protest. Abdul Zaid asked Fye why the hired crew of which he was a part could not join the ship, pointing out that they had paid their union dues. Fye said, ‘You black bastard this ship is not for you’. Another of the Arabs was so provoked by Fye’s comment that he slapped him. Fye then knocked the sailor down, and when Zaid went to the man’s assistance Fye struck him on the head with a stick.15 Fye was quickly surrounded and attacked by other Arabs. He suffered head and neck injuries as a result of this attack, while Gilroy had his arm broken in two places. White seamen, including some foreign white sailors in and around the shipping office, then came to intervene on Fye’s behalf and a pitched battle ensued. Two police officers tried to stop the fight but were soon swallowed up in the scuffling and missile throwing which followed, as local inhabitants joined in the fighting. The level of violence went beyond the power of the neighbourhood police to control and troops were sent for to restore calm. The Arab seamen escaped from the Mill Dam dockside area, hotly pursued by a white crowd. Some coal trimmers supplied the white crowd with ammunition to throw at the fleeing Arab sailors.16 Others in the crowd armed themselves with stones and bottles and pelted the retreating Arabs. San Bin Salah, charged with riotous assembly, estimated a crowd 200 strong chased them from the shipping office back to their lodgings in the east Holborn district. The Arab firemen regrouped and were joined by other Arab and black resi­ dents of the district. A group of around 50 people, some armed, re-emerged to face the crowd and drive it back to the Mill Dam area. Any shots fired appeared designed to disperse the crowd, since although 12 people were injured during the riots no one suffered bullet wounds and no weapons charges were laid against the Arabs arrested.17 Those more seriously injured included a 15-year-old white boy who had been struck on the head with a brick and an Arab who suffered broken ribs and was taken to Ingham Infirmary. Several of the Arabs arrested later appeared in court in bandages. The riot ended with the arrival of a regiment of the Durham Light Infantry and a squad of Royal Navy ‘bluejackets’ from a ship stationed in the harbour. Together they soon dispersed the white crowd and allowed the Arabs to safely return home. The riot at the Mill Dam in February was a consequence of ongoing white resentment against job shortages and the perceived economic ‘threat’ posed by black and Arab populations in South Shields. For example, in early January a café and house owned by Abdul Naggi were badly damaged and Naggi himself was beaten in two separate attacks by white crowds. Chief Constable Scott’s report to the Home Office on the rioting played down any economic motive in the Mill Dam riot and the other disturbances at the port. Yet, this was clearly evident in the February riot and later in November, when white sailors again opposed the hiring of Arabs. Black sailors found it equally difficult to find ships out of South Shields. In July 1919, a Nigerian fireman, Robert Anderson, allegedly 76

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Chief events of the riots threatened murder if he did not get a ship within a week. Local NSFU official James Gilroy was again involved in a dispute about jobs. After two all-white crews were signed on to ships, Anderson followed Gilroy into the merchant shipping office and started shouting threats at him. Gilroy walked out of the office and sought a police officer. Anderson was arrested and later convicted of threatening behaviour. He was bound over for 12 months. Despite such episodes, Chief Constable Scott wrote off black and Arab griev­ ances as unfounded. His intention was to fit the Mill Dam riot with his portrayal of trouble-making blacks and Arabs. Internal Colonial Office discussions make it clear that they were well aware of local bias showing through in his reports to the government: ‘The reports on the riots appear to indicate that in most cases the Negroes were the aggressors, but I do not think we can accept this view as proved’.18 The first serious outbreak of rioting in London arose from a ‘feud’ between white and black sailors resident in Stepney, close to the West India Dock. The riot broke out on 16 April in Cable Street. This street attracted notoriety in the 1930s when the eastern European Jewish population of the area stood firm against a procession by Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.19 On this earlier occasion, armed black, Arab and white sailors became involved in a fierce fight. Neighbourhood police called up reinforcements from elsewhere in London to quell the riot. A rather vague account of the incident in The Times reported that a string of cafés in Cable Street were attacked, leaving ‘a number’ of black and Arab sailors wounded, leading to the arrest of ‘several’ seamen.20 As a result of this lesser-known ‘battle of Cable Street’, four injured Arabs were detained in hospital. One white person received a knife wound which required hospital treatment. A further four Arabs were given medical treatment while in custody at Leman Street police station. Two of the Arabs arrested were later charged with police assault. Despite the injuries inflicted on Arabs, no white person was arrested for the attack upon the cafés. Following the Cable Street riot in April, a series of riots and disturbances broke out around the Limehouse area the following month. These took place over the space of four days beginning on Monday 26 May 1919. On this day, a crowd of whites attacked a small group of black sailors. Only one person, African-Caribbean Herbert Clarke, was arrested for involvement in the incident. The second night’s violence developed from ‘a rough and tumble into a pitched battle’ which raged for three hours in the Commercial Road, between Limehouse Church and the ‘Sailors’ Palace’. Black residents were forced to retreat towards their lodging house in St Ann’s Street. The crowd laid siege to the home, which housed over 100 sailors. The conflict, estimated to have involved 3,000–5,000 rioters, continued until the police intervened and drew a cordon across the road to quell the riot.21 Rioting broke out again on 28 May and again black residences were ­targeted. On this occasion the Strangers’ Home for Asiatics, Africans and South Sea Islanders in West India Dock Road was attacked. According to the account of the riot in The Times,22 white crowds gathered around the sailors’ home and attempted to 77

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Chief events of the riots attack any black person in the vicinity. White women who lived with black men or who were employed by black or Arab businesses were also attacked. There were further riots in June 1919. This phase of violence included attacks upon the London Chinese population in the neighbouring dockside areas of Limehouse and Poplar. A demonstration by unemployed white British sailors against Chinese labour at the mercantile shipping offices on East India Dock Road on 16 June was followed by attacks on Chinese individuals. The next night, a Chinese laundry in North Street was attacked. The laundry’s windows were smashed, and the disorder was curtailed only by the arrival of a large police presence. The following day the police stationed an officer outside the laundry. Police were also stationed in Grundy Street after a ‘slight disturbance’ in that area. Chinese workers were viewed in the same damaging light as black workers: as unfair economic competitors and sexual predators. The violence faced by a Chinese family on moving into accommodation in Poplar, and the emphasis given in local press accounts to the alleged preference given to them over a white ex-soldier for the house, underlines just how easily tension could be raised among the white population in this post-war period. Attacks on black people continued in tandem with those on the Chinese population in London. A seamen’s café in Cable Street was attacked by a white crowd on 14 June and a customer was taken to hospital under a police escort. On 16 June, the same evening as the first attack on the Chinese residents in Poplar, two Sierra Leonians, Moses Quaker and Isaac Morris, were arrested follow­ing a fight with a white crowd in West India Dock Road. They were tried at the Thames police court the next day and convicted of using insulting words and behaviour. Quaker was fined five shillings (25p) and Morris two shillings (10p) for not dispersing along with the rest of the crowd when ordered by the police. In August 1919, black sailors’ residences and lodging houses were again attacked by white crowds. An African-Caribbean sailor, Thomas Pell, was the vic­ tim of an apparently unprovoked attack by a white man as he stood at the door of his house in Canning Town. The white man, James Grantham, walked past and made an offensive remark. Grantham alleged Pell had laughed at him. Grantham hit him in the chest. Pell retaliated before being pulled into his house by two black sailors. Grantham then smashed the windows. This violent confrontation attracted a crowd of white people, who joined in attacking black residents in the area. During this riot, the Strangers Home for overseas sailors on West India Dock Road was attacked for the second time in four months. The scale of the August violence temporarily overwhelmed the police, but order was eventually restored. Although often inspired by the competition for jobs among merchant ­sailors, the sustained riots in and around London’s east end dock area had other causes. The friction caused within the overcrowded dockside population due to the severe post-war housing shortage was apparent and is discussed later in this chapter. However, the local press sought a single sensational origin for the on­going violence and latched on to the issue of white working-class resentment of any sexual relationships between white women and black and Arab men as the explanation for the disorder. 78

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Chief events of the riots The violence in Hull in May did not reach full-scale riot proportions. The outbreak of fighting bore some resemblance to the riots in Glasgow and South Shields in that it occurred in and around the local merchant shipping office. In Glasgow, in January 1919, a trades union appeal to rid British ships of Chinese crews contributed to the white sailors’ attack on British West African sailors. In Hull, a similar local union appeal apparently motivated black British sailors to turn on Chinese sailors. A mass meeting of seamen and firemen in the port held under the auspices of a body identified as the International Seafarers’ Union heard claims that despite growing unemployment among British sailors, ship­ ping companies continued to use lower-paid aliens to undercut British sailors, saving £3 a month per person.23 Following the meeting, a group of black British sailors cleared Chinese sailors from the Hull merchant shipping office. Information about the Hull violence is sketchy. A brief account appeared in the Hull branch report to the Marine Caterer: ‘During the past month there was a little disturbance in the street – the coloured seamen clearing the Shipping Office and Yard of Chinese crew – with the result that the Master decided to take Britishers’.24 This account of the incident unusually connected the ‘coloured’ seamen with the term ‘Britishers’. It is interesting to speculate whether black sailors in Hull were deemed ‘British’ only when they took action in support of the white sailors’ union campaign against the employment of ‘Asiatics’. The account of the disorder appeared in the Marine Caterer, the newspaper of the National Union of Ships’ Stewards, Cooks, Butchers and Bakers. It should be remembered that a representative of this union, John Fye, was prominently involved in the February riot at South Shields. Hull had a relatively small black population around this time. In June 1920 it was estimated at between 60 and 100.25 However, this small settlement faced resentment by elements of the local white population during 1919. A few days after the shipping office episode, a fight took place between a group of white people and three or four black sailors. Only one person, Manuel de Siloa, a black Portuguese subject from the Cape Verde islands, West Africa, was arrested for the incident. De Siloa was charged with wounding two people: a white ship’s fireman and a local woman. After these incidents in 1919, rioting the follow­ ing year reached a level of intensity to bear comparison with all but the most prolonged rioting (in Cardiff and Liverpool, discussed next) in 1919. The 1920 Hull riot is described in Chapter 6. The wave of rioting in Liverpool in early June grew from long-running ani­ mosity between black British colonial and Scandinavian sailors. Competition for jobs led to an abrasive relationship. The resentment among black British sailors towards northern European workers was set out in the black-owned Londonbased newspaper the African Telegraph: For some considerable time past there has been ill-feeling between Scan­ dinavians, Danes and Russian Poles and black Britishers, who are all in the seafaring line. The reason for this is [that] the black man feels that his services were appreciated when he undertook risks on ‘Q’ ships and other dangerous callings to meet the requirements of war, while at the time the foreign element

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Chief events of the riots was naturally viewed with suspicion.… The cessation of hostilities however, has brought a swarm of Russian Poles, Danes, Scandinavians, etc. to Liverpool and other port towns, and the black Briton finds that these men are given preference in engagements on board steamers now that there is no longer any danger to the country.26

This view was echoed in the white local press at the outbreak of the rioting.27 The rioting in Liverpool in June was more ferocious and sustained than that at any of the other seaports during 1919: dozens of people were arrested; a young African-Caribbean, Charles Wootton, was killed; rioting crowds reached up to 10,000 strong; and more than 700 black people were temporarily forced to leave their homes and seek police protection (see ‘Housing and residency issues’, below, for more on this episode). Post-war Liverpool had one of the largest black settlements in Britain, variously estimated at between 1,000 and 5,000 people. During the week of rioting in Liverpool in June, around 120 black workers in the city were sacked.28 The companies that employed them were put under pressure from white workers who refused to work with black people any longer and ex-combatant associations, which complained that blacks should not be employed where whites could fill the positions. The involvement of these asso­ ciations in pressing for the restoration of the pre-war workforce was apparent in many industries at the end of the war. Female workers, too, were left with little alternative but to give up jobs and allow the re-instatement of men who returned from war service. Of course, many women were pleased so to do; however, the re-instatement policy was not always handled in a sensitive ­manner.29 It is probable that pressure from trades unions sympathetic to the sailors’ protests also played a role in the removal of black workers.30 On 4 June 1919, a black sailor, John Johnston, was badly wounded in the face following an attack by a white gang, identified in the local press as a group of Scandinavians. Johnston, who was hospitalized, when questioned could not explain the actions of the white gang, other than to say he had refused them a cigarette.31 The next night there was a fight in a pub between black colonial and white foreign sailors. Liverpool’s Head Constable, Francis Caldwell, later discounted the suggestion that a group of Scandinavians was responsible for the attack on Johnson. This allowed him to present the pub incident the follow­ ing night as a purely unprovoked attack by black people on Scandinavians. As the instigators of violence, black people could then be blamed for the general outbreak of rioting in the city. It was as if the black attack on white Europeans on 5 June in some way justified the three days of white riot against the black population later that week. According to Caldwell’s subsequent report, as customers left the pub on 5 June, eight white sailors were met by a ‘mob’ of heavily armed black sailors, who proceeded ‘unmercifully and brutally’ to beat, kick and stab them. The riot spilled over into an attack by black sailors on a boarding house occupied by white European sailors. A Scandinavian sailor named Thomas Johanson was stabbed in the attack and was rushed to the Royal Southern Hospital suffering from an 18-inch wound in the back.32 80

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Chief events of the riots In the police version of events, the white crowd dispersed quietly when the police arrived at the scene. However, the black sailors resisted and turned on the police.33 One police officer who sought to restore order was shot in the mouth, another was struck on the head and a third was slashed in the face. This pub attack and the severe injuries to the police portray this group of black sailors in a very poor light. However, the aggression displayed towards the police by the rioters may have owed something to an element of retribution within the context of numerous confrontations between blacks and the police in the weeks preceding the outbreak of the riots. The police report on the rioting in Liverpool sought to rule out any possibility of extenuating circumstances in the events of 5 June. Caldwell admitted that a white crowd had gathered around the incident but he did his best to portray the bystanders as no threat to the black sailors, despite the fact that several black people suffered stab wounds in the fight. Caldwell described the crowd as consisting mainly of women and children attracted by the commotion. Yet, press accounts spoke of a white ‘crowd’ of only 200–300, and there was no mention of this group consisting of women and children.34 Caldwell’s interpretation of the events on 5 June was contradicted in other accounts of this incident. In fact, information appended to the Liverpool police report when it was forwarded to the Colonial Office challenged his portrayal of black aggression against innocent, unresisting white people. A list provided the names of those injured during this violent episode. Seven black people were on it. One of these, Alonza Carrington, had stab wounds to the back. If the police version of events is accepted, these wounds must have been self-inflicted. Of the 14 white people injured in this first night of rioting, six were British and eight were foreign born. Among the white British were two who were dis­ covered to have wounds only after the police had arrested them for rioting. The suggestion from this supporting evidence is that the aggressive behaviour of 5 June was not confined to the black sailors. Despite the obvious involvement of local white people, press reports of the incident portrayed it as a fight between black and Scandinavian sailors: Five persons are now in hospital as the result of a serious affray between negroes and Danes in the region of a public house near Gt. George Square last night. The police on interfering were subjected to desperate attacks, and several were injured.35

The same newspaper inaccurately described the white pub-goers as ‘Danes’. Two Russian sailors later gave evidence that they had been assaulted by black rioters.36 Following the pub fight and the injuries inflicted on three officers, the police decided to raid nearby lodging houses to round up those involved. This action began a chain of events which led to the death of Charles Wootton, aged 24, from Bermuda. He was a sailor who had served in the Royal Navy during the war.37 Wootton was one of a number of people the police attempted to take into custody from his lodgings – five black people were in fact detained at his 81

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Chief events of the riots house – but he eluded them by escaping out the back door. According to a later account, these lodgings were run by a black Liverpudlian woman named Gibson, who had been widowed during the war. To make ends meet for her family, she let the top half of the house to paying guests.38 Once out in the street, Wootton was pursued by a large white crowd. He was driven down to the dockside by the crowd and somehow forced into the water, where he drowned. The Liverpool Echo described Wootton’s death as an act of murder: It is reported that a detective climbed down a ship’s rope and was about to pull the man out of the water when a stone thrown from the middle of the crowd struck Wootton on the head and he sank. His body was later recovered by means of grappling irons.39

An inquest later failed to determine how Wootton had been forced into the water – whether he was pushed in or whether he dived in to avoid the crowd at his heels. The inquest verdict of death by drowning left many unanswered questions, particularly as to the role played in Wootton’s death by the hail of stones with which he was attacked while in the water. Police, press and government papers provide much of the evidence for the events of the 1919 riots. A statement written in August 1919 by Jamaican ship’s greaser Thomas Archer described the Liverpool rioting from an AfricanCaribbean perspective. As part of his statement, Archer provided a personal account of Wootton’s last moments: One coloured man who was only an eye witness of what was going on was chased by the police. He was grabbed from the police by the dock workers who threw him into the sea and started to stone him whenever he came to the surface of the water until he was killed…. I was occupying an upstairs building and was able to see everything that was going on.40

Archer was among the black people repatriated from Liverpool in the wake of the riots. The vessel on which he travelled, the SS Santille, was the subject of much unrest on the voyage to the Caribbean. The Colonial Office later conducted an enquiry into the grievances of those on board who were being returned ‘home’. Archer’s account of the events deserves consideration, written as it was in August 1919, only a few weeks after the events he described. However, it is poss­ ible he was reporting hearsay, and his recollections may have been augmented by other people’s accounts, as he had just spent several weeks with a boat load of similarly repatriated black people. It is possible that Archer was giving expression to what had become a collective memory of the rioting, after the interchanging of anecdotes and the piecing together of sequences of events that are likely to have gone on during the voyage to the Caribbean. His testimony is no less significant for this possibility. In some ways Wootton’s murder symbolizes the wider fortunes of the black population in Liverpool in 1919: he was the victim of a large white crowd; he 82

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Chief events of the riots was driven from his home; and he was unsuccessfully protected by the forces of law and order. Charles Wootton’s name was given to a modern-day adult and further education centre in Liverpool. Sixty years after his death, in June 1979, the Centre printed a pamphlet on the riots. Although the commemorative article contains an emotive description and assessment of the riots, it also provides evidence that the disturbances of 1919 and their implications lived on in the collective memory of the black population in Liverpool: Sixty years ago today, a guy from 18 Upper Pitt Street was killed, thrown into the Queen’s Dock in Liverpool, by a gang of people. His name was Charles Wootton and he was 24 years of age, the people responsible for his death were white and he was black. Had he been white he would not have died.41

Wootton’s death was the dreadful climax of an evening of brutality. After a few days of relative calm, the violence broke out again. The second phase of riots lasted from 8 to 10 June. For three days, the black population of Liverpool came under siege. West African Ernest Marke provided an eyewitness account in his autobiography Old Man Trouble. Marke’s experiences show how difficult it was to escape from crowds of white rioters: ‘A young West Indian friend and I went up to Brownlow Hill on a visit. We saw a mob about a dozen strong. They started chasing us the moment we were spotted.’ On this occasion Marke escaped by boarding a passing tram, but his friend was badly beaten. A few days later Marke, too, was attacked and beaten up.42 Looking back, Marke believed that workers from racialized minority ethnic groups were scapegoats for white workers during the riots. He suggested that the existence of such a ‘visible’ and vulnerable target provided a safety valve for the employment pressures which had built up in post-war Britain. Enmity between black British and white foreign sailors was also evident in Cardiff. Tension was apparent in the months leading up to the outbreak of the rioting. On 30 November 1918, one black and one Arab, George Edison and Ahmed Elmi, were charged with the malicious wounding of a Scandinavian sailor, Karl Olsen. Both men were found not guilty at a hearing at the Glamorgan quarter sessions in January 1919.43 Ongoing job competition was later identified as the cause of the widespread rioting in June 1919 in local press accounts, one of which noted that by that time there were ‘about 1200 coloured seamen of various nationalities out of work in Cardiff ’.44 In Newport the rioting broke out on the night of Friday 6 June. That evening the town hall had been ‘packed’ to hear NSFU leader Joseph Havelock Wilson address a meeting of ships’ officers under the auspices of the Joint Seafarers’ Council.45 In addition, that night’s edition of the Newport local evening paper, the Monmouthshire Evening Post, led with an article on the Liverpool riot.46 Although no investigation of the riot linked this sequence of events, the out­ break of rioting in the port following the meeting may well have been more than coincidental.

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Chief events of the riots

Demobilization issues A view frequently recorded in press coverage of the port riots was that black workers and soldiers had avoided the sacrifices endured by local white popula­ tions during the war. For example, in June 1919 the Liverpool Courier stated: There is … an unemployment grievance – the fact that large numbers of demobilised soldiers are unable to find work while the West Indian Negroes, brought over to supply a labour shortage during the war, are able to ‘swank’ about in smart clothes on the proceeds of their industry….47

The view that black workers had not taken the same risks as white people in the war was voiced by Liverpool’s Assistant Head Constable, L. Everett, in a report to the Ministry of Labour in November 1920: The plight of the coloured men is no worse; in fact it is better than that of the ordinary white seamen of whom there are a large number out of work. These latter men have a higher standard of living and more family ties than the coloured men. Besides they took greater risks during the war than most of the coloured men, many of whom … stopped ashore to avoid the submarine menace.48

Many black people reacted to this unfounded claim by wearing their military ser­ vice ribbons in a bid to prove that they had ‘done their bit’ for the British empire, in the mistaken belief that this would protect them from white crowds. The misplaced conviction that black people had shirked their duty in the face of the German submarine threat cannot be disproved by figures, since the extent of colonial black seamen’s losses are nowhere quantified. What can be shown is that shipping companies with large colonial workforces were hard hit. For example, the Elder Dempster shipping company, which traded from Liverpool to West Africa, suffered a very high casualty rate during the war. The company employed many West Africans, and principally below deck, as engine room crews, a position particularly vulnerable to submarine attack. At the outbreak of the First World War, Elder Dempster had a fleet of 101 steamers; 43 of these were lost during the war. The vessels carried vegetable oil and palm oil seeds, from which high explosive could be made; hence they were a particular target for the Central Powers. During 1917 alone, the height of the submarine ‘menace’, Elder Dempster lost 25 ships.49 During the war, 487 Elder Dempster employees were killed: 67 on active service and 420 when their ships were torpedoed or sunk.50 It is difficult to estimate how many of these sailors were African, since the Elder Dempster roll of honour did not list place of birth, and although some of the surnames listed are identifiably African, in other cases it is impossible to tell. In Barry, the rioting began following the killing of a demobilized soldier: Frederick Longman died during a fight between three white men, including Longman, and a French West Indian sailor, Charles Emmanuel. Longman, a dock worker, had joined the Royal Field Artillery in 1914 and had only recently returned after four and a half years of service. His recent military service 84

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Chief events of the riots ­ ackground was stressed in local press accounts of the Barry rioting. In fact, b his funeral was paid for by the Discharged Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Association. His service record could not disguise the fact that Longman was a tough customer and serial offender. He had 20 convictions for offences that included police assault and disorderly conduct. The death of ex-soldier Longman excited the ire of the weekly newspaper Barry Dock News, which portrayed the fight in the most lurid terms: A horrible tragedy occurred at Cadoxton, Barry, on Wednesday night last. Frederick William Longman, better known as ‘skanny’ Longman, age about thirty … was returning home just before ten o’clock, when he was waylaid near his own house by two negro seamen, one of whom, the alleged murderer, seized him by the throat, pinned him against the wall, and taking out a large, sharp, pocket knife, cut him a terrible gash about four inches in length, in the region of the heart, and the unfortunate man died in a few minutes…. The shocking tragedy gave rise to great excitement in the streets, and crowds of many hundreds of people made for the streets in which the negro sailors live, and several times up till midnight, the scenes of indignation and cries of revenge were very threatening, but happily the infuriated crowds were magnificently handled to restraint by the … police.51

From this report it would seem the outbreak of rioting in Barry was due to the totally unprovoked black aggression against an innocent white person, which in turn led to the understandable wrath of the white crowd. Only the heroic intervention of the police prevented further deaths. This account bears little resemblance to the events of the Barry rioting, during which a large white crowd attacked black residences on the first night and continued for a second night’s violence, during which a black-owned chip shop was wrecked (see below). In the Cardiff rioting, in which three people were killed, white rioters ­threatened worse violence to come when all British soldiers returned home. Jamaican James Sergeant, who was forced to take refuge from the white rioters in a Salvation Army hall, later recalled these threats: ‘I heard remarks after the riot from some white men that as soon as the remainder of troops come over from France it is going to be a worse turn out than what is already gone’.52 Sergeant was later repatriated. After the war, thousands of Allied troops remained stationed in Britain await­ ing repatriation. Their protracted presence caused tension. In May 1919, black British and white American sailors staged a fierce fight in Cardiff ’s Frederick Street. Three black men, Henry Gainer, John Davies and Robert Wilson, were later charged with attempted murder. During the fight, the black sailors fired four shots at the Americans. ‘The trouble it was alleged by the prosecution was brought about by Davies in company with two other negroes, brushing deliber­ ately against the Americans on the pavement.’53 By the time the case reached the assizes in July 1919, one of the defendants, Gainer, had been freed. Davies was cleared of the attempted murder charge but found guilty of shooting with intent to maim one of the white Americans, John Sang, and was sentenced to 85

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Chief events of the riots three years’ imprisonment. Wilson was found guilty of shooting with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm and was given a five-year sentence. This episode helps illustrate a degree of tension in Cardiff in the weeks immediately preceding the outbreak of rioting in June. The violent row between white American service personnel and black British colonial sailors was not an isolated incident in south Wales. In 1918, white American soldiers and black sailors fought in Newport. These incidents suggest ongoing white American hostility towards the black colonials in the ports. This antipathy re-emerged in the course of the port riots. A Times report on 13 June 1919 described ongoing hostility towards black British colonial sailors by white American navy personnel: ‘His chief failing is his fondness for white women, and American naval officers stationed at the American naval base at Cardiff have often expressed their disgust at the laxity of the British law in this connection.’54 The presence of troops and war veterans among the rioters raises the possi­bility that rioting around Britain’s ports may have been related to the quasi-political protests staged throughout 1919 by ex-combatant organiza­ tions.55 Following the Liverpool riots, Head Constable Caldwell’s report to the Home Office hinted at a level of organization among the crowds of white rioters. His account described: ‘a well organised gang consisting principally of youths and young men, soldiers and sailors, ages of most of them ranging from 18 to 30 years … [which] commenced savagely attacking, beating and stabbing every negro they could find in the street’.56 Of course, it is a common response to ‘blame’ group violence not on decent local citizens but on ‘hooliganism’ or on a small band of organized individuals, or on outsiders with ulterior motives.57 Too much should not be read into the possibility of organized ex-service group protest during the port riots since, as noted in Chapter 1, service person­ nel and recently demobilized troops were often in evidence in rioting and street violence throughout 1919. This was due to a mixture of chance and design, as crowds at this time would invariably feature ex-combatants, given the millions who served for Britain during the war. For example, in late January there were violent clashes between the police and crowds of white ex-service personnel in South Shields. Crowds of civilians egged on the demobilized soldiers, abused the police and obstructed their attempt to arrest several war veterans. However, there were hints of organized ex-service group protest in an attack a few weeks before the February riot in South Shields. On 9 January, six white British naval seamen had a violent argument with Arab café owner Abdul Naggi. The sailors badly damaged Naggi’s café, breaking many of the windows. Although Naggi reported the incident to the police, no immediate action was taken. The fol­ lowing day, a dispute took place in the town centre between a crowd of white people and three Arabs. A serving soldier home on leave, John William Jones, alleged that he and another white bystander were injured by the Arabs. Victor Grunhut, the Arabs’ defence lawyer, argued that they had been chased by a white crowd and had to defend themselves.58 The alleged attack by the three Arabs provoked an angry response from a growing white crowd, which headed back to Naggi’s café to wreak revenge. In this second attack, his house and café were 86

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Chief events of the riots wrecked; the remaining windows were broken, the furniture burnt in the street and the gas fittings ripped out. Naggi himself was assaulted.59 In south Wales, soldiers and former troops played a prominent role in the rioting. Several of the newspaper reports on the Cardiff riot mentioned that the white crowd contained ex-service personnel: ‘among the whites were a number of young soldiers in khaki and many ex-soldiers’.60 There were also white domin­ ion troops among the crowd, including James Rees (aged 27), a soldier serving in the New Zealand armed forces. Rees assaulted Housson Hassan on Saturday 14 June, the last day of serious rioting in Cardiff, and was sentenced to 18 months’ hard labour.61 Five of the 17 identified white males arrested in Cardiff were soldiers. In addition, ex-soldier John Donovan died from a bullet wound to the heart during the Cardiff riots. He was part of the crowd that attacked an Arab boarding house. Donovan sported a Mons service ribbon; Evans has described this as ‘a fitting symbol of aggrieved demobilised soldiers’.62 In Newport, initial press accounts of the rioting attributed the origins of the riot to the intervention of a white soldier, William Haley, following the insult of a white ‘lady’ when she resisted the advances of a black resident of the town.63 This story was soon dropped as hearsay, and Haley was later identified as one of the orchestrators of the rioting. Percy White, a black soldier serving with the local Monmouthshire Regiment, was another identified as a ringleader in the riot. White joined in an attack by a large crowd on two boarding houses occupied by black sailors in the town’s George Street on 6 June. In his own defence White said he had just followed the crowd, but evidence was given that he had been seen throwing himself at a door to break it down. White was found guilty of riotous assembly and given three months’ hard labour for his offence. The report of Newport’s Chief Constable, Charles Gower, to the Home Office on the riots, written in October 1919, admitted there had been some organized white violence in the attacks on black property.64 Although an element of coordination was mentioned in some local police and press reports, there was no serious consideration given to this aspect of the riot­ ing (or any possible domestic political implications) in any of the government’s discussions on the 1919 port riots. This is significant, given the Cabinet’s extreme concern regarding demonstrations and strike action (including the ‘40 hours’ dispute) during this period described in Chapter 1.

Housing and residency issues The introductory chapter noted that Britain’s ports became increasingly over­ crowded as industrial and commercial enterprises were often created and expanded at the expense of affordable housing in the low-income communities living near the dockside. Housing shortages increased competition for available accommodation and also led to rent hikes. These issues came to the fore during several of the port riots. 87

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Chief events of the riots A report on the South Shields rioting by a local NSFU representative for the union newspaper, the Seaman, in March 1919 stated: ‘Some of the best houses in the town have been purchased by Arab boarding masters and converted into lodging-houses’.65 During the April rioting in London’s east end, the presence of increased numbers of black tenants in the area was considered by the local press to be a trigger for the riots: Some streets which already housed a considerable proportion of aliens are becoming more and more cosmopolitan in character, and among the foreign occupants of premises there is, so the local people say, an increasing number of negroes as tenants. They pay substantial rents and many of them carry on the business of keepers of restaurants and cafes catering, as one would imagine, mainly for people of their own class and colour.66

In the Poplar district of London in June 1919, a house in Northumberland Street was attacked and wrecked after two Chinese men and their white wives moved into the accommodation. According to a local press account, a recently demobilized white soldier had been refused tenancy of the house and ‘This preference for a foreigner was alleged to be the cause of the trouble’. A crowd gathered and stormed the premises. The furniture was thrown out into the street and set alight. The occupants of the house were beaten and forced to seek police protection. The fire brigade was called. There was talk among the crowd of ‘wrecking the whole of the Chinese quarter’, but the arrival of a large police force deterred further violence.67 In mid-June, black inhabitants of a lodging house in the north-west port of Salford were attacked in the sort of episode just then taking place in London. The incident began when a crowd of white men gathered outside a black lodg­ ing house. The crowd taunted the inhabitants of the house and challenged them to come out. Anyone who did quit the house was then beaten. The police arrested no white offenders at this point. Instead, a black man named John Davies was detained by the police and, despite his claim that he had been struck by a member of the white crowd with a poker, he was charged with being drunk and disorderly.68 Davies was later admonished in court. Following the attack on the lodging house, six police officers patrolled the area of black settlement for the next three hours to ensure there were no further clashes. In the course of this patrol, a white person named Frederick Linton was arrested again on a charge of being drunk and disorderly. Linton had taken part in the earlier attack and was still on the look-out for black residents of the town: ‘The prisoner … had taken part in the squabble earlier in the night, and just before midnight he came out and “swore to have the black man’s blood”’.69 He was fined 30 shillings (£1.50) for his offence. Dozens of black people’s properties were damaged or destroyed during the rioting in Liverpool, which housed a black population estimated at up to 5,000. Thirteen houses and two sailors’ boarding houses were attacked, some more than once, during three days of riots, 8–10 June. Some of these premises were completely destroyed in the mass attacks by white crowds. Often furniture was 88

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Chief events of the riots removed to the street and set alight; on other occasions the property itself was set ablaze. For example, on 10 June a house rented by Annie Richards at 59 Parliament Street was ‘practically wrecked’ and the ‘furniture etc. destroyed’. The properties wrecked by the white crowds were made objects of damages claims against the Liverpool local council. These claims were considered later in 1919 by the council’s watch committee. The local council estimated the cost of damage to Annie Richards’ property at £150.70 Claims ranged from the extensive to the minimal, but together paint a picture of widespread destruction. Another claim read: ‘82 Beaufort Street, Negroes’ house, tenant Christina Astley. House prac­tically wrecked; furniture etc., carried onto the street and set on fire, amount of damage unknown.’71 The occupant claimed £60 in damages. On 30 September, the local authority’s surveyor assessed the damage to the property at £45. Almost all the damages paid out were less than the claim from the householder. During the Liverpool riots in June 1919, hundreds of black people were removed from their homes and put into protective custody. Some fled into police protection; others were removed wholesale by police into safe keeping. Jamaican Thomas Archer’s account of the Liverpool rioting stated that he and black lodgers sharing his accommodation were taken to the police bridewell (jail) at short notice. Black compliance with this initiative suggests both sides recog­ nized that the forces of law and order could not provide adequate protection for black people, neither on the streets where they lived nor in their very homes. Contemporary newspaper accounts stressed that the detention was voluntary: The negroes by the hundred have thrown themselves upon the mercy of the authorities. In dozens they presented themselves at the bridewell and yester­ day there were between 600 and 700 black men safely housed at their own request in the main bridewell in Cheapside.72

Although the reference here is to black men, families were displaced from their homes. Nine-year-old Liverpool-born Katie Aynsu was one of a family group who took refuge in Dale Street bridewell. The jail was very overcrowded and there was little food offered, except for those who could afford to buy from enterprising street vendors who pitched up outside. After a week of cramped conditions, the family asked to return home. Despite warnings from a female warden that it remained dangerous, they walked home (since black people were banned from the trams, to avoid flash-points). The family were met with abusive shouts as they walked, but returned to find their home largely intact, with only one window broken.73 The collection of so many black families in one place, although short-lived, gave rise to the suggestion that this temporary arrangement should become formalized. Central and local government officials, in consultation with the Liverpool police, proposed that black people should be placed in a compound or camp pending the implementation of the government’s repatriation scheme advanced following the outbreak of mass riots in June 1919.74 Liverpool’s Assistant Head Constable Everett enquired of the Home Secretary, Edward Shortt, whether the government had any powers to ‘intern’ the black residents 89

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Chief events of the riots of Liverpool, ‘either aboard ship or in one of the military camps which is [sic] now vacant on the outskirts of the city, and what steps he suggests can be taken to remove this black population, some 2,000 to 3,000 by compulsory repatriation or otherwise’.75 A few days later, an official from the Ministry of Labour visited the city to confer with the Lord Mayor and the Head Constable. A local press account reported their decision that, until repatriation could take place, ‘in all probability the negroes will be accommodated in one or more of the camps which were occupied by troops during the war’.76 Government and police authorities were not the only ones to consider the possibility of internment. Indeed, one former colonial resident, A. J. Muskett, proposed a similar solution to the port violence in Liverpool in a letter to the press dated 6 June 1919: Why not allocate these coloured men and their families to ‘compounds’? Give each man a tally, to be produced when required by the police and enforce him to be in his compound at a certain time. This is the way the native is treated in Cape Town, Johannesburg, etc., and, if any killing is done, it is usually one of his own race who is the victim.77

The proposal was not implemented. Perhaps it was realized that it would be impossible to order people whose homes were in Liverpool to quit them for good and live in a camp until ships could be found to remove them from Britain. The position of native-born black Liverpudlians such as Katie Aynsu in such an arrangement was also a possible factor for the failure to implement the plan. In Newport, local press reports made connections between demobilization (alongside increased job and housing competition) and the outbreak of rioting. One account summing up the riots in early June noted: ‘since demobilisation the housing and labour question has become more acute’.78 The day after the rioting broke out, a further press report stated: ‘There is no apparent immediate cause, but the suggestion is made that it is because coloured men are able to secure houses while other people cannot’.79 After a weekend of the Newport rioting, the housing argument was raised again in another local paper under the emotive (and inaccurate) headline ‘feelings against house and job snatching by aliens’.80 During the rioting, two black people’s boarding houses, situated at 3 and 4 George Street, were attacked by a large white crowd. The half-dozen police ­officers in the area were powerless to disperse the crowd and these residences were badly damaged, furnishings removed and burnt in the street, and the doors and windows broken.81 The crowd also attacked a restaurant owned by a man named Delgado on Commercial Road. From here, the crowd moved on to Ruperra Street, where a Chinese laundry and an Arab boarding house were attacked. The rioters had free rein for two hours, as the police were overwhelmed by the size of the crowd. Finally, black people took matters into their own hands and mounted an armed retaliation. It was only at this point that police intervened, arresting over 20 black people and several whites.82 The spread of the attack to the Chinese laundry and Arab boarding house suggests that any property owned or occupied by someone from a racialized 90

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Chief events of the riots minority ethnic group was considered ‘fair game’ by the white rioters. On the following night of Saturday 7 June, unrest again broke out, despite the arrival of mounted police. Another two black people’s boarding houses, this time in Ruperra Street, were attacked by stone-throwing crowds. A police sergeant was struck by one of the stones. Chief Constable Gower ordered a baton charge to break up the rioting crowd. ‘Some thirty officers drew their truncheons and heads down, swept along Ruperra Street. The crowd fled.’83 Three white rioters were injured and two white people were arrested, but no further black people were taken into custody. On 8 June, white crowds were prevented from loitering in the riot zone by police, but the night of Monday 9 June witnessed the return of violence, although more limited. This was described in the press as a ‘lively little scrap’ in Ruperra Street between groups of blacks and whites. The rumour was that black people involved in this incident had travelled to Newport from Cardiff, but there is no corroboration of this, since only one newspaper, the Monmouthshire Evening Post, described this, the final episode of rioting in Newport in 1919.84 The suggestion that Cardiff-based black people were involved in the dispute is an indication per­ haps of the unity among the wider black population in south Wales, with Cardiff residents making the 12-mile journey to aid friends in Newport. Two days later, the black residents of Cardiff were themselves under attack by white crowds. Residency issues were also important in the outbreak of rioting in Barry. The riot broke out on 11 June, following a fatal altercation between three white people and a black sailor whom they challenged and then attacked for simply being in ‘their’ street. As stated above, Frederick Longman was stabbed by French West Indian Charles Emmanuel during the fight and died within minutes. When cautioned by police following the fight, Emmanuel stated: I was coming down the street for a little walk, after signing on and this man (deceased) said ‘Why don’t you go in your own street?’, I say ‘Behave yourself ’. By the time I turn around to him, I speak to one coloured woman, and he came behind me, and hit me one clout in the eye. Three more men hit me, one with a poker, and I defend myself with knife. I run away shouting murder.85

Emmanuel ran away from the scene of the fight, pursued by a white crowd. The police officer who arrested him noted that he seemed to be pleased to be taken out of the hands of the pursuing crowd, which was hardly surprising given the circumstances. Emmanuel was not a newcomer to the port; he had lived in Barry for at least seven years. He was aged 45 and his greying hair moved one local newspaper to comment on his ‘picturesque appearance’.86 Emmanuel was walking in Beverley Street to meet up with friends resident in the area. The deceased Longman lived at 25 Beverley Street, next door to a black boarding house at number 23, and a black couple named Richards lived at number 17. Louisa Richards, whose husband was then at sea, gave evidence in Emmanuel’s defence at the murder trial. When Emmanuel took the stand, he declared that he took out his knife only after being struck with a poker by one of his assailants. The other two white men 91

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Chief events of the riots involved in the fight, Yeoman and Hopkins, claimed that they intervened only after Emmanuel had pinned Longman against a wall. The accused then pulled out his knife and forced them back before he stabbed Longman. Hopkins alleged that he had only glanced Emmanuel with a poker, after the stabbing. The confrontation which led to Longman’s death acted as a catalyst for further rioting in Barry. White rioters were soon on the streets, throwing stones at black people’s houses and chasing any blacks in sight. One target was Ernest Jackman, a shipwright who lived in Tredegar Street, Cardiff. On the night of 11 June, Jackman was lodging at 23 Beverley Street in Barry (next door to Longman’s house). He was eating his supper when he heard the white crowd gather outside. His landlady advised him to leave the house, which he did, table knife still in hand. The crowd gave chase and he attempted to seek refuge in the doorway of a house in nearby Robin’s Lane. Here, a white person, John Goldworthy, refused him entry and tried to catch him for the crowd. A fight ensued, with the result that Goldworthy received a gash on the head. Jackman later admitted pulling Goldworthy from the door in an attempt to gain entry to the house, but denied striking him, claiming that one of a hail of stones from the crowd had struck the victim. The doctor who treated Goldworthy agreed that this was a possibility. Although initially charged with grievous bodily harm, Jackman was convicted of the lesser charge of wounding at the Glamorgan quarter sessions. The magistrate took a charitable view of the offence, influenced perhaps by the events surrounding the incident and the fact Jackman had a trade and was not a ‘mere’ seaman: ‘The Chairman said as defendant [sic] was a respectable man they did not want to make a criminal of him, and therefore, bound him over for twelve months’.87 Violence broke out again in Barry on 12 June. This time, the target of a 50strong white crowd described as ‘workmen’ was a fish and chip shop run by Jamaican James Gillespie and his white wife. The crowd caused serious damage to the house and premises, and only the rapid assembly of a police cordon prevented a physical attack on the Gillespies. 88 One white person, Jeremiah McCarthy, was later convicted of criminal damage and incitement to riot for this attack. He was bound over for 12 months and ordered to pay £5 costs for damage to the shop door. The consequences of the attack on his chip shop can be traced in a letter from Gillespie to the Prime Minister in October 1919. He appealed for Lloyd George’s personal intervention to help him to quit Britain and obtain repatriation to Jamaica with his family: Sir, I am a native of Jamaica, British West Indies, been a seaman by profession sailing out of Barry Dock from 1896 till 1917, when I stoped [sic] ashore to go in Government work from the 29th of September 1917 to the 1st of June 1918, the work was finished (Granaries). I started a little business in the refreshment department (fish and chips) till the last racial riot 12th of June 1919 when my home was destroyed by the rioters. I applied for repatriation for myself and my family several times, to the Home Office, Colonial Office, and the West Indian Committee. I filled a form in, like wise a letter from my creditors giving me permission to leave the country.89

92

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Chief events of the riots Gillespie did not ask for compensation in his letter, although he claimed to have lost £227 due to riot damage to his property. He explained he was currently living on 28 shillings (£1.40), in the form of a weekly out-of-work donation, supplemented by money raised from pawning his furniture. Gillespie’s account provides clear evidence of how the riots actively drove black people (including those of long residence) from Britain. His case is also illustrative of how black homes and businesses were a particular target for attack by white crowds who feared a challenge to their economic position by any signs of black prosperity. Similar attacks on businesses owned by minority ethnic groups had occurred during anti-Jewish riots in south Wales in 1911 and in the widespread antiGerman riots throughout the course of the First World War.90 The Marine Department of the Board of Trade received Gillespie’s applica­ tion for repatriation in October 1919.91 The response of the Colonial Office on receiving a copy of his letter to the Prime Minister stated ‘there is no objection to the white wife and step-child of the seaman James Gillespie accompanying him on his repatriation’.92 However, his repatriation was delayed until his resi­ dence claims in Cornwall County, Jamaica, where he was born in 1874, could be validated and his marriage details in Britain confirmed. Housing and residency issues were also apparent in the outbreak of rioting in Cardiff. The Bute Town dock area was commonly identified as the ‘black quarter’ of the port; for example, on the day of the most serious Cardiff rioting, 12 June 1919, ‘attempts were frequently made by the crowd to reach Bute Town but they were thwarted by the police’.93 However, during the war, the black and Arab populations had increased and spread out through the city. Explaining the outbreak of rioting in Cardiff, the Daily Mail discussed alleged black and white competition over housing: ‘Some of the Negroes in Cardiff own their own houses, and demobilised Cardiff men who are lucky if they can get a back room feel aggrieved at the black men’s flourishing state’.94 Anger provoked within sections of the white population by the expansion of the black population beyond the immediate port environs of the city bears comparison to white working-class resistance to territorial incursions by black colonial French and African-American workers which led to riots in the French dock areas in 1917, and riots in northern cities of the United States of America after the First World War.95 The wartime expansion of the black population north of Bute Town was into an area which had been a centre of Irish settlement since the nineteenth century. Evans has stated that around one-third of the whites arrested during the riots in south Wales had Irish surnames.96 Four of the 18 white people arrested in Cardiff had surnames suggestive of Irish ethnicity (Clancy, Hurley, Linahan and Power).97 One of the three people killed in the Cardiff riots, John Donovan, was described in the press as Irish. Elements in the Irish-born population may have perceived their own fragile social and housing positions threatened by black movement into what they viewed as an ‘Irish’ area. In Barry, two white shoe-shiners, Tim Hooley and Eli Duffy, who were con­ victed of criminal damage and incitement to riot, had surnames indicating Irish descent. In Newport, Chief Constable Gower’s report on the riots in October 93

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Chief events of the riots 1919 stated: ‘it is noticeable that the majority of white persons charged in con­ nection with the disturbances were Irish’.98 Six of the nine arrested white rioters had identifiably Irish surnames (Haley, Daley, Ryan, Shea and Sheedy). Andrea Murphy has similarly suggested that those with Irish ethnicity were involved in one of the outbreaks of rioting in Liverpool: surnames, such as Bray, Murphy, Gallagher, Girvan, Costello and Duffy suggest that the White aggressors whom the police arrested were mostly Irish or of Irish descent. It is known that Irish people, particularly of Northern Protestant origin, did live in those areas adjacent to Pitt Street at that period.99

Eight of 36 white rioters (22%) in Liverpool identified in research for the present book had surnames indicative of Irish ethnicity.100 Large numbers of white working-class people were apparently prepared to fight to keep their areas for ‘locals’ during the 1919 riots. Unsurprisingly, black residents, often living in a few dockside streets in the seaports, were also pre­ pared to use violence to protect their homes. A local newspaper reporter visited the Bute Town district in Cardiff as it lay ‘under siege’ to obtain the views of some of its black inhabitants, whose anger and determination to defend their settlement emerged despite the biased handling of the report: I talked with intelligent natives [emphasis added] of the Bermudas and West Africa, known to me to have made their homes in Cardiff for many years. They were unanimous in advising their compatriots to remain in their recognised area. ‘It will be hell let loose, as your people say, if the crowd comes into our streets. There are men among us that nothing can restrain if we are attacked. We are ready to obey the white man’s Laws, but if we are unprotected from hooligan rioters who can blame us for trying to protect ourselves?’101

Black people felt that they had been let down in the first instance by the government and in the second by the police, for not effectively protecting them from white crowds attacking their properties. Yet, both the government and the police subsequently blamed the black population for the severity of the violence. Cardiff ’s Chief Constable David Williams made his own view perfectly clear: It seems that white men are usually the aggressors, but that the coloured men are the first to use arms…. There is a readiness on the part of the coloured race to use firearms, razors and knives immediately a brawl commences.102

Williams’ opinion may have been influenced by the first fatality in the Cardiff riots: Harold Smart. On 11 June, Smart approached a police officer and told him that a black man had just slashed him in the throat. Smart, aged 18, died early the next morning, but no one was ever arrested for causing his death, and no witnesses to the incident came forward. Rioting in the streets around Arab lodging houses led to two further fatalities in the Cardiff riots, within 24 hours. John Donovan, mentioned above, died on the night of 12 June. He was a member of a crowd which attacked an Arab lodg­ ing house in Millicent Street. The besieged inhabitants defended themselves, 94

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Chief events of the riots some using firearms. Donovan was hit and died later that day from a bullet wound to the heart. On the same evening as Donovan’s death, Mohammed Abdullah died from a skull fracture sustained during a white attack on another Arab boarding house, this time at 264 Bute Street. Four other people received serious head injuries during this incident: three Arabs and one white man. At Abdullah’s inquest, five white men charged with causing his death gave evidence protesting their innocence. Instead, the five alleged that police officers struck the fatal blow as they waded into the mêlée to remove Abdullah and others to safety from the house. This defence was apparently accepted, since although the coroner declared that a blow to the head was the cause of Abdullah’s death, the five whites accused of murder were later found not guilty. After the two nights of riot on 11 and 12 June, Chief Constable Williams deployed troops around the Bute Town area to reinforce the police presence. These tactics were apparently successful in suppressing the disorder, since only minor incidents occurred on 13 and 14 June. The cooperation of black and Arab residents of Cardiff also helped ease the tension. Williams noted this in a telephone call that day to the Home Office: ‘During the present disturbances the coloured people have done all they can to assist the police by keeping in their own streets and even within doors’.103 The level of violence diminished and by 15 June had ceased. Calm was restored at the expense of the black population, who were effectively barricaded into their own homes.

Racism in action: sexual tensions The introductory chapter noted that racist hostility often emerged in the context of marriages and other relationships between black and white people. This opposition was experienced at all levels of British society. In the seaports, such disapproval became violent in several instances of rioting. Ethnically diverse sexual relations caused resentment and jealousy among sections of the white British male and female population and such ‘wrongdoing’ was cited in press accounts as an explanation for the port riots in the summer of 1919. There is no reason at all which justifies a crowd interfering with the blacks, who – whatever may be the doings of individuals – are as a body, peace­ able and altogether well-behaved, and have been throughout the years…. Whatever be alleged in the way of wrongdoing on the part of the black men, that is for the authorities to deal with.104

In South Shields, the employment of white females by the male Arab ­owners of a café and boarding houses was condemned by local white people. Dora Sharp was one such white woman employed in an Arab boarding house. She gave evidence in defence of some of the Arabs arrested during the February riot, and declared that she had seen a white man pointing an old gun at an Arab in the heat of the riot.105 Sharp’s close involvement with the Arab population of the town led to her arrest two days after the riot. She had been in a public 95

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Chief events of the riots s­ houting match with two other white women. The incident drew a large crowd and Sharp was taken into custody. In court, the two other women denied ­making a disparaging remark about Arabs and alleged that she had assaulted them. In response, Sharp stated: ‘I wouldn’t leave the Arab house for 20 of you. I’m probably going to marry one tomorrow – happy days.’106 She was convicted on a charge of disturbing the peace and fined 10 shillings (50p). White women who worked for Arabs were ostracized by their native com­ munity and found that their workplace also became their social sphere, if not always by choice, then by circumstance. White disapproval of the association between local white women and Arabs was explicitly stated in a racist descrip­ tion of life in the east Holborn district of South Shields provided by the east coast secretary of the NSFU. This description was published in the union’s newspaper, the Seaman, in March 1919: ‘Here, women a cruel fate compels one to regard as English, flirted and frivolled with the grinning lechers, who have all continued to be born in Aden to please our Foreign Office’.107 Resentment caused by the involvement of white women with the Arab population was also touched on in the official report on the riot produced by Chief Constable William Scott in November 1919, in which he stated that ‘coloured men enticed white women to their houses’.108 In London, white anger provoked by the alleged misbehaviour of Arabs con­ tributed to the outbreak of rioting. During April 1919, local newspaper accounts quickly discarded job competition between sailors in the port as a cause of the violence and instead portrayed the rioting as a consequence of sexual jealousy. According to one local account, white rioters attacked Arab customers because they ‘objected to English girls visiting an Arab eating-house’.109 Not to be outdone, the Eastern Post and City Chronicle a few days later exposed what it considered to be the ‘scandal’ of ethnically diverse sexual relationships: A scandal to which we have on more than one occasion called attention in these columns – viz., the association of coloured men, especially Arabs – with white women in East London, has had further light thrown upon it by proceedings at the Thames Police Court on Saturday, when four Arab seamen were charged with participation in a riot which broke out in Cable Street, on the previous Wednesday night…. In the East End there is a colour-line, as there is in America, in South Africa, and Egypt, and the white woman who is seen in company with a negro is regarded as outside the pale. Unfortunately, the number of women who come within this category in the East End is increasing.110

These views were echoed in the Seaman, which sought to blame the rioting on the ‘attention paid by coloured men to the waitresses at some of the cafés’.111 A local newspaper account of the June rioting revealed striking similarities in press attitudes towards black and Chinese populations living in the east end of the city: Since the war the yellow population has increased in the East End. As Englishmen joined the army, Chinese came to replace them in many instances, in the factories and in the kitchens of hotels and restaurants. The Chinaman

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Chief events of the riots gave up the sea for a shore job, earned good money, and then he and his compatriots over-flowed from his original quarter, forming alliances in some cases with white women.   These white women are not in all cases of the most desirable character, and this added to the basic grievance of scarcity of houses, provides a popular excuse for disturbances.112

In Salford in April 1919, white resentment at the association of black men and local white women was displayed in a domestic setting. Two white brothers named Hall loudly objected to a party in a neighbouring house on the grounds that black men and white ‘girls’ were dancing together. Following their com­ ments, the Hall brothers were then allegedly set upon and beaten up by some of the black party-goers. The police were called to break up the fight and three West Africans – James Johnson, William Daniels and Obadiah Williams – were subsequently charged with assaulting John Hall. Johnson was further charged with an assault on William Hall. A press account of the trial ‘enhanced’ the Halls’ description of the events leading up to the assault, to create an impression of black men as sexual predators: ‘in a lodging house in Duke Street, in the Greengate district a negro concert party was being held. Niggers were strum­ ming banjos while white girls danced.’113 Johnson’s view of the events was quite different: … [He] stated that a friend was playing the banjo when they heard William Hall making abusive remarks about black men dancing with white women. He never left his room, but some of the other blacks did, and they were respon­ sible for the assault. There were eight or nine negroes about at the time.114

John Hall positively identified his three assailants in court. All three men were convicted of assault. Johnson was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment, with Daniels and Williams each receiving six-week terms. In Newport, the port rioting was initially attributed to a violent white male response to a black man trying to put his arm around a white woman. The description of the female involved in this incident in a local press account as a ‘lady’ was undoubtedly used to suggest that a ‘respectable’ white woman was the subject of a black man’s inappropriate attentions. Meanwhile, during the trial of white rioters arrested for their part in an attack on three black boarding houses, a woman named Martiniaz said in evidence that one of the rioters, Jerry Shea, shouted at her, ‘you ought to be burnt, because you are a black man’s wife’.115 In the course of the Cardiff riots, local police and press reports were firmly of the opinion that in displaying a ‘fondness for white women’, black men were asking for trouble. An incident on 11 June which was initially blamed for trigger­ ing four days of riots in Cardiff involved a dispute between a white crowd and a group of black men who had just returned to the city after a day out with white female companions. A police report, compiled a month after the outbreak of violence, dismissed the baiting of black men and their white female companions in this episode as insignificant in the outbreak of rioting.116 97

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Chief events of the riots Press accounts played up the ‘sex’ issue as both a convenient and a ‘racy’ explanation for the rioting. Other grievances were mentioned, including job competition among sailors and local housing shortages, but what really made the ‘white man’s blood boil’ was the question of ethnically diverse sexual relation­ ships. A Times report on 10 June reflects this view: During the war the colony of coloured men in Liverpool, largely West Indians, increased until the men now number about 5,000. Many have married Liverpool women, and while it is admitted that some have made good husbands, the inter-marriage of black men and white women, not to mention other relation­ ships, has excited much feeling.117

This explanation for the rioting also features in more modern writing on the Liverpool riots. However, later writers such as May and Cohen placed this fac­ tor within the context of wider economic and social problems.118 Their analysis suggested that the issue of sexual relationships was simply the leading manifes­ tation of more general white protest against post-war social problems.

Conclusion The nine seaport riots described in this chapter shared some features, most notably attacks by large white crowds on much smaller groups of people from racialized minority ethnic backgrounds. Given the size of the crowds which took part in these popular protests, peaking at 10,000 people at the height of the rioting in Liverpool, it is surprising that the number of fatalities was not higher than the five deaths recorded. The riotous confrontations occurred in places of leisure, employment and residence for black, Arab and Chinese people. The origins of the violence in cafés, workplaces and residences underlined the economic and social motiva­ tions of the white working-class crowds. Riots in and around shipping offices were triggered by intense job competition in the merchant shipping industry and the seamen’s unions’ hostility to the hiring of racialized ethnic minorities. Rioters often then moved onto accommodation occupied by black, Arab and Chinese port dwellers, and included the destruction of both private homes and lodging houses. Black-owned businesses were also targeted. Military service and ex-service personnel were involved as both victims and assailants in the riots around Britain’s seaports. Although ex-service groups staged a range of coordinated protests around Britain, particularly in July 1919 to tie in with the imperial British peace celebrations, there is no hard evidence to link the outbreak of port violence to their actions, despite hints of organization in some of the episodes of rioting. Racist responses were apparent in the port rioting around the country throughout the year. This was evident in expressions of scandal attached to the access to housing of members of racialized minority ethnic populations and was particularly demonstrated in outspoken criticism of sexual relationships between black, Arab and Chinese males and white British females. 98

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Chief events of the riots

Notes Evening Times (Glasgow), 23 January 1919, p. 1. Daily Record and Mail (Glasgow), 24 January 1919, p. 9. Evening Citizen (Glasgow), 29 January 1919, p. 3. Daily Record and Mail, 24 January 1919, p. 9. Bulletin (Glasgow), 24 January 1919, p. 2. See also Glasgow Herald, 24 January 1919, p. 7. 6 Evening News (Glasgow), 24 January 1919, p. 5 7 Evening News, 24 January 1919, p. 5. 8 Evening News, 29 January 1919, p. 3. 9 TNA, CO 323/814, Note from Graeme Thomson, Ministry of Shipping, to Gilbert Grindle, Assistant Under-Secretary, Colonial Office, 20 June 1919. 10 Bulletin, 14 June 1919, p. 14. 11 Bulletin, 23 June 1919, p. 12. 12 Fye, described in the court proceedings after the riot as a ‘disabled ex-soldier’, had been involved in a violent dispute in the shipping office over the hiring of Arab sailors years earlier. In September 1914, Fye brought a number of sailors to a ship’s engineer for hiring as firemen. One of the men was Mohammed Abdulla. The ship’s engineer took Abdulla’s discharge book, but told him he wanted to sign ‘Britishers’. A dispute arose between Fye and Abdulla when the engineer signed on two white men. Other white and Arab sailors in the shipping office then became embroiled in the disturbance. Abdulla claimed Fye had struck him after he complained that his seaman’s discharge book had not been returned. Fye counter-claimed that Abdulla had accused him of bribing the engineer to take on white sailors and had attacked him with a stick. On this occasion, Fye was admonished. Abdulla was convicted of assault and fined £1 plus costs. For more on this incident see R. I. Lawless, From Tai’izz to Tyneside: An Arab Community in the North-East of England in the Early Twentieth Century (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1995), p. 75. 13 Shields Gazette and Shipping Telegraph, 10 February 1919, p. 3. 14 Shields Gazette and Shipping Telegraph, 12 February 1919, p. 3. 15 Shields Gazette and Shipping Telegraph, 11 February 1919, p. 2. 16 Shields Gazette and Shipping Telegraph, 4 March 1919, p. 3. 17 Shields Gazette and Shipping Telegraph, 13 February 1919, p. 3. 18 TNA, CO 318/352, Colonial Office memorandum on the repatriation of coloured men, 1 December 1919. 19 The more notorious ‘battle of Cable Street’ occurred in 1936, when Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists ‘blackshirts’ attempted to march into areas of Jewish immigrant settlement in the east end of London. As the Jewish population and other groups resisted, London’s Chief Constable halted the march. As a result of this and other unrest surrounding Fascist processions, the coalition govern­ ment passed the Public Order Act 1936, which outlawed uniformed marches in Britain. 20 The Times, 17 April 1919, p. 7. 21 Eastern Post and City Chronicle (London), 31 May 1919, p. 5. 22 The Times, 30 May 1919, p. 9. 23 Marine Caterer (Liverpool), 9(13) (June 1919), p. 204. See Chapter 1 for full details of the various pay rates for sailors and ships’ firemen. 24 Marine Caterer, 9(13) (June 1919), p. 204. 25 Hull Daily Mail, 21 June 1920, p. 4. 26 African Telegraph, 1(12) (May–June 1919), p. 209. A ‘Q’ ship was an armed decoy ship

1 2 3 4 5

99

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Chief events of the riots disguised as a merchant ship to lure enemy submarines to the surface so they could be attacked. 27 Liverpool Echo, 6 June 1919, p. 5. 28 ‘Last week there were under 120 black men employed in Liverpool and today the coloured men say that they are all out of work. Some are existing on the 28/- per week unemployment allowance, and others are going from day to day on credit.’ Liverpool Courier, 11 June 1919, p. 5. 29 DeGroot’s account of the maltreatment of female war workers reveals the similari­ ties between black and women workers after the war. ‘Before long, critics began to discredit the contribution made by women during the war.’ DeGroot, Blighty, pp. 263–64. DeGroot (p. 263) also cited a Daily Sketch newspaper article of 28 June 1919 which referred to the ‘scandal of the proposed retention of flappers while ex-soldiers cannot find jobs’. It would be easy to replace the word ‘flappers’ with ‘blacks’ to produce a line familiar at the time of the port riots. 30 ‘The attitudes of unions and white workers rather than the management, appear to have been decisive.’ May and Cohen, ‘The Interaction Between Race and Colonialism’, p. 118. 31 Liverpool Record Office, Central Library, Liverpool, Liverpool Watch Committee Minute Book, Min/Wat 1/56, Head Constable Caldwell’s report to the Watch Committee, 17 June 1919, No. 56, 251–62, 352. 32 Head Constable’s report to the Watch Committee, 17 June 1919. 33 Head Constable’s report to the Watch Committee, 17 June 1919. 34 See Liverpool Courier, 13 June 1919, p. 5; and Liverpool Echo, 6 June 1919, p. 5, and 10 June 1919, p. 4. 35 Liverpool Echo, 6 June 1919, p. 5. 36 Liverpool Courier, 8 November 1919, p. 3. 37 Law and Henfrey, A History of Race and Racism in Liverpool, p. 155. 38 L. Julienne, Charles Wootton: 1919 Race Riots in Liverpool (Liverpool: Charles Wootton Centre for Adult and Further Education, 1979), p. 3. 39 Liverpool Echo, 6 June 1919, p. 5. 40 TNA, CO 318/349, Enclosure in Jamaica despatch no. 515, 1 October 1919. 41 Julienne, Charles Wootton, p. 1. 42 E. Marke, Old Man Trouble (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975), p. 30. 43 Glamorgan Record Office, Glamorgan Police Records, D/D Con/C Fingerprint Books, 1918–21. 44 Western Mail, 13 June 1919, p. 7. 45 South Wales News, 7 June 1919, p. 6. 46 Monmouthshire Evening Post (Newport), 6 June 1919, p. 1. 47 Liverpool Courier, 11 June 1919, p. 4. 48 TNA, CO 323/848, Enclosed report from Ministry of Labour to Colonial Office from L. Everett, Assistant Head Constable of Liverpool, ‘Unemployment of Coloured Men in Liverpool’, 7 November 1920. 49 G. Chandler, Liverpool Shipping: A Short History (London: Phoenix House, 1960), p. 177. 50 P. N. Davies, The Trade Makers – Elder Dempster in West Africa, 1852–1972 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1973), p. 203. 51 Barry Dock News, 13 June 1919, p. 3. 52 TNA, CO 318/349, James Sergeant to Colonial Office, 4 August 1919. 53 Cardiff Times and South Wales Weekly News, 19 July 1919, p. 8. 54 The Times, 13 June 1919, p. 9. 55 See Chapter 1 for more on organized protests by ex-service personnel.

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Chief events of the riots 56 TNA, CO 318/352, Liverpool police report on riots, November 1919. 57 See Chapter 3 for a discussion of hooliganism in the riots. 58 Shields Gazette, 11 January 1919, n.p., in cuttings file, Central Police Office, 22 May 1919, Tyne and Wear Archive Services, Newcastle, File T95/172. 59 Tyne and Wear Archive Services, T95/172, Report by Chief Constable William Scott to J. Moor Hayton, town clerk, South Shields, 20 January 1919. 60 The Times, 13 June 1919, p. 9. 61 Western Mail, 19 July 1919, p. 8. 62 Evans, ‘The South Wales Race Riots of 1919’, p. 17. 63 The Times, 17 June 1919, p. 9. 64 TNA, CO 318/352, Copy of a report by Charles Gower, Chief Constable of Newport, to the Home Office, 7 October 1919. 65 Seaman, 14 March 1919, p. 2. 66 Boroughs of Stepney and Poplar and East London Advertiser, 26 April 1919, p. 7. 67 East End News (London), 20 June 1919, p. 5. 68 Salford Reporter, 17 June 1919, p. 4. 69 Salford Reporter, 17 June 1919, p. 4. 70 Liverpool Record Office, Central Library, Liverpool, Liverpool Corporation Watch Committee, Minute Book No. 50 1918–19, 352 Min/Wat 1/56, 17 June 1919, list of riot damaged property. 71 Liverpool Record Office, Central Library, Liverpool, Liverpool Corporation Watch Committee, Minute Book No. 50 1918–19, 352 Min/Wat 1/56, Head Constable’s report to Liverpool Watch Committee, 17 June 1919. 72 Liverpool Courier, 12 June 1919, p. 5. 73 Carlton E. Wilson, ‘A Hidden History: The Black Experience in Liverpool, England, 1919–1945’ (PhD thesis, University of North Carolina, 1992), p. 159. 74 See Chapter 5 for a discussion of repatriation following the riots. 75 TNA, MT 4/756, L. Everett, Assistant Head Constable, Liverpool, to Home Office, 10 June 1919. 76 Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury, 13 June 1919, p. 3. 77 Letter from A. J. Muskett in Liverpool Evening Express, 7 June 1919, p. 3. 78 Cardiff Times and South Wales Weekly News, 14 June 1919, p. 6. 79 South Wales Argus, 7 June 1919, p. 4. 80 South Wales Daily News, 9 June 1919, p. 5. 81 South Wales Argus, 7 June 1919, p. 4. 82 Monmouthshire Evening Post, 7 June 1919, p. 10. 83 Monmouthshire Evening Post, 10 June 1919, p. 7. 84 Monmouthshire Evening Post, 10 June 1919, p. 7. 85 Barry Dock News, 20 June 1919, p. 3. 86 Emmanuel was described as ‘a fine, well built coloured man with curly hair turning grey that gave him a picturesque appearance’. South Wales Echo, 22 July 1919, p. 1. 87 Western Mail, 2 July 1919, p. 2. 88 Western Mail, 13 June 1919, n.p. 89 TNA, CO 318/350, Letter from James Gillespie to Prime Minister, Lloyd George, 24 October 1919. 90 See for example: G. Alderman, ‘The Anti-Jewish Riots of August 1911 in South Wales’, Welsh History Review, 6 (1972), pp. 190–200; and W. D. Rubinstein, ‘The AntiJewish Riots in South Wales: A Re-examination’, Welsh History Review, 18 (1996/97), pp. 667–99. See also Panayi, ‘Anti-German Riots’. 91 TNA, MT 4/756, Marine Department, Board of Trade to Colonial Office, 10 October 1919.

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Chief events of the riots 92 TNA, CO 318/350, Colonial Office to Board of Trade, 7 November 1919. 93 D. Williams, Chief Constable of Cardiff, ‘Report to Cardiff Watch Committee on Colour Riots’, 9 July 1919, reprinted in South Wales Magazine (winter 1970), p. 8. 94 Daily Mail, 14 June 1919, p. 2. 95 See Chapter 1 for a discussion on the common ground in the British, American and French riots around this time. 96 Evans, ‘The South Wales Race Riots of 1919’, p. 5. 97 See Chapter 3 for further discussion on the identity and constitution of the rioting crowds. 98 TNA, CO 318/352, Chief Constable Charles Gower, Report on Newport Riot, 7 October 1919. 99 Murphy, From the Empire to the Rialto, p. 31. 100 See Chapter 3 for more on rioters’ backgrounds. 101 South Wales Daily News, 14 June 1919, p. 5. 102 TNA, CO 323/816/331–35, Secret report from David Williams, Chief Constable of Cardiff, to the Director of Intelligence, 9 October 1919. 103 TNA, HO 45/11017/377969, Notes of a telephone call from Williams to Home Office, 14 June 1919. 104 South Wales Daily News, 14 June 1919, p. 4. 105 Shields Gazette and Shipping News, 4 March 1919, p. 3. 106 Shields Gazette and Shipping News, 8 February 1919, n.p. 107 Seaman, 14 March 1919, p. 2. 108 TNA, CO 318/352, Colonial Office memorandum on the repatriation of coloured men arising from directory of intelligence reports, 1 December 1919. 109 East End News, 22 April 1919, p. 3. 110 Eastern Post and City Chronicle, 26 April 1919, p. 4. 111 Seaman, 21 April 1919, p. 4. 112 Eastern Post and City Chronicle, 21 June 1919, p. 5. 113 Salford Reporter, 12 April 1919, p. 4. 114 Manchester Evening News, 17 April 1919, 3. 115 The Times, 17 June 1919, p. 9. 116 Williams, Chief Constable of Cardiff, ‘Report to Cardiff Watch Committee’, 9 July 1919. 117 The Times, 10 June 1919, p. 9. 118 May and Cohen, ‘The Interaction Between Race and Colonialism’, p. 115.

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C hapter 3

Who were the rioters?

This chapter focuses on the constitution of the rioting crowds: the national identity, gender, occupational backgrounds and age ranges of their members. The findings and figures discussed here have largely been obtained from inter­ rogation of two datasets created by the author. The first dataset contains 196 black and Arab rioters, witnesses and others who were associated in some way with the port rioting, such as lawyers and clergy. Of these, 155 are rioters and 41 are ‘related persons’. The second dataset, for white rioters and related persons, such as trades unionists, contains 107 individuals: 89 rioters and 18 others. The datasets therefore together include 303 people: 244 rioters and 59 others. They were compiled by extracting information down to individual level from govern­ ment files, police records, court papers and newspaper reports. The figures in the present chapter are based not on overall totals of black and Arab rioters detained in each port, but on the rioters and others connected with the riots in some way for whom at least some personal details were uncovered.1 As mentioned in the introductory chapter, British colonial subjects from Africa, the Caribbean, Arab territories and south Asia were regarded as lesser Britons or even aliens by many white rioters, by representatives of sailors’ unions and in the press. Information on birthplace has been identified for around a quarter of the people from overseas who were caught up in the riots in some respect, and this is used here to show that, where national identity is known, the vast majority of black and Arab rioters were British colonial subjects. Information on gender allows for some discussion of the involvement of women as rioters, victims of riot and court witnesses. Although these findings are based on a small number of women, they permit a tentative assessment of female roles in ­ working-class seaports. Some consideration is also given to the treatment of female rioters before the courts. Information on the ages of those involved allows for a challenge to the argument put forward by police and the press that the rioters were young ‘hooligans’ outside the norm of working-class society. 103

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Who were the rioters? In the Introduction, it was argued that the seaport riots were symptomatic of a wider disillusionment, in particular with the economic realities of post-war Britain. In order to support this argument, employment patterns are analysed here to assess whether those arrested and others associated with the seaport riots as victims and eyewitnesses were invariably sailors and their families or whether the rioters represented a cross-section of British working-class society. Finally, in seeking to provide an insight into the motivations for participation in the riots, this chapter considers the views of the rioters as expressed in their statements given in court. The crowd theory of George Rudé discussed, and in some respects chal­ lenged, in the introductory chapter was influential in preparing this chapter. Although aspects of Rudé’s approach to crowd theory have been questioned, his theoretical model of the constitution of rioting crowds remains a useful method­ ology. The starting point for much of Rudé’s work is an analysis of the people who took part in riots in France and Britain in the late eighteenth century. Rudé argued that by looking at the make-up of the crowd, the traditional tendency to regard rioters as aimless mobs, hell-bent on violence, could be avoided. He posed a series of questions with which to construct an analysis of the crowd and their motivations. The line of questioning pursued by Rudé can also serve as a useful model when considering the 1919 port rioters. How large was the crowd concerned, how did it act? Who (if any) were its promoters, who composed, and who led it…? Who were the targets or the victims of the crowd’s activities…? What were the aims, motives and ideas underlying these activities…?2

Comments on the size of rioting crowds have been made in the previous chapter. The wider economic and social circumstances behind the riots were considered in Chapter 1. In the present chapter, the composition of the crowds is used in part to determine the economic and social circumstances of the ­rioters on both sides. Different types of crowd leaders emerged during the riots. Some were seamen’s union officials, such as Emanuel Shinwell in Glasgow (see Chapter 1) and John Fye in South Shields (Chapter 2), who directed the anger of white rioters towards West African and Arab sailors in these ports. The inten­ tion here is to examine, where information is available, the recorded views of ‘ringleaders’ identified by the police. Such a focus on crowd leaders may appear to be a throwback to the methodological approach followed by Gustave Le Bon, Elias Canetti and other early crowd theorists who believed only an ‘inner core’ of five or ten people had defined riot aims (see Introduction).3 However, early theorists on crowd motivations used the notion of crowd leaders without ever trying to uncover the motivations and the particular role of such individuals within a group of rioters. Neither did Rudé give much consideration to such leaders, since any approach to crowd history which stressed the importance and influence of individuals reinforced the idea of the crowd as an aimless mob thoughtlessly following a few determined people. Although the views and 104

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Who were the rioters? motivations of those labelled riot ringleaders are unlikely to have been typical, they are worth examining to provide some insight into the opinions of rioters and related others.

Degrees of Britishness Information available on people from Africa, the Caribbean, Arab territories and south Asia who were caught up in the riots allows some reflection on the identification and designation of these groups of workers in Britain. Table 3.1 lists the known birthplaces of 54 (28%) of the 196 members of racialized minority ethnic populations involved in the riots in some way (information on birthplace is also portrayed in Figure 3.1). Twenty-nine were West Africans, with at least 19 of these coming from Sierra Leone; a further three came from the Gold Coast (Ghana). There were 16 people from the Caribbean, of whom five were Barbadians and four were Jamaicans. Aside from British colonial subjects, there were two colonial subjects from other European empires: Charles Emmanuel, who was convicted of manslaughter during the rioting in Barry, came from the ‘French West Indies’; and Manuel de Siloa, a West African resident in Hull con­ victed of assault, hailed from the Portuguese colony of the Cape Verde islands. Reinforcing the point made in the introductory chapter regarding the lack of precise information on the nationalities of ‘Arab’ residents, only two people were described as Adenese, and one further person came from Somaliland. Only three of the 54 black, Asian and Arab rioters and others whose birthplace was noted in the available records can be identified with any certainty as ‘aliens’: rioters Emmanuel and de Siloa mentioned above, and a Japanese sailor, Keen Nakaana, aged 32, who was stabbed in the thigh during rioting on 17 June in Cardiff. Place of birth was seldom provided for white rioters. The nationalities of only three among the 107 white rioters and related others were provided: James Rees and Mickey Wolke came from New Zealand and Syria, respectively; and John Donovan, who died during his part in the rioting in Cardiff, was Irishborn. The presumption must be that the remainder were Britons. Table 3.1  Places of birth of black, Arab and Asian rioters and others Place of birth West Africa Caribbean Africa (other) India Aden Somaliland Canada Guyana Japan

Number 29 16 2 2 2 1 1 1 1

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Who were the rioters? 30

Number

25

20

15

10

5

0 West Africa Caribbean Africa (other)

India

Aden

Somaliland

Canada

Guyana

Japan

Birthplace

Figure 3.1  Places of birth of black, Arab and Asian rioters and others

As the information, albeit incomplete, on nationality has demonstrated, the great majority of the people caught up in the rioting were Britons. However, in several of the riot ports confusion reigned over the precise national identities of many of the British colonial subjects involved as police, courts and the press speculated on the rioters’ origins. The black seamen attacked and arrested in Glasgow were West Africans from Freetown, in the crown colony of Sierra Leone.4 However, their status as Britons was not directly acknowledged by the police or the magistrate who considered their cases in court, although com­ ments on the ‘British’ surnames of the black people brought to trial in Glasgow are to be found in several press accounts: ‘Most of the accused, although obvi­ ously of negro blood, bore familiar English-sounding surnames, such as Johnson, Davis, Parkinson, Alfred, Pratt, with Tom Friday at the end of the list’.5 These common British surnames provoked confusion from a magistrate who did not take the trouble to identify those before him as individuals: In the case of two of the arrested sailors who gave the same name the ­magistrate, Dr. Neilson had some difficulty in finding a means of distinction by which they could be referred to in court. Both men were employed as ship’s firemen and came from Freetown, Sierra Leone. Dr. Neilson finally differenti­ ated between them by their ages, which were different. A similar process was gone through later with another two of the sailors who also had the same surnames, came from Freetown, Sierra Leone and were firemen.6

Few Arab rioters had their nationalities precisely identified. This may have been because wartime government directives purposely blurred nationality issues for Arab workers. Lawless has suggested that many of the Arabs who sailed to Britain from the port of Aden in fact came from outside the British protectorate of Aden. Some were Somalis; others came from the province of the 106

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Who were the rioters? Yemen, which until the war’s end was part of the Ottoman empire.7 As Turkish subjects, sailors from this area could more accurately have been described as enemy aliens. The swift passage in August 1914 of the Aliens Restriction Act led to new restrictive measures, including interviews by police and immigration officers of aliens and those suspected of alien status on arrival in Britain with the real possibility of deportation as an ‘undesirable alien’. However, Arab British subjects or with those with ‘British protected person’ status were exempt from the rigours of the Act. In 1917, the Board of Trade recommended to the Home Office that no claims to British subject status by Arab sailors should be challenged.8 This was a ­matter of wartime necessity. The government was acutely aware of the short­ age of seamen for the merchant fleet and the recommendation meant that Arab sailors of all nationalities could act as a ‘reserve army of labour’: ‘The proposal is made to meet a political emergency created by the war. It seems expedient to accord to these Arabs during the war the limited measure of protection necessary.’9 This group of sailors was therefore granted free access to work on British ­vessels for the duration of the hostilities. The government decision had obvious implications for the Arabs when they were no longer needed to plug the wartime employment gap. Attitudes towards Arab sailors soon changed as the war came to a close, as the actions of trades union officials and the rioting in South Shields in February 1919 indicate. During the court cases arising from the South Shields riot, south Asian ­barrister Dr Abdul Majid10 acted as an observer for the Islamic Society. He stated that the Arabs in the port were loyal British subjects (and therefore hailed from Aden, the Aden Protectorate and British Somaliland). Majid, President of the Society, gave interviews to the South Shields press in which he stressed the great sacrifices undertaken by Arab sailors during the war and emphasized that Adenese sailors came under the jurisdiction of the India Office. He underlined the vital support provided by India as a whole to the British empire at war and the Arabs in South Shields were to be counted along with the population of the subcontinent. In Cardiff, the blurring of nationalities and the limited information on eth­ nicity in the press and official accounts makes difficult any attempt to assign the rioters to ethnic or national categories. The majority, though, of those arrested did have Arab names. Some among this group may have come from Arab terri­tories on the Horn of Africa. Photographic evidence of the arrested rioters remains in the shape of a set of monochrome prints in police records. These showed that most of the people variously described as ‘black’, ‘coloured’ and ‘Arab’ on police and press accounts possessed very dark skin pigmentation. In Newport, Chief Constable Charles Gower’s riot report wrongly identified the black rioters as African-Caribbean: A number of West Indian natives [sic] and eight white men were charged with rioting at the Quarter Sessions and whereas a number of whites received various terms of imprisonment, only one West Indian was sent to prison and that for an assault on a police constable.11

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Who were the rioters? Some of the black people detained in Newport were West African. Two brothers of the name Tom Savage were arrested during the rioting. The Savages were from Sierra Leone. Both were found guilty of rioting offences: one was bound over for riotous assembly and the other was imprisoned for a month for police assault. The brothers were two of five all by the name of Tom Savage who had come to work in Britain as seafarers. The Savage brothers were unlikely to have been the only West Africans involved in the Newport riot.12 The persistent inaccurate or generalized identification of colonial Britons suggested a lack of appreciation for the status and important economic and military role of British imperial subjects in the metropole. A selection of letters published in the South Wales Argus following the outbreak of rioting at Newport provides an informal contemporary perspective on conflicting metropolitan and colonial interpretations of ‘Britishness’. A letter in the paper from the aptly named ‘anti-black’ advocated a few strokes of the lash for the rioting ‘natives’. The correspondent made a number of suggestions as to how black people in Newport could effectively be segregated, including forcing people to sit in the rear of trams and the arrest of any black men and white women found in each other’s company.13 In other words, ‘anti-black’ wanted the introduction to Britain of a segregationist system on the lines of South Africa and the southern states of America. This letter drew an immediate response from within the local black population. Alban Jordan, from Barbados, stressed the common identity of all Britons: We, as coloured men, and born British subjects, don’t see why we should all be ridiculed and despised by most of the British people … we are looked down upon, worse than Germans…. About thrashing coloured men instead of giving them the penalty of British law – will that be justice under the flag that the sun never sets on, the Union Jack?14

A few days later a letter calling for the recognition of equality between black and white people was published in the paper. It was submitted by renowned Cambridge anthropologist Alfred C. Haddon.15 Haddon’s view was that some black people were the equal of white people in terms of achievement: Nobody who had the delight of listening to the recent performance by the Choral Society of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s ‘Hiawatha’ will treat seriously the suggestion of the inevitable and universal inferiority of our black-skinned brethren from other parts of our Empire. Unfortunately, it is evident from the present agitation that there are many who, through no virtue of their own, were born ‘pale-faces’ of whom it must be said that their skins are the whitest part of them.16

Haddon’s letter and tribute to black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor17 was not free from the taint of racism. He seemed to ­suggest that black ‘civilization’, here in the form of Coleridge-Taylor’s work, could be measured only in terms of its degree of conformity to white European notions of worth. This double standard was something that, according to his ­ biog­rapher, Coleridge-Taylor was himself aware of. ‘The great praise for the Hiawatha trilogy little affected Coleridge-Taylor, 108

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Who were the rioters? but in other ways did him harm. The opinion was suggested by some that “people of negro blood did not develop beyond a certain point”.’18 Haddon’s attitudes are indicative of an ‘enlightened’ white British response to black people in both the metropole and the British colonies, which contrasted with the violent activities of the white working-class rioters and yet continued to judge black people based on their standard of achievement within Western civilization. As for ‘anti-black’, a further letter, printed in tandem with Haddon’s, showed that this person’s racist outlook had been in no way altered by the airing of contrary views in the press: ‘Experience has taught me that the only possible treatment for the native must be on the principle that the white man is the master and the black man the servant’.19

Rioting women Fourteen black and white women were identified among the rioters and related persons affected in some way by the seaport rioting. The sole black woman identi­ fied, Louisa Richards, gave evidence as a witness during a riot trial, as did three white women. One white woman, Florence O’Brien, was attacked during the Hull rioting. The other nine white women identified by name in the available sources on the port riots were arrested for riot offences. Although these female rioters account for only 10% of the total of 89 white rioters identified, the information on them gives some indication of the part played by working-class women during the riots. Six of these nine were arrested in Liverpool, and one each in South Shields, Cardiff and Newport. Ages were supplied for six of them. The average age based on this small sample was 24, which is similar to the 25.6 years for the larger sample of male white rioters (the ages of 53 of the 80 male rioters identified were recorded). The youngest female was aged 18 and the oldest 32. Occupational information was discovered for several of the women involved in the rioting. In Liverpool, three female rioters were described as ‘unemployed’, while Mary Elizabeth Carter, aged 21, was a ‘factory hand’ and Winifred Welsh, 18, was a servant. These rioters were clearly unskilled working-class women. There were connections between male seafarers and the remaining women arrested during the riots, as well as the female court witnesses. Bertha Lambert, who was charged with causing a disturbance in Liverpool on 10 June, was the wife of a black sailor. Frances West, arrested in South Shields for wilful damage to an Arab sailors’ boarding house, had no occupation given but was described as dependent on her husband, a white sailor in the Royal Navy, from whom she was ‘legally separated’. Dora Sharp, who acted as a witness for some of the Arabs arrested in the South Shields rioting, was a servant employed in the Arab ­boarding house which West and other white rioters attacked. Mabel Emma Ali, who gave evidence at a riot trial in Cardiff, was married to an Arab ­boardinghouse keeper. Finally, a white woman described in the press only in terms of being the wife of a black sailor named Martiniaz appeared as a prosecution witness against white rioters in Newport.20 109

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Who were the rioters? The only black woman named in riot accounts was also married to a black sailor. Louisa Richards, who lived in Barry, gave evidence in Charles Emmanuel’s defence at his trial for murder following the death of Frederick Longman on 11 June 1919. Richards’ husband was at sea at the time of the rioting. She was a near neighbour to the deceased and was well placed to have seen the events that unfolded during the altercation between Emmanuel and three white men, including Longman. The Richards lived at number 17 Beverley Street. A board­ ing house for black sailors was located at number 23 and Longman resided at number 25. At the murder trial in July 1919, Richards described how Longman first insulted and then struck Emmanuel. Emmanuel then closed with him in a struggle before being struck by two other white men, one with his fists and the other with a poker. It is likely that Louisa Richards’ evidence held some sway with the jury, since Emmanuel was found not guilty of murder. However, he was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Nothing further is known of Richards beyond her involvement in this trial. Six of the nine female white rioters were charged with wilful damage to property during the riots (five of these were additionally charged with ­riotous assembly). The three others were charged with causing a disturbance, brandish­ ing a razor and riotous assembly. The outcomes of eight of these cases have been traced and in each the female defendant was found guilty. The only case that could not be traced to a conclusion was that of Bertha Lambert in Liverpool, who was charged with causing a disturbance. According to press reports, Lambert shouted ‘niggers were as good as the whites’ in the face of a rioting crowd. Of the eight women convicted, one, Agnes Devenish, found guilty of brandish­ing a razor in Cardiff during the rioting, was discharged without ­further punishment; another, Frances West, was fined 10 shillings (50p) for wilful ­ damage. The remaining six were imprisoned. Mary Sheedy was jailed for three months in Newport for riotous assembly. The magistrate found her guilty of playing a prominent part in a white attack on a house owned by a black person named John Davies. In Liverpool, five women convicted of the twin charges of wilful damage and riotous assembly were given jail terms. Four were imprisoned for six months; the fifth, unemployed Bridget Meyrick, aged 32, was given an eight-month term. Three of the jailed female Liverpool rioters were sisters: Mary Welsh (aged 18), Winifred (20) and Annie (30). To complete the family affair, they were joined in the dock by their 16-year-old brother, Francis, a labourer, on common charges of wilful damage and riotous assembly. All four members of the Welsh family were sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. While there is sufficient information to piece together some kind of case history for these women, other elements of their trials remain elusive. For example, there is no indication in brief court reports and press accounts of why those charged with identical offences received different sentences, although the implication is clearly that the ‘level’ of offence differed. Moreover, there is no information which would explain why, after being found guilty of bran­ dishing a razor, Agnes Devenish should be discharged by the trial magistrate in Cardiff. 110

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Who were the rioters? In Chapter 4 the offences, conviction rates and lengths of sentences given to black and white rioters are compared; however, it is pertinent here to assess whether there is any evidence to suggest that white females were treated dif­ ferently from white males charged and convicted of riot. As indicated above, in the eight cases where the outcome is known, all the white women charged with rioting offences were found guilty and six of these were imprisoned (75%). In comparison, of the 75 cases of white men charged with rioting offences where the outcome was known, 69 were found guilty (92%). Forty-two of the convicted male rioters (61%) were then given custodial sentences. These figures, albeit based on a small sample, indicate the increased likelihood of a custodial sentence for women. Whether these women were arrested because the police had a solid case against them, while other female rioters were not detained, or whether they were selected for arrest because they were women is not known. However, it appears from the conviction rates and custodial sentences given that magistrates sought to make an example of them (perhaps considering the misdemeanours of law-breaking women a more serious threat to public order and decency than was the case for men of the same background). Marital status is known for the majority of the female rioters and witnesses. Among the nine rioters, West, Sheedy and Lambert were married; among the witnesses Ali, Martiniaz and Richards were also married. The three Welsh sisters were unmarried and Dora Sharp, witness to the South Shields riot, is unlikely to have been married given her occupation as a servant. The marital status of Liverpool rioters Meyrick and Carter was not mentioned in any of the sources, and nor was that of Devenish in Cardiff. There is similarly no such information available on Florence O’Brien, wounded in Hull in May 1919 during a confronta­ tion between black sailors and a group of white people for which West African Manuel de Siloa was subsequently convicted. Unsurprisingly, there is little information on marital status available for male rioters and related others. Such information is available only for middle-class pro­ fessionals who became involved in the riots as defence lawyers and also in a few cases for black people who became part of the post-riot repatriation programme. The sole instance of a male rioter whose marital status was recorded is Jamaican John Martin in London. Martin, a serving Royal Navy ship’s fireman, was charged with wounding a white male named James Hanrahan during a riot on 27 May. At his trial it was emphasized that Martin – who was on four weeks’ leave – had a wife and two children living in Jamaica and had no association with white ‘girls’. It is likely that Martin’s stable family background and proof of war service, rather than his protestations of innocence, led to his ‘not guilty’ verdict.

Male rioters: ages and occupations The 155 black and Arab rioters identified by name were all male and, as stated above, 80 of the 89 white rioters were male. More information, though, is available on the smaller sample of white rioters than on the black and Arab 111

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Who were the rioters? rioters. For example, the ages of 53 of the 80 white male rioters (66%) is known, compared with 85 of the 155 black and Arab rioters (55%). The average age of black and Arab rioters was 27.7. The youngest rioter was West African seaman William Daniels, aged 18, arrested in Salford, and the oldest was Alonza Beckles, aged 55, who was detained in Cardiff. John Flynn Marden, aged 54, arrested in Cardiff, was the oldest white rioter. As mentioned above, the average age of white male rioters was 25.6, about two years less than for black and Arab rioters. The small difference offers little support for the notion that the white rioters were merely young ‘hooligans’ (see below). Only three black and Arab teenagers were detained in the riots; however, 15 white male rioters aged under 20 were arrested. Five were aged 17, four aged 18 and there were three each aged 19 and 16. The three youngest white rioters were: Francis Welsh (labourer) and Ernest Taylor (seaman), both arrested in Liverpool; and Edmund Birch (labourer), detained in London. The age ranges of black, Arab and white male rioters are portrayed in 10year bands in Figure 3.2. In the accompanying Table 3.2, it may be seen that 28% of white male rioters whose ages have been identified were aged between 16 and 19 and only 2% of black and Arab rioters were in this age band. Of the white males, 43% were aged between 20 and 29. The vast majority of black rioters – 71% of those arrested – were in this age band. The proportions were similar for the two groups in the next age band, with 19% of the former and 21% of the latter group aged in their thirties. Perhaps as a reflection of the harsh

60 Black and Arab rioters White rioters 50

Number

40

30

20

10

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