RIOTS IN BRITAIN

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 33, 8 February 1935, Page 3

RIOTS IN BRITAIN

SERIOUS AT SHEFFIELD

CLASHES NEAR TOWN: HALL

LINCOLN M.P. MOBBED

United Press Association—By Electric TcloKraph—Copyright. (Received February 8, 11 a.m.) LONDON, February 7. Later details of the Sheffield riot show that it was the most serious of the unemployment demonstrations throughout the country; _ Thirty thousand gathered at the Town Hall. The Socialist City Council refused to receive a deputation, and closed the Town Hall gates. The police set a cordon round th"c building. The unemployed retaliated. Throwing stones and wielding pickets they smashed shop windows, and the women belaboured the police with umbrellas. The Town Hall was converted "into both a police station and hospital, as the police gathered in the injured and arrested. ; They then charged and chased the crowd over an adjacent church graveyard, where the unemployed renewed the fight'until foot and mounted police . eventually dispersed the rioters. -

_ During the height of the riot the City Council was passing a resolution of protest against the Government's new scale of relief.

After the fighting the Town Hall corridors were piled with confiscated red flags, staves, stones, and pieces of concrete.

Simultaneously with the appearance in court of twenty-three of the Sheffield rioters, who .were remanded in connection with last evening's s disturbances, another serious unemployed outbreak occurred at Lincoln, men and women mobbing the Conservative M.P., Mr. W. S. Liddall. The unemployed committee invited him to address them in the Co-operative Hall on the unemployment assistance regulations, and the- meeting demanded that the Sheffield demonstrators be released. Then forty men and women rushed the platform and tried to strike Mr. Liddall. The police surrounded him. The crowd attempted another rush, but police sheltered Mr. Liddall until reinforcements arrived.'