HOMELAND UNEMPLOYED

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 September 1932, Page 5

HOMELAND UNEMPLOYED

RIOT AT BIRKENHEAD

[BY CABLE PRESS ASSN. COPYBIGHT.]

LONDON, September 18

Ten police and seventeen civilians were injured,'"while nine rioters were arrested, during week-end riots, that took place in the narrow streets of Birkenhead. The rioting culminated in the Chief Constable issuing”an ultimatxxm forbidding the holding of processions and demonstrations. The rioters used bricks, stones, iron and bottles. Women flung irons from upper windows. Four teen shops were looted. Hundreds of the police were rushed by ferries to Birkenhead from Liverpool, and these police now patrol the town. There are large crowds of unemployed in Birkenhead who are in an ugly mood. The rioting began at nine o’clock on Saturday evening. It was continued without any abatement fox’ eight hours until five o’clock on Sunday morning. The trouble arose owing to unemployed feeling resentment at the “Means Test,” designed to add to theii’ difficulties in the drawing of the dole.

The Mayor of Birkenhead has made appeals to law-abiding citizens to dissociate themselves fiom the rioters and to prevent the necessity of more extreme measures being taken.