SERIOUS RIOTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22030, 9 February 1935, Page 13

SERIOUS RIOTS

UNEMPLOYED MOBS

VIOLENCE IN SHEFFIELD FIGHT AT TOWN HALL LINCOLN DISTURBANCE POLITICIAN ATTACKED By Telegra'ph—Press Association—Copyright' (Received February 8. fi.s p.m.) LONDON. Feb. 7 Later detail:? of the riot in Sheffield yesterday show that it was the most serious of the unemployment demonstrations which were held throughout the country. Thirty thousand people gathered outside the Town Hall. The Labour council refused to receive a deputation, and had the gates of the Town Hall closed and a police cordon placed around the building.

The unemWoved retaliated by throwing stones. They also wielded pickets, and broke sbon windows, and women belaboured policemen with ut"brcllas.

The Town Hall was converted into a combinpd police station and hospital as the police gathered in the injured and those arrested. Then they charged and chased the crowd over the graveyard of an adjacent rhurcb. vhere there was renewed ficliting. Foot and mounted policemen eventually dispersed the rioters.

During the height of the disturbance, the council was carrying a resolution protesting against the Governments new scale of relief fillowances. After the fighting confiscated red flags, staves, stones and pieces of concrete were piled up in the corridors of the Tovm HalL. -As the result of subsequent representations made by the council in connection with the disturbance, the Government ordered the immediate payment of unemployment allowances on the old scale, in spite of its former announcement that it would be impossible to begin payments this week. While 23 of the Sheffield demonstrators were being remanded in connection with t'ihe riot, another serious outbreak by unemployed occurred at Lincoln, where men and women mobbed the Conservative* member of the House of Commons for that borough, Mr. W. S. Liddall.

The committee of the -unemployed had invited "Mr. Liddall to address it in the Co-operative Hall on the unemployment assistance regulations. The meeting demanded the release of the Sheffield prisoners. Then 40 men and women rushed the platform, and tried to strike Mr. Liddall. Policemen surrounded him, and when the crowd attempted to make another rush they sheltered him until reinforcements arrived.