"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3003, 4 October 1911, Page 75

"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

A WEEK OF UNREST.

August 18. The continuous and intense heat of the last "seven weeks has dried all semblance of greenness from the gardens .and parks. The earth is baked, and London, with its many miles of tall buildings and paved streets, is stifling. With tbe exception of a shower or two, the drops of which could almost be counted, in some parte, there has been no rain since Coronation time, and' what was a gorgeous, glorious feast of sunshine, gratefully received after winters of fog and summers of rain, has passed into a drought that has caused much suffering. There has been a magnificent wheat harvest—.those coming back from the country tell of the golden wonders of the wheat fields, —but all the lighter crops and root crops have suffered severely, and now sheep and cattle are suffering, as well as individuals, from shortage of water. Add to the miseries and discomforts of the drought the miseries, and discomforts of the strike, all departments of business are affected. Many are brought face to face with ruin, and" most with loss of more or less magnitude, and many with actual starvation. One can scarcely realise that one has been living in law-abiding England during the past week, where in the ordinary course men and women willing to work are unmolested, for the mob law set tip by union members has compelled those who belong to no trades, unions, if not to join issues in lawlessness, to cease work, to the untold suffering of thousands, among them, alas! the children of that class in England who at the best of times have none too much to eat, and who now, with fathers and mothers workless, would die of want but for charity. Wcth thousands of tons —hundreds of thousands of tons—of food rotting in British docks,, food is becoming scarcer and dearer all over the country, the pTice of everything is .increasing, andl especially of that food which the hot weather makes most desirable, and which the drought has joined issue with the strike to make so scarce as to be beyond the means of the ordinary purse. Although a settlement with the London dockers was. arrived at last Saturday, and the immediate fears of the week were at on end, *he situation in Liverpool assumed a graver aspect, and other branches of workers in Glasgow, Manchester, and London struck for one reason and another. Like a great fire quenched at one point it" broke out in another, and the ■ Government, realising that the situation had passed from peaceful control, and from even police control, poured the military into the fighting streets. In Liverpool the scenes have been scenes of savagery. Quite apart from the rights or wrongs of the questions at issue, the methods of the men to bring them .to pass have been an exhibition of unbridled passion, unreasoning' brutality, and the women of the strikers not only stoning the police and soldiers and hurling bottles at their heads, but shrieking' blasphemieo and worse after them in the streets. Furies every bit as venomcus as the furies of the French Revolution. "Red Sunday". will ever be remembered in Liverpool. The t week-end had been one of the hottest on record, and had greatly irritated the conditions of "strike mania." The strikers were dis-

appointed that the London dockers had com© to terms. The temper of the mass meeting which followed a procession of j strikers through Liverpool was' in a con- • dition of smouldering excitement, and the-match was applied by some fancied , offence of the police—they turned some ; boys off a window sill where their lives f were in danger, —and the mob burst into a j flame of passion. Bottles, stones, sticks, and staves were hurled. So ungovernable were the strikers that they tore down the wall of a private garden and hurled the bricks and stones at the .police. In the midst of t/h© riot a detachment of 40 police took their stand in front of- an, hotel", and immediately became the target of the missiles which felled the ." men and smashed the windows." Nearly 100,000 people were fighting, and things became so critical that the Riot Act was. read.. Many were injured on both sides, fierce hand-to-hand conflicts taking place, and the Fire Brigade was called out to turn their hose on the mob. As' soon as suflicr'ent reinforcements had been brought up the police charged the crowd with drawn batons, and the wild mob ran screaming in indescribable confusion. A section of tli© Birmingham constables came down Lime street at a Tun, striking right and left, but were brought up in St. Johni6 lane by a crowd of men who attacked them with belts and stones. Mounted police came on the scene and charged, and the streets scon presented the appearance of a battlefield. Six policemen were gravely injuired, and 120 others—stzlkers and police—were more or less severely hurt. ; I On the days following Liverpool was j under martial law. The War Office had taken charge of the situation with a brigade of infantry and two regiments of cavalry—about 5000 horse and foot, — fully armed. About 100.000 men were idle. The shipowners had locked out the dockers and the infuriated men were only kept from violence by the presence of the ; soldiers, who, mounted and armed, let , loose the food supply, conducting lorries and vans from the warehouses to their destination through the streets. In Lon- j don there were fresh complications with i' the strikers, who were supposed to come i' to terms on the Saturday, and fresh ! strikes broke out all over th© country. , In Birmingham, Glasgow, and other places riots took place, and a general j : railway strike throughout th© kingdom j ' •wae threatened. AH the troops at Alder- |

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shot, Salisbury Plain, and Dover were prepared for action, and called into barracks from encampments. Thousands of would-be happy folk who had anticipated a week or fortnight's holiday by the sea had their pleasure, curtailed by the decision to returm to London while there was a chance of so doing, and the earlier days of the week saw thousands come reluctantly back to the heat-baked city from the coasts and the moors. At Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, Southampton, Belfast, Sheffield, and Leicester, things were in a state of unrest, but m Liverpool on Tuesday the strike mama reached, its climax. There were fresh riots in which four men were killed and the military received orders to fire on the mob. The riot occurred through the attempt of the crowd to capture the prison vans containing rioters who were being conveyed from the police courts to prison for J their pact in tHfe proceedings of Sunday. Great crowds had assembled in the I streets, armed with stones, bottles, etc. ! As the cavalcade of the prison vans was | sighted, conducted by mounted police and men of the 18th Hussars, first one stone and then another was thrown, and in-, creased until there was a perfect shower. The escort rode on steadily, and seeing that the soldiers did not retaliate the crowd pressed closer with bricks and i bottles, shouting and screaming and curs- ' ing. Some of the troopers were actually { unhorsed and in danger of bring trampled Ito death. At length, when ; the resistance I threatened to overwhelm the escort, the | command came to an officer to fire." He ■ held his revolver high in warming, but j the mob only increased their violence. :He fired, -and presently he, fired again. A i policeman reported : ' We had a very hot fight, which i went on till we wwo nearly exhausted. Again and again we were met with showers of stones from till sides., It was useless to charge them, as we were powerless against such large numbers. As we beat the foremost from one sddie , more stone-throwers cam© on from the other. Wherever we turned we were mot with missiles. All of us were struck about the body. | We chased one group of stone-throwers over a canal bridge, and one man fell in. Two of my men turned from pursuing the crowd, jumped into the water, and rescued a, maji who before had attacked us, I'• "I saw an attack mad© on the vans, saw a stone thrown, the waving of swords by the hussars, and a man shot in the head," said a young workman named Eachern employed in "Vanxhall road. He was standing not far from the scene of the outbreak. " The eight was terrible. A& tbe hussars and' police guarding; the five prison vans were passing' below Hopwood citreet they were met with a fusillade of stones. ! r " Both the. cavalry and policemen were frequently struck .as the missiles were showered from the housetops, windows, and side streets. One man in front of the rest I eaw throw stonies at a hussar, and in retaliation the cavalryman fired twice with a revolver over the top of his assailant. At a third shot the man dropped with a bullet in his head. .', "Meanwhile the cavalry waved their swords. Still the crowd pressed! down through the side streets, and from, a littkt distance continued to hurl missiles. ' Slowly , the ; cavalcade went on.. Some man and 1 wcanen hurried to the : wounded man and' carried him to Dr Lucas's surgery close by. I picked up the man's bloodstained cap. "A little farther on I saw one of the soldiers level a, carbine, pointing up a side streat. Altogether I beard four shots."

All the- evening aad till midnight the battle raged. The crowd was mad. | In the House of Commons next dav Mr : Chuiohiill, the Secretary of State, read the statements of the Chief Constable of j Liverpool, and'that of General M'Kinnon, j in command of the troops. The comf stable said: I You need not attach any vary greai importance to_ the rioting of last night. It took place in an area where disorder m a chronic feature, ready to break cut when any abnormal excitement is in force. The object of the riot was purely and simply attack on the police, whom they tempted into side streets, where barricades of sanitary dustbins and wire entanglements were placed. The riot began about 8.0, and the -troops ■were called out with natural reluctance on the part of the police officer in charge at 11.40. The mob pursued' the sarnie tactics stoned troops and police from, the windows and housetops, but troops and police worked admirably together, and reduced the neighbourhood to peace about 2.30, and the former retired to quarters*. Twenty prisoner* were taken from the streets and house® I The troops filed & few efcots (officers' revolver shots, ■ I think) ; at -the housetops whence the stones came. ' Six privates of the Yorkshire Regiment and two constables received minor injuries. Bath military andr police behaved admirably, and the experience of working with the former has been valuable to the officers of the police, who will oall the latter out more readily in future A great deal of damage was don© to houses and shops, especially publiehouses and provision shops; but food-does not seem to have been the object, as the bread was thrown about the street. Troops engaged were Yorkshire Regiment 200 of all ranks. fe ' General M'Kinnon's report was that :- Bricks and other missiles - were hurled from upper windows on the troops, and on further requisition of the nmgisttrate to fire the offioec commanding directed single shots to be fired at the most prominent individuals at ■ the upper windows who were hurling missiles. The total number of shots fired were seven revolver shots by officers, nve rifle siiots. No casualties are reported to have resulted, and th© disturbance was at once quieted down. The troops returned to barracks at 3 a.m. Three mien were inijured among the troops, but none seriously. Bayonets were, fixed and the troops advanced down the street with their weapons at the charge," but no bayonet charge occurred, nor did they use their bayonets, as the crowd immediately dispersed down a side street. -General M'Kinnon reports that both officers and men shpwed the utmost forbearance, and were perfectly calm and collected. Last night the threatened railway -war

began -with the declaration of a general strike. The railway companies refuse to deal with the men under the present conditions. The whole of yesterday was spent in fruitless negotiations between the Government and. the leaders of the railway men. But the Government has stood firm to protect the pubildc and public interests. There are sufficient non-unionist railway men to run a restricted service, and. food will be gjiven first place over passengers should the strike continue. There was great excitement in London last night when the strike began. Troops are pouring into town to guard the stations and lines. The Commissioner* of Police has called upon the citizens to enrol for constable duty should the situation be-, come more grave. Liverncol is like an armed camp, and hard to believe, says this- morning's report, that it is an English city. Soldiers with fixed bayonets are guarding the important buildings, the Lord Mayor's bouse among them. If necessary, the General Post Office an London will have the services of the Royal Engineers, as all measures of protection will be taken for the safe delivery of mails. Quite a number of readers have,offered the newspapers their private motor oars should the railways not be able to run with the dailies. Already the great London is hampered by the difficulty in obtaining the enormous quantity of paper required for printing, as much of it is lying in vessels from Newfoundland. The week-end bids to be one of unrest and tension—if nothing worse happens.