WORKERS AT WAR

In 1911, overworked and underpaid Britons downed tools and led the biggest industrial dispute the nation had ever seen

- SPENCER MIZEN

DID YOU KNOW?

NOT WELCOME

In 1910, Winston Churchill sent the British Army to Tonypandy, south Wales, to quell unrest stemming from a miners' strike. His actions made him unpopular in the area for decades; as late as 1950, he was forced to address the issue while visiting Cardiff.

A takes some beating. Deacon was charged with reading the riot act to a vast crowd of strikers that had descended on the area around St George's Hall in central Liverpool. His words were, in effect, the authorities' last-minute bid to persuade the demonstrators to disperse and return to their homes peacefully.

The crowd, however, was in no mood to listen - perhaps 80,000 of them had taken to the streets in support of what was being described as the "Great Transport Workers' Strike". What followed was one of the most violent episodes in the history of British industrial relations.

No sooner had Deacon addressed his restive audience than fighting broke out between police and the protesters. As members of the Warwickshire Regiment stood by waiting for the order to go into action, mounted police waded into the crowd. By the end of the day, hundreds required treatment for their injuries.

Two days later, things got even worse. When protesters threw bricks at vans carrying strikers to prison, soldiers guarding the convoy opened fire, killing two men. It was a bloody end to a strike that truly shocked the nation. Yet it was far from an anomaly.

GRINDING TO A HALT