Turning the Big Guns on Hull 1911

The National Rail Strike of August 1911 brought the military out onto the streets with bayonets drawn and rifle butts in action against an aggrieved and unruly workforce. 

This had been on the orders of the Government Minister, Winston Churchill as he felt that a show of force was necessary to deter any escalation of militant or violent civil disorder. There were pitched battles and riots in Llanelli in Wales which saw  the shooting by soldiers of two strikers. Some 32 other towns across the UK saw the deployment of the army. 

There had been a tentative agreement on some of the disputed issues between General Management and Union Leaders and the men were encouraged to return to manning the railways. 

To some this indicated that the Strike was over but there remained very resilient resistance in the major cities of the North and North East of the Country. 

At New Shildon in County Durham 1500 troops were marched into the area and in other areas the military reinforcements included cavalry. 

The basic demands of the railway workers was an 8 hour day, a minimum wage of 24 shillings a week and on top of that a pay rise of 2 shillings per week all round. 

The strike had brought a good proportion of the rail network to a halt or with a much reduced timetable service able to be provided. Potato prices doubled, there were shortages of coal and the collateral effect was the laying-off of around 200,000 mine and dock workers who relied heavily upon rail traffic. 

In my home city, Kingston Upon Hull, the fishing industry was particularly badly hit and hundreds of boxes of fish, unloaded on the quayside had to be dispatched for manure as there was no onward transport. 

The North Eastern Railway workers in Hull remained defiant of any back to work order although some of the Carters or Porters employed by the Hull and Barnsley Railway Company did return to work and this caused anger and accusations of scab labour from the strikers. 

Lorries, loaded up and heading out from the Hull and Barnsley Depots had a mounted police escort as they made their way out of the city. In Whitefriargate, an important central thoroughfare, an attempt was made by strikers to undo the harness of a horse pulling a Company lorry which was delivering goods to several business establishments. 

A large group of police, mounted and on foot cleared the crowd away. 

There was general support for the strike in that at some warehouses the transported goods were refused much to the noisy appreciation of the pickets. 

There was an outbreak of violence with the police and van men surrounded and pelted by stones but nobody was seriously injured. 

Perhaps most menacingly, and it is speculated to have been at the behest of Churchill, the Royal Navy Cruiser, Attentive appeared in the River Humber just off Victoria Pier and was later joined by another vessel, HMS Alarm, a torpedo boat destroyer. 

In Newcastle, Leeds , York and Hartlepool there was continued snubbing of the deal. 

HMS Attentive

HMS Alarm

The action of the railway workers was just one of many in the four years leading up until the start of the First World War which saw many sectors of industry and trade directly affected. Not many of the towns and cities where disputes arose will have experienced the show of military force as in Hull.