The story of a strike and of strikes yet to come........... part three

Over the last few weeks I have been writing about the impact of the industrial action during 1911 and 1912. 

We were still a very unequal society. The life expectancy for working men was just 50 years of age and 54 for women, five per cent of children aged between 10 and 14 were already at work and the richest one percent held 70 percent of the wealth.

Between 1889 and 1910 the cost of food rose by 10 per cent and the cost of coal by 18 per cent. In stark terms this meant that the “purchasing power of 20s. in the hands of a working class housewife in 1895 went down to 18s. 5d. in 1900, to 17s. 11d. in 1905, to 16s. 11d. in 1910 and to 14s.7d. in 1914.”*

And as wages were decreasing in value the profits of companies were increasing which was not lost on working families. It is this realization that they were growing poorer as their employers were getting richer which accounts for the bitterness of the great strike struggles of the early 20th century.

It is fair to say that “no such open class antagonism had been seen in Britain since the time of the Chartists.” **

So it was against this background that the Carters struck.

We tend to forget just how much was shifted by horse and cart.

Each railway company had their own stables and in all there were 157 carriers listed in the 1911 street directory.

It was a hard job involving plenty of heavy lifting and a measure of horse knowledge. The absence of carters from the road not only meant shortages of food.

Coal was not being moved to heat the boilers which powered the countless machines across the city, and finished manufactured goods were left in factories where they had been made.

The police in our picture were escorting one of the non striking carters travelling from Piccadilly Gardens along Newton Street. Their destination could have been the wholesale market.

There were concerns on the part of the authorities for the continuation of food supplies and at one point mounted officers of the Manchester City Police drew swords on a crowd.

This was followed by the dispatch of troops to the city. Winston Churchill, answered questions in the House about the decision to send troops to Manchester on July 6th and Salford on the 13th.

The troops, Churchill said were sent not only in accordance with the regulations "to send Military aid to the civil power .... but in this case they had also the express instructions from the War Office, sent after consultation with me." ***

The Times carried a story that the Stock Exchange felt “a certain amount of uneasiness aroused by the reports of riots among the carters on strike at Manchester,” and further reported a fall in shares. ****

The events were also carried by the New York Times which reported that “crowds of women joined the men, stopping traffic and destroying or scattering the market produce in the streets” and it took the police till midnight to disperse the crowd making “frequent charges with their batons.” *****

Picture; Police officers beside a wagon travelling from Piccadilly Gardens along Newton Street, © Greater Manchester Police Archive, July 1911

*Morton, A. L., A People’s History of England, Lawrence & Wishart 1961 p 509

**Ibid Morton p 510

***House of Commons Debates, July 6, 1911, vol 27 c1341 & July 10, 1911 vol 28 cc13-4

****The Times, July 3rd 1911

*****New York Times, July 5th 1911