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“Prosecutions…are Always Risky Business”: Labor, Liberals, and the 1912 “Don't Shoot” Prosecutions*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
Extract
In the spring of 1912, the British syndicalist leader Tom Mann was prosecuted under the Incitement to Mutiny Act 1797 for his opposition to the use of troops during the great coal strike. He was convicted and sentenced to six months' imprisonment, but an outcry from socialists, trade unionists, and progressives forced the Liberal government to reduce his sentence and release him early from prison. This much is familiar to historians of early twentieth-century Britain and Ireland. It is often forgotten, however, that Mann was only one of eight syndicalists and socialists who were prosecuted for their involvement in the “don't shoot” agitation. It is likewise forgotten that Mann went on trial just days before the suffragette leaders Emmeline Pankhurst and Frederick and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence shared a similar fate, amid demands that Sir Edward Carson, the leading opponent of Irish home rule, join them in the dock. Indeed, the Nation, a progressive Liberal weekly, complained that “the country is…getting somewhat tired of political trials.” Perhaps because we assume the relative transparency of the law, historians have failed to scrutinize in detail the origins and outcome of the “don't shoot” prosecutions. George Dangerfield devoted one sentence to them, Elie Halévy a few more; although the “don't shoot” episode has been invoked to symbolize the increasingly fragile relations between Liberalism and the working classes, it continues to receive only brief mention in accounts of Edwardian labor and politics. Even Tom Mann's biographers have shed little new light on his case.
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Footnotes
An earlier version of this article was presented to the Southern Conference on British Studies, Atlanta, Georgia, in November 1992. Crown copyright material in the Public Record Office is reproduced by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office. The quotation from H. H. Asquith's letter to George V is reproduced from photographic copies in the Public Record Office of original letters preserved in the Royal Archives and made available by the gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen. The author wishes to thank Mrs. Dorothy Evelyn and the University of Liverpool Library, Mr. Geoffrey Trevelyan, the Trustees of the Trevelyan Family Papers and the Robinson Library, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland, and the House of Lords Record Office for permission to quote from private manuscripts. The author has made every effort to obtain permission for quotations from manuscript sources, but he begs the indulgence of any copyright holders whose identity or whereabouts were unknown to him. He is grateful to Laura Tabili, Jonathan Zeitlin, and two anonymous readers for their helpful criticisms and suggestions.
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38 Parliamentary Debates (Commons) 34, 5th ser., col. 1372 (28 Feb. 1912).
39 Justice, 2 March 1912.
40 ULL, Glasier papers, I.1.1912/10, Glasier to Johnson, 27 Feb. 1912; I.2.1912, diary, 27 Feb. 1912. Glasier took exception to the proposed leaflet because it was ambiguous on such points as the distinction between shooting strikers and “Arabs, Kaffirs, Boers, &c.” To MacDonald's embarrassment, the Huddersfield Worker published the draft. See Parliamentary Debates (Commons) 35, 5th ser., col. 1094 (13 March 1912); PRO, MacDonald papers, PRO 30/69/1156, fol. 163, Riley to MacDonald, 14 March 1912; Labour Leader, 22 March 1912.
41 ULL, Glasier papers, I.2.1912, diary, 2 March 1912. Doubting a sudden conversion to militancy, Glasier speculated that MacDonald was instead engaged, perhaps with David Lloyd George, in “a bit of tactics having for its end the saving of the Liberal Ministry from committing a blunder.”
42 Justice, 9 March 1912.
43 PRO, HO 144/1192/220104/3, Daily Express cutting, 14 March 1912.
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46 Parliamentary Debates (Commons) 35, 5th ser., col. 1775 (19 March 1912). Lloyd George made this statement the same day Mann was arrested. But for an indication that Lloyd George was prepared to support strong measures to end the strike if the miners rejected a compromise settlement, see Riddell, Baron, The Riddell Diaries, 1908–1923, ed. McEwen, J. M. (London, 1986), p. 37Google Scholar.
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51 British Library of Political and Economic Science, University of London (BLPES), Lansbury papers, 5/1/23–24, Gawthorpe to Lansbury, 20 March 1912. Gawthorpe was not the only feminist to concern herself with the “don't shoot” cases. For example, see Liddington, Jill, The Life and Times of a Respectable Radical: Selina Cooper (1864–1946) (London, 1984), pp. 217–18Google Scholar.
52 The Times, 23 March 1912.
53 PRO, HO 144/7062/220603/37, Troup to McKenna, 25 March 1912. The attorney general did not find everything to his liking either. Pressed by Lansbury, Isaacs was obliged to dissociate himself from the Recorder of London's remarks about the syndicalist menace while charging the grand jury on 19 March. See Parliamentary Debates (Commons) 35, 5th ser., cols. 1840–42 (19 March 1912); The Times, 20 March 1912; Labour Leader, 22 March 1912.
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68 The Times, 9 April 1912; Daily Herald, 20 April 1912; Manchester Guardian, 6 May 1912.
69 Parliamentary Debates (Commons) 37, 5th ser., col. 26 (15 April 1912).
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76 PRO, CO 904/159, Birrell minute, 23 April 1912.
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79 Daily Herald, 2 May 1912.
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81 Manchester Guardian, 10 May 1912.
82 ULL, Glasier papers, I.2.1912, diary, 10 May 1912.
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85 Daily Herald, 20 May 1912; PRO, HO 144/7062/220603/98, LMP report, 20 May 1912.
86 Manchester Guardian, 10 May 1912; Nation, 11 May 1912.
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88 PRO, CAB 41/33/49, Asquith to George V, 11 May 1912. The Liberal whip Percy Illingworth feared that Mann's conviction could damage the candidacy of Gordon Hewart, a Liberal barrister who had been part of the prosecution team. In August, Hewart lost the Manchester Northwest by-election in a strong swing away from the previous Liberal poll. See John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Scott papers, CPS 332/112, Illingworth to Scott, 14 May 1912; CPS 332/116, Illingworth to Scott, 30 May 1912; Clarke, P. F., Lancashire and the New Liberalism (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 303–05CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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92 PRO, HO 45/10684/223719, National Political Reform League deputation transcript, 21 May 1912.
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95 Parliamentary Debates (Commons) 38, 5th ser., cols. 2008, 2014 (22 May 1912).
96 Parliamentary Debates (Commons) 38, 5th ser., cols. 2014, 2028 (22 May 1912).
97 Parliamentary Debates (Commons) 39, 5th ser., cols. 872–996 (12 June 1912); Parliamentary Debates (Commons) 40, 5th ser., cols. 37–44 (24 June 1912), 215–19 (25 June 1912), 642–718 (28 June 1912).
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100 The Times, 19 June 1912.
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102 Parliamentary Debates (Commons) 39, 5th ser., cols. 1618–22 (18 June 1912). Wedgwood, who may have served as an intermediary between Crowsley and the government, mentioned his advice to the defendant that “if he pleaded guilty he would probably get off, and I had good reason for saying that, but he replied that his conscience would not allow him to plead guilty to what he did not consider a crime.”
103 PRO, HO 144/7062/220603/110, Blackwell minute, 21 June 1912; /113, Channell to McKenna, 22 June 1912; Blackwell minute, 24 June 1912; Home Office to Channell, 25 June 1912.
104 PRO, HO 144/7062/220603/107, Blackwell, McKenna, Troup minutes, 18 June 1912; Daily Herald, 26 June 1912. For Mann's prison experience, see also Ruskin College Library, Middleton papers, MID 24/11, Mann to Brockway, 2 Jan. 1929.
105 Manchester Guardian, 25 June 1912.
106 Parliamentary Debates (Commons) 40, 5th ser., col. 218 (25 June 1912).
107 PRO, HO 144/1192/220104/5, Derbyshire Advertiser cutting, 28 June 1912. See also The Times, 26 June 1912.
108 PRO, HO 144/1192/220104/5, ? minute, 8 Aug. 1912; Simpson minute, 8 Aug. 1912; /6, Stephenson to Home Office, 14 Aug. 1912.
109 It may be noteworthy that the trial occurred just five days before a by-election at Ilkeston on 1 July, necessitated by the War Office parliamentary under-secretary J. E. B. Seely's appointment as the new war secretary following Haldane's elevation to the woolsack as lord chancellor. Even though spared the bad feelings which might have flowed from the imprisonment of three local men, Seely was returned with a significantly reduced majority.
110 Daily Herald, 21, 25, 27, 29 June 1912.
111 Parliamentary Debates (Commons) 40, 5th ser., cols. 732–33 (1 July 1912).
112 Parliamentary Debates (Commons) 40, 5th ser., cols. 1600–1601 (8 July 1912).
113 Parliamentary Debates (Commons) 41, 5th ser., cols. 421–533 (17 July 1912).
114 Daily Herald, 10 Aug. 1912.
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116 Parliamentary Debates (Commons) 36, 5th ser., col. 73 (25 March 1912).
117 But for the 1913 squabble over who did more to free Mann, the BSP or the Labour party, see BLPES, ILP papers, Head Office Circulars 3, “Memorandum on the Application of the British Socialist Party for Separate Affiliation to the International Bureau,” p. 4.
118 For a parallel critique of the political distinction between “militants” and “constitutionalists,” and the reproduction of this distinction in the historiography of the women's suffrage movement, see Holton, Sandra Stanley, Feminism and Democracy: Women's Suffrage and Reform Politics in Britain, 1900–1918 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 1–52Google Scholar; Mayhall, Laura E. Nym, “Creating the ‘Suffragette Spirit’: British Feminism and the Historical Imagination,” Women's History Review 4, 3 (1995): 319–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
119 Although beyond the scope of this article, it should be noted that Edwardian socialism and trade unionism were hardly free of anti-Semitism, chauvinism, and racism. With an internationalism tempered by triumphal notions of Englishness and Britishness, the Victorian popular-radical inheritance may have exacerbated these tendencies. A full accounting of the labor and socialist Left's stance towards imperialism and its handling of race before the First World War remains an urgent task for historians. But see Barrow, Logie, “White Solidarity in 1914,” in Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, vol. 1: History and Politics, ed. Samuel, Raphael (London, 1989), pp. 275–87Google Scholar.
120 For the Edwardian era as an important transitional moment in which voluntarist and Jacobin, or statist, versions of working-class citizenship competed for support in the labor movement, see Hinton, James, “Voluntarism versus Jacobinism: Labor, Nation, and Citizenship in Britain, 1850–1950,” International Labor and Working-Class History 48 (1995): 71–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
121 McKibbin, , “Why was there no Marxism in Great Britain?,” p. 24Google Scholar. For Edwardian Unionist efforts to mobilize popular support by construing gendered catchphrases like “an Englishman's home is his castle” in specifically anti-Liberal and anti-socialist ways, see Lawrence, Jon, “Class and Gender in the Making of Urban Toryism, 1880–1914,” English Historical Review 108 (1993): 645–48Google Scholar.
122 Hobson, J. A., Traffic in Treason: A Study of Political Parties (London, 1914), pp. 53–54Google Scholar. Hobson was one of a growing number of progressives, disillusioned with the Liberals and concerned about the future of peaceful social and political reform, who had begun to look to Labour.
123 Winter, J. M. and Joslin, D. M., eds., R. H. Tawney's Commonplace Book (Cambridge, 1972), p. 47Google Scholar.
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