Bloody Sunday 1887

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Bloody Sunday (1887)
Bloody Sunday was an event which took place in London, England on 13 November 1887, when a crowd of
marchers protesting about unemployment and the Irish Coercion Acts, as well as demanding the release of MP
William O'Brien, clashed with the Metropolitan Police. The demonstration was organised by the Social Democratic
Federation and the Irish National League. Violent clashes took place between the police and demonstrators, many
"armed with iron bars, knives, pokers and gas pipes". A contemporary report noted that 400 were arrested and 75
people were badly injured, including many police, two policemen being stabbed and one protester bayonetted.
William O'Brien (2 October 1852 – 25 February 1928)

was an Irish nationalist, journalist, agrarian agitator,
social revolutionary, politician, party leader,
newspaper publisher, author and Member of
Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. He was
particularly associated with the campaigns for land
reform in Ireland during the late 19th and early 20th
centuries as well as his conciliatory approach to
attaining Irish Home Rule.
Gladstone's espousal of the cause of Irish home rule had split the Liberal Party and made it easy for
the Conservatives to gain a majority in the House of Commons. The period from 1885 to 1906 was one
of Tory dominance, with short intermissions. Coercion Acts were the answer of British governments
perturbed by rural unrest in Ireland, and they involved various degrees of suspension of civil rights.
Although one purpose of the 13 November demonstration was to protest about the handling of the
Irish situation by the Conservative government of Lord Salisbury, it had a much wider context.
William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS 29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a
British statesman and Liberal Party politician. In a career lasting over 60 years,
he was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for 12 years, spread over four
non-consecutive terms (the most of any British prime minister) beginning in
1868 and ending in 1894. He also was Chancellor of the Exchequer four times,
for over 12 years. Apart from 1845 to 1847, he was a Member of Parliament
(MP) from 1832 to 1895 and represented a total of five constituencies.
Gladstone was born in Liverpool to Scottish parents. In 1868, Gladstone
became prime minister for the first time.
Dorset Street, originally known as
Datchet Street, was a street in
Spitalfields, East London, once
situated at the heart of the area's
rookery. By repute it was "the worst
street in London", and it was the
scene of the brutal murder of Mary
Jane Kelly by Jack the Ripper on 9
November 1888. The murder was
committed at Kelly's lodgings which
were situated at No. 13, Miller's
Court, entered from a passageway
between 26 and 27, Dorset Street.
The Long Depression, starting in 1873 and lasting almost to the end of the century, created difficult
social conditions in Britain—similar to the economic problems that drove rural agitation in Ireland.
Falling food prices created rural unemployment, which resulted in both emigration and internal
migration. Workers moved to the towns and cities in thousands, eroding employment, wages and
working conditions. By November 1887, unemployed workers' demonstrations from the East End of
London had been building up for more than two years. There had already been clashes with the police
and with the members of upper class clubs. Trafalgar Square was seen symbolically as the point at
which the working-class East End met the upper-class West End of London, a focus of class struggle
and an obvious flashpoint.
This attracted the attention of the small but growing socialist movement – the Marxists of both the
Social Democratic Federation (SDF) and Socialist League, and the reformist socialists of the Fabian
Society. Police and government attempts to suppress or divert the demonstrations also brought in
the radical wing of the Liberal Party and free speech activists from the National Secular Society.
The working class in British cities contained many people of Irish birth or origin. London, like
industrial areas of northern England and western Scotland, had a large Irish working class,
concentrated in the East End, where it rubbed shoulders with increasing numbers of Jews from
Eastern Europe.
Some 30,000 people, "mostly
respectable spectators",
encircled Trafalgar Square as
at least 10,000 protesters
marched in from several
different directions, led by
(among others) Elizabeth
Reynolds, John Burns, William
Morris, Annie Besant and
Robert Cunninghame-Graham,
who were primarily leaders of
the Social Democratic
Federation. Also marching
were the Fabian playwright
George Bernard Shaw, Eleanor
Marx, and Charlotte Wilson.
Trafalgar
Square
There were approximately 14,000 police officers for 5.5 million Londoners. Two thousand police and
400 troops were deployed to halt the demonstration. Burns and Cunninghame-Graham were arrested
and imprisoned for six weeks. Annie Besant, who was a Marxist, Fabian and secularist, spoke at the
rally and offered herself for arrest, but the police declined to do so. Of the 400 arrested, 50 were
detained in custody.
At some point James Compton Merryweather, head of the firm Merryweather & Sons, and a
Conservative supporter, offered to use a 400-gallons-per-minute steam fire engine as a water cannon
of the day to clear the rioters from Trafalgar Square. However the Commissioner of the Metropolitan
Police, Sir Charles Warren, declined.
In the fighting, many rioters were injured by police truncheons and under the hooves of police horses.
The British Army dispatched a force of 400 men, consisting of both infantry and cavalry. Although the
infantry were marched into position with bayonets fixed, they were not ordered to open fire and the
cavalry were not ordered to draw their swords. An Australian newspaper, of conservative political
orientation, reported that the wounds received by the mob were less severe than those of the
constables.
Early-20th-century
police truncheons in
the Edinburgh Police
Centre Museum
The following Sunday, 20 November, saw another demonstration and more casualties. According to a
report in the partisan Socialist Review, among them was a young clerk named Alfred Linnell, who was
run down by a police horse, dying in hospital a fortnight later from complications of a shattered thigh.
The funeral of Linnell on 18 December provided another focus for the unemployed and Irish
movements. William Morris, leader of the Socialist League, gave the main speech and "advocated a
holy war to prevent London from being turned into a huge prison". A smaller but similar event marked
the burial of another of those killed, W. B. Curner, which took place in January. The release of those
imprisoned was celebrated on 20 February 1888, with a large public meeting. Henry Hyndman, leader
of the SDF, violently denounced the Liberal Party and the Radical MPs who were present.
Henry Mayers Hyndman 7 March 1842 – 22 November
1921) was an English writer, politician and socialist.
Originally a conservative, he was converted to socialism

by Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto and launched
Britain's first socialist political party, the Democratic
Federation, later known as the Social Democratic
Federation, in 1881.
Although this body attracted radicals such as William

Morris and George Lansbury, Hyndman was generally
disliked as an authoritarian who could not unite his party.
Nonetheless, Hyndman was the first author to popularise
Marx's works in English.
Hyndman was an antisemite, voicing antisemitic opinions

with regard to the Second Boer War and blaming "Jewish
bankers" and "imperialist Judaism" as the cause of the
conflict.

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L

William O'Brien (2 October 1852 – 25 February 1928)

Originally a conservative, he was converted to socialism

Although this body attracted radicals such as William

Hyndman was an antisemite, voicing antisemitic opinions

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