Knives & Razors v. "Rough Hands"

White and unemployed Englishmen got up before dawn at North Shields last week, strode like burly ghosts down the long black wharf of the Lyle Line, massed in truculent formation before the door of a shanty where seamen would be signed on for the dingy S. S. Cape Verde.

Englishmen desperately needed the jobs, and these particular 500 Englishmen were grimly resolved to prevent the Lyle Line from signing on another crew of Negroes.

Came the dawn and soon afterward the Negroes, strapping, ink-black Somalis. They shouldered up to the English phalanx, which did not budge. Eye to eye whites and blacks glared, job-hungry.

As a matter of course the Somalis prepared for knife play. Retiring down the pier, pretending to disperse, they telephoned to blackamoors across the Tyne who presently swarmed over in ferryboats. Only English newspapermen covered what next happened, and they conceived it their duty to be brief and vague. All despatches from the scene were studiously played down by British editors. Example: "Several Englishmen and two Somalis were gravely injured by knives and razors. . . . The whole police force of North Shields became engaged and was forced to charge time and again before quiet was restored. Even then the police were able with much difficulty to prevent the lynching of several Somalis who had fallen among rough hands."

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