"Violence to the Lieges"

"Violence to the Lieges"

John McGovern, a Laborite M. P. who was suspended from the House of Commons in July because he refused to leave the Chamber until forcibly ejected (TIME, July 13), attempted to lead a parade of jobless dole-drawers through the streets of Glasgow last week. Police inspectors were waiting for him, told him that he could not march. The crowd of sullen workmen in grimy caps grew & grew. There were angry murmurs. Suddenly riot flared. Mobsters smashed store windows and began looting. Brickbats, cobblestones, beer bottles whanged through the air. Mounted police clattered down the High Street swinging their truncheons. John McGovern was dragged off to jail, charged with "threatening violence to the lieges and committing a breach of the peace."

But Glasgow was not calmed that easily. Looting and rioting continued intermittently for three days. Scotch reporters gloomily wired that a simple impulse to snatch and steal, rather than any motive of politics or protest seemed to inflame the mob. At the Gallowgate, where the famous Battle of the Butts occurred in 1544, heads were bloodied. Scots fought with sticks and bottles while their gudewives cheered them on from the upper stones, threw down broken furniture, flower pots, and in one case a large tin trunk on the heads of the hard-pressed constabulary. One gigantic battler kept six constables busy sitting on his head, chest, arms and legs in the station house. Mr. McGovern, M. P., limped into police court complaining bitterly that some policeman had given way to his feelings and booted him violently on the fundament, causing a painful bruise at the base of his spine.

Glasgow was not the only scene of disorder: menacing mobs rioted in Dundee, Salford, London.

Hannington. In his little Bloomsbury office last week sat one Wal Hannington, organizer of the National Unemployed Workers' Movement, who claimed credit for fomenting these, the most serious British riots since 1921. Communist Wal Hannington, frank proponent of violence, is a hard-muscled, soft-spoken young man who dresses extremely neatly, wears tortoise shell glasses and serves tea to teatime visitors. Without hesitation he explained how some of last week's British riots were organized by his scouts (not Boy Scouts) scrawling directions on the sidewalks, how the N. U. W. M. fooled the police by starting false mass meetings at the opposite end of towns from the scene of intended ruckus.

London police took Wal Hannington at his word, arrested him for "inciting demonstrations." Quietly a judge clapped him for six months into Wormwood Scrubbs Jail. Nervous, the London Press achieved a remarkable conspiracy of silence, omitted all mention of Communist Hannington.

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