‘The 1911 Liverpool General Transport Strike Revisited’

Lecture by Professor Sam Davies
The Refectory, St Nicholas’s Church, Chapel Street, Liverpool
Wednesday 23rd November at 2pm

Photograph is of part of the crowd on Bloody Sunday, 13 August 1911

In 1961 Harold Hikins addressed the Society on the 50th anniversary of the Liverpool General Transport Strike. Five decades later, on the centenary of the strike, Professor Davies will reconsider its historical significance. The causes, progress and key events of the strike have been analysed in some detail in previous literature. This literature focuses mainly on the leadership of the strike, both within individual unions and the Strike Committee, and on the response of employers and the state, not least because the available records inevitably push research in this direction. In this lecture Professor Davies will shift the attention to the ordinary rank-and-file citizens of Liverpool who were involved in the strike, not only the strikers who participated directly, but also those who were caught up in the accompanying civil disturbances – in the public demonstrations, picketing, rioting, and most notably the events of ‘Bloody Sunday’ on 13 August and the subsequent lethal use of firearms by the military in the following few days. The evidence is elusive and diffuse, but a close analysis of the local press coverage and visual images, along with lists of casualties treated in local hospitals, as well as reports of court proceedings such as prosecutions of rioters and inquests into fatalities, supplemented by census and birth/marriage/death data, can give some idea of who the individuals were who were involved in these events. This social history of the crowd will help to shed some light on what the motivations and reactions of these individuals were.

Sam Davies is Professor of History at Liverpool John Moores University. He is primarily a labour historian, and is the author of Liverpool Labour: Social and Political Influences on the Development of the Labour Party in Liverpool, 1900-1939, (1996), co-author of County Borough Elections in England and Wales, 1919-1938: A Comparative Analysis, (8 volumes, 1999, 2000, 2006 and following), and Dock Workers: International Explorations in Comparative Labour History, 1790-1970, (2000), and co-editor of Merseyside: Culture and Place (2011).