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‘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).
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