‘I’ve never seen the place look so bare.’
Headless corpses were among the broken bodies littering the streets. Men and women, some on fire, ran screaming in terror while others scuttled out of the town, abandoning their homes and fleeing for the safety of the moors.
THIS HAPPENED NOT in some unfortunate town on the Western Front as it was shelled by heavy artillery but in Ashton-under-Lyne, on the edge of Manchester.
Manchester’s greatest industrial disaster took place on 13 June when an explosion at the Hooley Hill Rubber and Chemical Works killed forty-one and injured hundreds. The factory was producing TNT for the government. The explosion and subsequent fires destroyed two thousand homes.
The disaster began with a fire in the William Street section of the factory which spread and led to an explosion which shook buildings three miles away, demolishing over one hundred nearby cottages, workshops and other structures. In the words of one local newspaper, the factory itself was ‘blown to atoms’. Two nearby gasometers caught fire and rumours of a second explosion caused panic as hundreds fled for the open country of Ashton Moss, carrying what they could of their belongings. Of the 150 workers on the night shift, four miraculously survived injury. Many of those in hospital remained gravely injured and three died almost immediately.
Separated from the factory by a canal, the Bridge End Mill caught fire and burnt to the ground, as did Messrs Clayton, hay and straw merchant, almost a mile away. Hardly a pane of glass in the town survived and the damage to local cotton mills meant that hundreds of workers were made idle. The force of the explosion was such that a railway worker mending the track nearby was decapitated.
There were plenty consumed by ghoulish curiosity and in the following days thousands poured into the town to witness the extent of the devastation. A relief fund was immediately launched and raised £1,900 within five days of the disaster.
Perhaps more than any other single incident, the explosion impressed on the city the extent to which the war had come to dominate every facet of life. It was now all-pervasive. Many diarists testify that even in sleep it was impossible to escape it. The war was enveloping everything, turning the city in on itself.
Even temporary physical escape was becoming impossible. The number of passenger trains was shrinking and those that remained were much slower; many stations were closed; luggage was restricted and fares increased by fifty per cent. Unsurprisingly, travellers reported appalling conditions, in which sixteen people were crammed into a carriage intended for six and coaches meant to carry 600 packed to bursting with over a 1,000 sweating commuters. On the first Sunday of the year those who had used some of the limited services to get out into the countryside were forced to walk long distances home when several trains failed to materialise.
In March the number of suburban trains was again reduced and late evening services ended. The situation for Easter holiday makers, hoping to get away for one of the coldest Easters on record, was worse than ever. Higher fares and fewer trains were bad enough, but new regulations meant that tickets could be bought only on the day of travel from the railway ticket office and were limited by the reduced space available. North easterly gales deterred football fans from attending games. The weather was so inclement that the customary Whit processions and children’s outings were cancelled.
Fewer were taking solace in drink: from 9,053 arrests for alcohol-related offences in 1913, the figure fell to 3,052 in 1916. The reason is not hard to find: the opportunities to drink were continuing to shrink. The Food Controller announced that from 1 April beer production would fall by a further thirty per cent, thus reducing it to half the prewar level. This would, he assured irate drinkers, make available huge quantities of barley, sugar and cattle food.
The Manchester brewers were further beleaguered by the activities of the temperance lobby and felt compelled to strike back. In March they launched a massive advertising campaign and, like their opponents, latched onto the food issue, claiming that beer is not only a food but also helps with shortages as ‘it makes solid food more easily assimilated and so less of it is needed for nutrition’. Yet, later in the month, there was widespread consternation in the city’s pubs: the vexed drinker had now to contend with a scarcity of beer and consequent price rises.
By July licensees felt that concerted action against creeping state control was essential. They met in enormous numbers at Houldsworth Hall and asserted their opposition to government control. Yet their worst fears were realised when the Food Controller instructed brewers to reduce the price of a pint to no more than 4d or 5d depending on its alcoholic content. One reason for this directive was to attract people away from spirits, the sale of which had greatly increased since the start of the war and which the authorities deemed more damaging than beer to health and war production.
Together with the fall in drunkenness there was a parallel fall in crime generally, though a major exception was bigamy. But for an excellent war record Henry Coghill would have received a more severe sentence than eighteen months imprisonment when he was convicted at the Spring Assizes of marrying bigamously; not once, but twice. Sarah Marron, a rag sorter, took advantage of her husband’s service at the front to enter into a bigamous marriage. She received only three months.
Bigamists were still to the fore when the Winter Assizes opened in November: the twenty charged with the offence made up almost half the total number of cases. Most were soldiers or the wives of soldiers. What appalled Mr Justice Shearman was that several bigamists were motivated not by unwise love but by the desire to claim additional army separation allowance.
Those women who were properly entitled to the separation allowance were finding that rising food prices were continuing to erode its value. The government feared that lack of food threatened civilian morale more than anything else, which is why it intervened to fix the price of milk. However, some of the means by which the Food Controller sought to avoid shortages served only to antagonise many. For instance, in February he told the British people, ‘Economy is not only a patriotic duty but a necessity’. He went on to remind heads of households that they should limit their weekly purchases so that each member of the family ate no more than 4Ib of bread, 2¼lb of meat and ¾ Ib of sugar. One woman a local paper interviewed in a butcher’s was buying her weekly ration of 3Ib of meat for herself and eight children. She was indignant that people who for a long time had lived largely on bread and margarine were now being asked to eat even less. Few people, she said, had been able to get ¾ lb of sugar for several months and many people had been without any for far longer.
Complaints about bread were now a staple of everyday conversation and reached a peak of discontent during the summer. It was not simply less palatable than previously – many claimed it was also less nourishing. Millers were allowed to put into flour up to ten per cent of ingredients other than wheat. The variation in taste – one week passable, the next inedible – was also a cause of complaint. From early September the quality did improve slightly as the government allowed millers to use low-grade Manitoba wheat in place of maize. By then, however, white bread had disappeared from the shops.
With German U-boats trying to sink every cargo ship bound for Britain, food supplies were being choked off and in 1917 fear of starvation came to underpin every other concern. In 1914 Britain imported two-thirds of calories consumed and by April 1917 there were no more than a couple of weeks’ food supplies left.
The poor suffered most, as the bread, which was such an essential part of their diet, depended on imported wheat. For such people, meat of any type was a luxury and hunger now became an unremarked part of everyday life.
More than anything else it was with regard to food that working class people felt they were being treated unfairly and that others were not shouldering their fair share of the burden. It was a major factor contributing to an ‘us and them’ attitude, as it was widely believed that shops in middle-class areas were well stocked and that it was only in poor areas that people queued for their food. Many middle class families retained their domestic help – as late as 1917 there were still 1,250,000 British women in service – the chief advantage of which was having someone to queue for food.
To make up for the food that was ending up at the bottom of the Atlantic, the city authorities made enormous efforts to encourage Mancunians to grow their own. In January the Manchester Foodstuffs Special Committee announced that it was planting an additional 290 acres of potatoes and oats. In late January it announced a series of lectures on rearing poultry according to the ‘intensive system’. Neither strategy was advanced by the prolonged cold weather, making it the coldest January for many years. On the night of 30 January the temperature was 20.4 degrees Fahrenheit, or 11 degrees of frost. The snow and fog continued into early February. An epidemic of frozen pipes struck the city on 5 February, when the temperature fell to a record low for the city centre, 11 degrees Fahrenheit. The extreme cold took its toll on an exhausted and undernourished population: almost three hundred tram conductors and drivers were absent through illness on a single day. As late as 9 March there were successive evenings when there were 13 degrees of frost.
By the middle of February people were speaking of a ‘potato famine’ in Manchester and once more the suppliers were blamed for holding back stocks in order to raise prices. Within a few days the threat of government intervention seemed to have alleviated the problem, as traders in Smithfield Market reported more potatoes were available. But at the end of March even hospitals could not get the potatoes they needed and they were virtually impossible to find in poor areas. One greengrocer on Stretford Road, who had a good supply, rationed them to a maximum of 4Ib per customer, only to find that people from all over the area were drawn by the news; he soon had a queue 250 yards long.
The sugar problem was getting worse too. It was almost impossible to find a grocer prepared to sell other than to good customers spending a substantial amount. In the poor areas of the city, such as Ancoats and Hulme, it was necessary to spend at least 1/6d in order to get two ounces of sugar which cost a penny. Poor people were therefore paying 8d for a pound for sugar, which had cost 2d before the war. This particular shortage was regarded by many as a major reason for much of the sickness which was common among children in poor areas. One lady social worker remarked that ‘the children of the poorer districts of Manchester are much more anaemic and debilitated than they were in peace time. It is obvious that they are not getting the proper amount of food.’ The infant mortality figures, which show an increase in some of the poorer areas, support these opinions. One doctor stated that ‘there is no doubt that there is much suffering and sickness among children because of their poor food’.
By the end of February the potato shortage was still a problem and several of the Smithfield traders specialising in chip potatoes had gone out of business. There was an embargo on the import of Irish potatoes and this made matters worse and increased public annoyance, as rumours were circulating to the effects that enormous stocks of Irish potatoes were being unnecessarily delayed by the Department of Agriculture.
In early March the courts cracked down on potato dealers, who were among the most unpopular men in the city. Three were fined £2 and three £5 for charging excessive prices. By the end of the month merchants had virtually no potatoes to sell at any price. One housewife who had five soldiers billeted on her was able to obtain only 5Ib a week.
It’s hardly surprising that by the beginning of March the Manchester Corporation Foodstuffs Committee had received 500 applications for allotments. By the end of the summer 3,000 Corporation plots were under cultivation and the authorities were congratulating the novice growers on how well the city had risen to the challenge. Some councillors – on the basis of what evidence is not clear – claimed that Manchester’s response was superior to that of any other city. Their highest praise was for the allotments created on Princess Road on former football fields, on Sunderland Street in Harphurhey and on French Barn Street. Many gardeners’ huts on Princess Road were curtained, with interiors as good as any well-maintained home. The Sunderland Street allotments were on ground that had once been a cinder tip and one of the most unsightly spots in the entire city. The transformation wrought in these places inspired many working men to become expert growers in a short time.
Expert or not, there was little anyone could do about the weather. August 1917 was one of the wettest the city had ever experienced: it rained on twenty-six days. By September it was still raining and the corn crop was threatened.
In September the Princess Road allotment holders staged a show to encourage more people to grow their own vegetables. The president of the Moss Side Allotment Holders’ Society, Mr Matthewson Watson, boasted that the area had more allotments than anywhere in Britain; they produced giant marrows, carrots, turnips and every vegetable imaginable, yet the familiar potato remained the pride of the show.
Many of those who were unable to grow their own blamed the farmers for shortages, claiming that they found it more profitable to sell their stock directly to restaurants and retailers prepared to pay a premium. Others blamed hoarders, while the government put the onus on the public to exercise voluntary restraint. Government research showed that the vast majority of the city’s families did their best to conform to government requests. For the poor, the very idea of restraint was nonsense, as one diarist remembers that bread and ‘scrape’ was his family’s standard breakfast, while potatoes and bread – perhaps with some dripping – was usually their main meal. Though many retailers dreaded the prospect of rationing, Mr James Kendall of the Manchester, Salford and District Grocers’ Association, saw no alternative and believed that it ‘is what is wanted to make people understand the necessity of some sacrifice’. But, he stressed, no scheme, not even rationing, would work if the government did not solve the supply problem. Already it was commonplace for shops to run out of basic food items.
Those who had taken to growing their own food were continually hampered by the bad weather. In the early days of April the city was hit by blizzards, four inches of snow and 10 degrees of frost. Local dignitaries were pushing the new Food Economy Campaign Handbook and reminding people that ‘a victory in the present terrible struggle now depends upon our women’.
In May bread again became the focus of concerns. By this time maize, barley and rice were being used to supplement wheat and the resultant colour, texture and taste were to the liking of few. One housewife complained that it was often inedible and was ‘very dark, heavy and tasted of yeast’. Later various amounts of potato were added, which only increased complaints about the ‘war loaf’ or ‘black loaf’, which became progressively more spongy and malodorous. The advantage of this for underfed children was that they waited outside factories at closing time and begged the workers to give them the remains of uneaten lunches.
In May it was the soaring price of meat that was the major cause of complaint. In a single week the price of mutton increased by 4d a pound and chops reached the outrageous price of 2/- a pound. The bad weather, apparently, had slowed the growth of sheep and many were not yet ready for slaughter. Some, of course, were inclined to blame the butchers, who claimed that they too were suffering and that many of them were being forced out of business, having actually lost money during 1916. Local restrictions reduced supplies to hotels and restaurants to seventy-five per cent of their needs and by September it was clear that control orders were having very little effect on prices, which continued to rise as many retailers simply ignored them.
On 17 October papers reported that meat stocks in the city were sufficient for no more than two days.
Towards the end of the year the steady trickle of letters to the newspapers complaining of food profiteers exploiting the public became a torrent. The city’s Director of Food Economy, Mr Yapp, came in for a great deal of irate criticism when he admonished the public for eating too much and exhorted manual labourers to eat no more than eight pounds of bread and two pounds of meat a week. Incensed housewives berated his ignorance of the realities of the food situation, complaining that no working man could afford that amount of meat. In addition, the price of fish was so high that it was no longer a practical alternative for those who could not afford meat.
The length of queues for food remained a major source of annoyance. By December it was extremely difficult to obtain meat and queues for tea and margarine were long. This was a cause of great hardship for the poor and support for rationing was now overwhelming. It finally arrived with the announcement on Christmas Eve that it was to be administered by the Local Food Control Committee, which was to meet immediately to decide how best to operate the scheme.
But food was not the only necessity in short supply. Though working class people of all ages were dependent on second hand clothes, increases in the price of new garments inevitably affected them too. The ubiquitous pre-war three guinea suit, so beloved of the middle class, disappeared, as such a suit now cost a minimum of £4. Suit material was in short supply and many tailors had great difficulty replenishing stocks. In 1917 the Garment Workers’ Union and the Middleman’s Society, whose members were notoriously poorly paid, demanded an increase on the price paid for making up garments. The bosses resisted on the grounds that the civilian market was shrinking and the shortage of materials was already forcing up prices.
The problem of rising rents surfaced in August 1917. Despite the Rents Restriction Act of 1915 – which decreed that the standard rent was that paid at the outbreak of war and that any increases had to be justified in terms of structural alterations, increased property taxes or water charges – many landlords had tried to take advantage of the shortage of accommodation to increase rents. In August many tenants, organised in the Local Tenants’ Defence Association, refused to pay increases and in many cases actually secured the return of increases already paid. One local newspaper pointed out that according to the Act, the largest valid increase since 1914 was 2½d a week in north Manchester and that there was no justification for any increase in the south of the city.
As for the few luxuries left to the poor, the Budget of May did nothing to help them. Further taxes on entertainment and tobacco put 4d on the price of a shilling music hall ticket and a penny on a pack of ten cigarettes. All these factors put more pressure on wages and ensured that the demand for pay rises would continue.
Industrial relations continued to deteriorate and 1917 was the worst year for strikes since the war began. One factor was the introduction of conscription. Other factors were dilution – the use of unskilled workers to perform tasks previously the preserve of craftsmen – the shrinking of wage differentials, food prices, the general rise in the cost of living and fuel discontent.
In a continuing wages dispute, the spinners rejected an offer of ten per cent, while on 1 April the engineers received an additional 5/- a week bonus. In May 30,000 engineers in south Lancashire went on strike because the Munitions Department continued to insist that the unskilled should be allowed to perform tasks traditionally the preserve of craftsmen. In July the cotton spinners demanded a thirty per cent rise. But the problems affecting the cotton industry were more complex. Shortage of raw cotton led, in September, to the Cotton Control Board imposing production restrictions and employers’ levies to alleviate the suffering of those put out of work. The system was initially planned to run for three months, by which time it was hoped supplies would improve; but by October there was widespread unemployment in the cotton industry.
At the end of March the city’s carters threatened to strike. In May, 600 employees of the Co-Operative Wholesale Society in Eccles went on strike. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers and Allied Trades, whose members had been on strike for a week, held their conference in Manchester and voted to return to work. The employers exacerbated the situation by issuing a statement claiming that all those who failed to return were betraying the men at the front. In fact, only fifty per cent returned as agreed, the rest drifting back piecemeal.
The disgruntlement among engineers was in part political. As on Clydeside, the shop stewards’ committees had become a major force in the industry and often operated in open opposition to the union’s executive committees, many of which had lost the allegiance of their members as it was widely felt that they had not addressed workers’ grievances. The problem of the dilution of labour was a festering grievance, poisoning relations. Added to this was the abolition of the trade card system, which gave those working in key industries exemption from military service. The new system of exempted professions applied to fewer workers.
On Monday 18 May the government took a risky decision: police arrested the engineers’ leaders in Manchester and whisked them to London, where they were joined by their colleagues who had been arrested in Sheffield and the capital. The key figures from Manchester were George Peat, of Abbey Hey Lane, Gorton and P.H. Kealey, of Byer Street, Gorton, who were charged with ‘impeding the supply of weapons’. The reaction of the union executive committee was to order its members to return to work while negotiations continued through the established channels. The Manchester men responded by returning in large numbers, though it seems that this was in no small part due to the influence of the shop stewards who spoke to the men at a mass meeting and recommended a resumption of work. It seems the engineers now expected the arrested men to be released. This did not occur and when instead they were brought before Bow Street magistrates, the Attorney General stated that all had signed an undertaking to abide by an agreement between the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and the government. The charges were then withdrawn, though with a warning that those involved in further disruption would henceforward be prosecuted. Though the Liverpool engineers remained on strike, a major confrontation in Manchester had been avoided.
On 8 August Manchester’s dockers refused to work with non-union men -- specifically two men who refused to join the union. The use of non-union labour had been a festering sore for years. Mr Blundell, the union spokesman, asserted that despite this action the dockers had proved themselves ‘as loyal and as patriotic as any other class of workmen’.
Perhaps the most incendiary strike of all was that of the city tram workers, who on 26 June and in defiance of their union’s recommendation, initiated a work to rule. The public, however, was less than sympathetic and intensely annoyed by the inconvenience caused. It was not long before annoyance turned to rage. In Gorton, men leaving a munitions factory after work overpowered the crew of a tram and drove it off. There were many altercations between staff and travellers, often arising from the refusal of travellers to accept that trams were full when so informed by female conductors. This frequently led to a standoff: staff refused to move the tram because it was over full while passengers refuse to get off. In the words of one account, ‘for many hours altercations continued and in many cases all restraint of temper and language was absent. In many of the resulting disputes blows were exchanged.’ In other cases, drivers refused to stop at designated stops, leaving fuming commuters shaking their fists in impotent rage.
On the night of 4 July the tram workers held a midnight meeting at which they rejected the exhortations of their union leaders to resume normal working and instead voted to go on strike the following night unless the Tramways Committee increased its previous offer of 2/6 a week rise. Such a stoppage threatened a calamitous effect on every aspect of industrial production, especially munitions.
The intensity of public feeling was made clear at the City Police Court on 6 July, when Mary Gaskell of Swinton was fined 10/- and 10/6 advocate’s fee for assaulting Sarah Jane Yates, a tram guard. She was also fined an additional 5/6 for using offensive language. In her defence Mrs Gaskell said she had been driven to it by the flirtatious manner in which the guard had spoken to her husband. At the same hearing a police superintendent stood accused of assaulting another female guard. That case was dismissed.
At this stage, just as an all-out strike was imminent, the Labour Ministry announced that a tram strike was illegal and those involved would be arrested under the Munitions of War Act. The Permanent Secretary to the Ministry, Sir David Shakleton, undertook to arbitrate and promised a decision within fourteen days. Despite a ballot in favour of strike action, normal working was resumed. Eventually, on 11 July, the tram workers were given a bonus of 2/6. This was far below their expectations but they felt that, having given their word to accept arbitration, they were honour bound to remain at work.
The parlous state of industrial relations now threatened the entire war effort. At the end of July Judge Parry was in Manchester, conducting an inquiry into the situation. Mr Purcell, chairman of the Trades Council, made a statement with which no one could disagree: prices had been locked into an upward trajectory for many years and the impact of the war meant workers were finding it extremely difficult to feed their families. On top of this fundamental problem, numerous other complaints were overlaid: the restrictions on alcohol, the industrial fatigue that inevitably arises when workers are working over the entire weekend as well as long hours during the week, and the demoralising effects of increasing pressure to work faster.
Conditions in the factories were also causing a generalised sense of grievance: the imposition of quasi-judicial hearings to maintain discipline, the refusal of the management to address complaints, the government’s continued insistence on the dilution of skilled labour, the frequent refusal of employers to issue leaving certificates and the appointment of arbiters to industrial disputes who lacked understanding of the issues involved, all antagonised workers. The dilution issue was an continuing cause of conflict between workers and management. The unions had acceded to it in order to increase arms production. However, many companies also continued with commercial work and sought to introduce it there as well. As a consequence of this the position of militants in the industry was strengthened, as many men felt that bosses were seeking to undermine hard earned working agreements on which their status as skilled workers depended.
The food problem was also having a major impact on industrial relations. At the most generous estimate the wages of manual workers had increased by fifty per cent since the outbreak of war while food prices had risen by 105 per cent. All the restrictions on food in reality applied only to the poor: those with money could still obtain anything they wanted. Unfair distribution of essentials was corroding morale and fostering pervasive disgruntlement.
Meanwhile, military developments were mixed. News in early April that the USA had joined the Allies gave the city a great boost. Local papers reported that the American government planned to send its entire force to bolster the Western Front. In tribute to the new allies, the Town Hall flew the American flag on 4 July. The more perceptive, however, realised that with the Russian collapse in November, the entire strength of the German army could now be brought to bear on the Western Front.
The same month the story that the Germans were operating a corpse factory in which the bodies of soldiers were rendered down for their fat and used for munitions and animal feed appeared in the local newspapers. The Manchester papers were particularly keen on stories about the Kaiser’s poor health. In March he was, reportedly, dying of Bright’s disease while going insane.
War weariness showed itself in antagonism to all those perceived as shirking their duty in the national cause. Foremost among these were the Irish. The rising of 1916 led to a great deal of anti-Irish antagonism, a sentiment which, together with its concomitant anti-Catholic bigotry, was prevalent in certain quarters of the city. In July workers at a large chemical plant refused to work with Irishmen, who consequently were given a week’s notice and told to return home. As the men, about 200 in total, entrained for Dublin at Exchange Station, they were met by a hostile crowd waving flags and singing patriotic songs. The police attended in great numbers as the crowd became increasingly vociferous. Many of the Irishmen were of military age but all refused to join up and proclaimed their support for the IRA.
Similarly, pacifists, regarded as cowards who were betraying the men at the front, continued as the objects of popular odium. The Milton House Committee refused to allow the Hall to be used for a meeting of the Soldiers’ and Workmen’s Council, which was in fact a pacifist organization. In order to make the organisation’s nature clear to all, the Manchester and Salford Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Federation posted a resolution repudiating the Council.
On 11 August pacifists from Lancashire, Cheshire and North Wales met at Stockport Labour Church, Hillgate. The principal speakers were Mr W.C. Anderson MP and Mr Arthur Williams of the Transport Workers. Admission was by invitation only but news of the event leaked out and the delegates were met by members of the British Workers’ League, who had recently broken up a similar meeting in Stephenson Square. On this occasion ‘Traitors’ Peace Meeting’ was scrawled on the pavement in large letters. Soon a large crowd gathered at the entrance where Mr J.H. Pendlebury, of the British Workers’ League, mounted a chair and proceeded to denounce all pacifists as cowards and traitors. Plain clothes police interfered only when a butcher’s cart found the crowd was blocking the road. Mr Pendlebury obligingly moved his chair.
On 8 September the police banned another pacifist demonstration planned for Stephenson Square. The organizers were ‘well known women social and political workers’, including Mrs Philip Snowden – the wife of a leading Labour politician – and Mrs Margaret Ashton. An enormous crowd gathered for the event but it soon became clear that most were there with the intention of disrupting the meeting, including many wounded soldiers who were determined to hold an anti-pacifist protest. As the meeting was about to start it became clear that there was going to be trouble and Superintendent Gilmour, at the head of a large body of police, cancelled proceedings. The police were cheered but the crowd’s attitude towards the organizers was such that they decided to take refuge in Newton Street police station.