Love on the Dole

by Walter Greenwood

  By the wall of the gas works rested a number of crudely hand-painted placards fixed to flimsy sticks, and a large black, double-poled banner bearing a slogan surmounted by a skull and crossbones. By its side was a big drum over which a diminutive, pugnacious individual mounted guard.

  The great pale sea of faces were turned to an improvised rostrum where a stocky, wire-haired fellow speaking in a strong Scots accent, passionately inveighed against the government and urged all to resist, by force if necessary, the threat to their standard of life. His words were greeted by a roar of approval, and, this much encouraged, he jabbed the air in the direction of the plain-clothes police, their size rendering them conspicuous, standing in the crowd. He condemned them as ‘traitors to their class’, as ‘enemies of the workers’, ‘servants of the boss class’. He concluded on a threatening note, glaring at the police. Then he stepped down and was lost in the crowd who applauded mightily.

  Ned Narkey, his magnificent physique set off to perfection in his new uniform, winked at his nearest companion in blue and muttered, out of the side of his mouth: ‘Ah hope t’ Christ the bastards start summat. Ah’ll. …’ He stopped and stared. A few beats on the big drum commanded silence for the next speaker.

  Larry Meath appeared on the rostrum, cleared his throat and surveyed the crowd as he wiped his moist brow with his handkerchief. He wished all this over so that he might return home to go to bed. This present indisposition, this severe cold, was a nuisance; it left him enervated. He had been foolish to come.

  Ned’s eyes narrowed; he strained his ears to catch what Larry said, inwardly cursing the noisy traffic and the bell-ringing errand boy cyclists who paused awhile to investigate what all this to-do was about.

  Larry began with a repudiation of the previous speaker; urged his audience to appreciate the preparations, in the way of attendant police, which had been made in anticipation of any disorderliness; reminded the crowd that the cause of their protest was of their own making; recalled the scares and the people’s response at the general election. A spasm of coughing interrupted him; he recovered and continued, urging the need of working-class organization. Again he was incapacitated. This time he stepped down, went over to the wall and rested a hand against it in support of himself as the cough racked him bathing him in perspiration.

  A finely featured young man with long hair took his place on the rostrum instantly winning the acclamation of the crowd by heaping invective upon all with whom he disassociated himself in the social scale.

  Harry, on the appearance of Larry, had pushed his way to the front and now stood by him with an expression of excitement on his face. Like most of the crowd his bewilderment and resentment had disappeared for the nonce in face of the imagined possibilities engendered by the speech-making. Each had taken courage in the presence of his neighbour; the protest, surely, in face of their numbers, must be effective. The very atmosphere tingled with expectancy.

  A man came up to Larry: Harry heard him say: ‘You’re in the deputation, aren’t you? There’s six of us. We’d better lead the march then we can go into the city hall without having to hunt for one another when we get there.’

  Larry nodded: ‘I wish we’d done. I feel as weak as a kitten

  This cold, I suppose.’

  The man looked at him, concerned: ‘Why don’t y’ clear off home? Ah’ll tell ‘m, y’ feel bad.’

  ‘No, I’ll be all right. What time’s the mayor expecting us?’

  ‘In about half an hour,’ the other answered, looking at his watch.

  ‘Hadn’t we better be forming the procession? It’s going to take us all our time to be there punctually. Which way do we go?’

  ‘Round by labour exchange, then round by Crosstree Lane ‘n’ Consort Road.’

  ‘We’ll not do it in half an hour,’ said Larry: ‘Still, form the ranks…. Who’s in charge?’

  The man nodded in the direction of the finely featured young man addressing the crowd.

  Larry frowned: ‘Hadn’t you better inform him of the time?’

  ‘Ah’ve told him once.’ He went to interrupt the speaker again who ignored him and continued speaking for another ten minutes. When he stepped down, hair in disarray, eyes burning with passion, Larry went up to him and said, with a touch of impatience: ‘D’y’ know what the time is? We’ll have to take a tram if we’re to keep the appointment’

  The organizer stared at Larry with a mixture of surprise and indignation: ‘Eh?’ he said, then added, warmly: They’ll wait our pleasure. We’re not kowtowing to them,’ with dilated nostrils and staring eyes. ‘We lead the procession. And if the arrangements don’t suit y’ can drop out’

  ‘All right all right,’ returned Larry, angrily: ‘You’re in charge. It won’t be my fault if they refuse to meet the delegation. They’ll not delay their business indefinitely.’

  ‘No business is more important than the starving proletariat,’ replied the organizer, as angry as Larry.

  ‘Oh, don’t talk so damn daft, man. Get something done, for God’s sake.’ He about faced, disgusted, recognized Harry, grabbed a placard and pushed it into his hand: ‘Here, Harry,’ he said, ‘Hold that up. Stand where you are,’ to the pugnacious drummer: ‘Some music, please.’ The man responded, setting himself in front of Harry and beating loudly upon the drum. Larry asked a number of his immediate neighbours to form themselves four deep behind Harry: they complied, obediently. The large, black double-poled banner was unfurled and set in front of the drummer preceded by a man carrying a red flag. The nucleus formed, the remainder followed automatically. Men detached themselves from the main body to form up behind those already in line.

  It happened so speedily that the organizer, momentarily, was at a loss; then, piqued, he found his voice and strode to Larry’s side, indignant at his assumption of control: ‘Here …’ he protested. Larry picked up a megaphone from the side of the rostrum, handed it to him and said: ‘You’ll want this to ask the crowd to assemble, won’t you? What do you want me to do next? Shall I distribute the remainder of the placards down the line?’ His request for orders pacified the organizer, who, with a grunt, nodded curtly, stepped on to the rostrum and bawled at the crowd through the megaphone.

  Buzz of voices, jostlings, pushings. Larry found himself overcome by a peculiar faintness. He went over to the wall, leaned against it, brain spinning, a sensation of utter uselessness in every member of his body. He closed his eyes: a cold sweat broke out all over him. By Jove, he’d never felt like this before in all his life. This was a severe cold, to be sure. Still, he soon would be free to return home to go to bed. Bed! To be there now. A couple of days in bed, with Sally to sit with him of an evening, he pretending to be an invalid so that she might indulge him with all due pampering.

  The pretty prospect revived him. He opened his eyes, mopped the perspiration from his face and shivered. He unbuttoned his coat and took in his belt a couple of holes. He felt warmer now.

  He gazed down the long, serpentine column of men. Most of them were betraying excessive self-consciousness; unmistakable signs, voluble speech, furtive, shamefaced glances toward the growing crowd of sightseers lining the pavements: bluff, noisy invitations to all to join in; attitudes consorting ill with the arbitrary imperiousness of their placarded demands: ‘Not a penny off the dole.’ ‘Hands off the people’s food.’ An inspector passed amongst the police giving instructions: press photographers appeared. Boys, come from nowhere, called the midday racing edition in shrill voices, darting in and out the crowd, pausing-by the blowsy women who rummaged in their plackets for their purses.

  The procession moved off preceded by a police inspector and four stalwart policemen. The remainder of the constables flanked the procession, a couple - one either side - every six yards or so. Grinning spectators, youths mostly, marched along the pavements whilst those in the ranks jeered at them for not falling behind. The jeers were taken up; many who walked the pavements were shamed into swelling the numbers in the roadway.

/>   Occasionally, the monotonous beat of the big drum was varied by the insistent clamour of a handbell; sometimes they were banged and rung in concert, their din attracting the attention of all within earshot.

  Quite unexpectedly the demonstrators received a shock and an ominous intimation.

  Their proposed route would have led them past the labour exchange, but, as the leader of the procession wheeled to the right towards a side street, the policemen in front about faced and formed a cordon.

  The column halted: drum and bell were silenced.

  The organizer stepped forward desirous of an explanation, receiving scant courtesy of the inspector, who, pointing his stick down the road and staring elsewhere than at the man to whom his remarks were addressed, said: ‘Keep straight on.’

  The organizer protested, indignantly.

  Larry touched him on the arm: ‘We’d better do as we’re told,’ he said: ‘It’s useless arguing with these men.’

  The finely featured young man ignored him. With blazing eyes he asked instructions of the demonstrators. Which were they to do, obey the police or follow out their original intention of marching past the labour exchange? A new spirit stung the marchers; it was as though they were set on their mettle; faces could be seen assuming expressions of defiant pugnacity. A confused murmuring grew; the front portion of the procession broke ranks and pressed forward in a body, eyeing the cordon threateningly. The police farther down the line behaved strategically, breaking up the column into several small portions, preventing further augmentation of the crowd blocking the roadway higher up.

  Pale, lips pursed, the organizer took the initiative in stepping forward and motioning to the crowd to break through the cordon. A handful of men made a rush; some broke through into the desert patch of street beyond where they stood staring foolishly at the policemen’s backs and at the rest of their companions who were being pushed back roughly.

  Larry, heart fluttering with apprehension, trembling with incredulity, faced a part of the crowd, held up his arms and enjoined them to re-form the ranks. Surly, muttering, casting baleful looks at the police, some obeyed. Hesitantly others followed. The procession was reformed. The police inspector ordered his men to the procession’s head. Ned Narkey spat on to the ground and grinned exultantly at Larry as he passed.

  The new spirit immediately manifested itself when the march continued. Down the long column and on the pavements the incident was passed on, explained and discussed excitedly. Those who had been concerned in the clash demeaned themselves with conscious pride; hostile glances were thrown policewards, and, in general, an air of animated expectancy pervaded the demonstrators. Somebody produced a mouth organ and commenced to play the ‘Red Flag’. Those unacquainted with the words la-la’d the tune.

  The crowds grew denser and denser the nearer the long column came to its destination, and, by the time the main thoroughfare leading to the city hall was reached, pavements and roads were a moving river of humanity, impassable, on the Manchester approach, to traffic. At each street corner a tributary of new arrivals immersed itself in the main river, most of them in the nature of curious spectators.

  Women pushing bassinettes or carrying their children; young unemployed men and women hurriedly pulling on their coats or setting caps and neckcloths straight, doubtless, having just rushed out of their homes; old men and women, doddering, roused out of their hovels in adjacent slumdom by the clamour. Shop windows, rows of them, used as grandstands by the shop assistants. Winged rumour had flown on in front, enlarging and exaggerating the story of the recent clash. Already, expectant crowds were blocking the pavements by the city hall, craning their necks and waiting as they would have had royalty been expected to pass.

  With the foretaste of constabulary intolerance in mind, Larry feared for the outcome of this demonstration. The crowd was become enormous.

  Two dozen yards or so away, drawn across the entrance to the city hall square, he saw a strong cordon of police. He turned to the organizer, puzzled: ‘I say,’ he said, ‘I understood that we were to be permitted to enter the square.’ The square, a not very large enclosure, facing the city hall and flanked either side by municipal show rooms, a bank and solicitors’ offices, was the meeting place of all interested in election results at the appropriate time; a rallying point and had been from time immemorial.

  The finely featured young man did not answer; he seemed to be as puzzled as Larry, who now was coughing violently as he walked. When the procession halted outside the square he was catching his breath with exhaustion. With the other five delegates he approached the cordon. He’d be glad to get inside the city hall to sit down. Perhaps he’d better excuse himself when the mayor had received them; better take a tramcar home and get to bed.

  A uniformed police official, resplendent in gold braid, met the six delegates: ‘Here,’ he cried, impatiently, ‘Get this crowd shifted and be bloody quick about it’

  ‘But - Here - I say …’ protested the organizer.

  The police official turned, signed to the four constables and the inspector who had headed the procession, turned his back on the delegation and faced his men in the square. Orders passed. Mounted police appeared at the trot, and, on a sudden, a swarm of plain-clothes men descended from nowhere and began to snatch the placards from the hands of the demonstrators, flinging the posters to the ground and trampling them underfoot. Amazed, incredulous, all who had witnessed the incident were shocked to inaction.

  A murmur rose, grew in volume to a roar of protest: men turned to expostulate with the plain-clothes men; the object of the march was forgotten instantly: arms gesticulated, eyes flashed angrily. The police advanced and began to push the crowd back; tempers, already short, snapped. The pugnacious individual in charge of the drum, provoked beyond endurance by the repeated pushings and digs of a policeman, and after almost losing his balance by an excessively vigorous push, threatened the policeman with one of his drumsticks. Instantly he was arrested, the drum removed, flopped on the ground to be rescued by somebody and taken away quickly.

  Traffic accumulated behind the surging crowd: lines of tramcars, motor-cars and lorries going to and coming from Manchester. Clanging of tram bells; hooting of motor horns; faces pressed against the glazing of the upper decks of the trams; Press men leaning out with cameras in their hands.

  With a rush, and as though in obedience to a command, a new force of police, truncheons drawn, charged the crowd.

  Harry, jostled this way and that, dodging blows, caught a glimpse of the finely featured young man set upon by a couple of constables, knocked down savagely, and frog-marched away by three hefty policemen.

  Narkey’s great bulk was conspicuous as he laid about him, right and left, recklessly indiscriminate. A woman, whom he struck across the bosom with his truncheon, screamed; her companions, shouting protest, cursed and spat at him; one of them, with an expression of intense savagery, reached forward and clawed Ned’s cheek, drawing blood. Harry cheered, excitedly, and, next moment, Harry saw Ned hustled away by a sudden rush of angry men who broke through to engage the police in a futile struggle.

  Fascinated, scared, Harry gaped at the spectacle of helmets rolling on the setts, truncheons descending on heads with sickening thuds; men going down and being dragged off, unceremoniously, to the cells.

  Then he gasped, flushed, and, on a sudden, raised his cupped hands to his mouth and bawled: ‘Larry! Larry! Luk out!’

  He saw Larry standing in the midst of the tussle, an expression of shocked bewilderment on his face. He saw a policeman’s hand fall on his collar, a truncheon strike thrice, twice on Larry’s back and once on his head. He went down on his knees, head drooping forward. A couple of constables took him under the armpits and pulled him towards the cells, his legs dragging behind him.

  Speechless, Harry stared for a moment. He gulped, made a dive for Larry’s hat, then, dazed, hysterical, brain a riot of confusion, he, hugging Larry’s crumpled hat, pushed his way into the crowd on the pavement an
d was lost in the surging masses.

  CHAPTER 11

  UPSET IN NORTH STREET

  GASPING for breath, a wild light in his staring eyes, Harry ran into North Street

  It was turned noon; the mills had loosed the operatives; he had expected to find the street quiet, had pictured himself dropping the bombshell of what he had witnessed and causing great commotion in the neighbourhood. To his surprise he found a crowd of neighbours congregated outside the home of Bill Simmons. A policeman was walking away.

  Harry fell into a walk as he passed the policeman whom he eyed furtively, his heart rising apprehensively to remember his guilt in having been one of the demonstrators.

  Helen and Sally detached themselves from the group of neighbours and came forward to meet him. Both wore expressions of anxiety. He licked his lips: ‘Have y’ heard, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye,’ said Sally: ‘Were you one of ‘em?’

  Harry nodded; then, blushing: ‘But they’d no right t’ do what they did!’

  Sally puckered her brows and regarded him interrogatively. Helen clutched his arm: ‘But you never stole any, did y’, Harry?’

  He stared at her, blankly: ‘Stole any? What y’ talkin’ about?’