37? mu ftiO* 3Chb THE SEARCH FOR ORDER AND LIBERTY: THE BRITISH POLICE, THE SUFFRAGETTES, AND THE UNIONS, 1906-1912 DISSERTATION Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of North Texas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Kung Tang, B.A., M.A. Denton, Texas December, 1992 37? mu ftiO* 3Chb THE SEARCH FOR ORDER AND LIBERTY: THE BRITISH POLICE, THE SUFFRAGETTES, AND THE UNIONS, 1906-1912 DISSERTATION Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of North Texas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Kung Tang, B.A., M.A. Denton, Texas December, 1992 Tang, Kung, The Search for Order and Liberty: The British Police, the Suffragettes, and the Unions. 1906-1912. Doctor of Philosophy (History), December 1992, 280 pp., bibliography, 127 titles. From 1906 to 1912 the British police contended with the struggles of militant suffragettes and active unionists. In facing the disturbances associated with the suffragette movement and union mobilization, the police confronted the dual problems of maintaining the public order essential to the survival and welfare of the kingdom while at the same time assuring to individuals the liberty necessary for Britain's further progress. This dissertation studies those police activities in detail. Primary sources for this dissertation include Cabinet Office, Home Office, and Metropolitan Police Archives; Parliamentary Debates. Parliamentary Papers, and collections of British law reports; and manuscripts, including those of Herbert Henry Asquith, Arthur James Balfour, Herbert John Gladstone, Edward Richard Henry, David Lloyd George, and Reginald McKenna. The earlier chapters introduce the theme of the conflict between order and liberty and survey the origins and development of the police from 1829 to 1906. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 examine the confrontation between the police and the suffragettes from 1906 to 1912. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 study the police's difficult position in coping with strikes from 1906 to 1912. In conclusion, the author suggests that the British police constituted a relatively democratic institution. Under the control of Parliament, the rule of law, and the direction of the Home Office, the police fulfilled their responsibility of assuring public order at the cost of a minimum of lives and injuries, while they generally protected various kinds of individual liberty. Although they did not manage the suffragette movement as impartially as they dealt with the unions' strike mobilization during the years from 1906 to 1912, the British police served, under the substantial control of the Liberal Government, positively to balance the conflict between order and liberty. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION II. THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE BRITISH POLICE AS A DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTION, 1829-1856 9 III. THE BRITISH POLICE AND PROTESTS, 1856-1906 28 IV. THE POLICE AND THE SUFFRAGETTES, 1906-1908 67 V. THE POLICE AND THE SUFFRAGETTES, 1909-1910 98 VI. THE POLICE AND THE SUFFRAGETTES, 1911-1912 132 VII. THE POLICE AND LABOR DISPUTES, 1906-1910 160 VIII. THE POLICE AND LABOR DISPUTES, 1911 . 188 IX. THE POLICE AND LABOR DISPUTES, 1912 . 225 X. CONCLUSION 250 BIBLIOGRAPHY 259 in CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A recurring problem in civil society is the conflict between two seemingly irreconcilable principles. One is what can be called "liberty," the desire that people have to be masters of their own lives, reenforced by the advantage the state may see in permissive rule. The other principle is "order," the need for civil society to be peaceful and the impulse of those who govern to bar activity they see as "anti-social." While total liberty is anarchy, total order is tyranny. To avoid these two extremes, man confronts a dual problem of maintaining public order necessary to the welfare of any society while at the same time promoting the individual liberty essential to the progress. Disorder resulting from the conflict between order and liberty is a basic and persistent characteristic of a democratic state. Confronted with disorder, man must take steps to deal with it. Essential among these steps is the institution of a police. The police, who represent the collective interests of the community, play the key role in maintaining the balance between order and liberty in the state. Two major functions of the police are the protection of the life and property of every individual and the maintenance of the security of the state. While the former 1 2 represents generally a consensus, the latter involves the arguable problem of the control of crowds. At political demonstrations, industrial disputes, or other difficult situations, crowd control for assuring the security of the state is "one of the most controversial types of police activity and one of the areas most sensitive to government pressure."1 This kind of police action may be easily directed to diminish individual rights or the public expression of thoughts. It is difficult for the police to serve positively to balance the conflict between order and liberty and to set a condition for future social reform; in a conservative or repressive state, often they function negatively as an obstacle to social change. T. A. Critchley contends, however, in A History of Police in England and Wales, that "in a democratic state, where Parliament is supreme and the rule of law well established, a strong, highly respected police force is a condition, not a denial, of liberty within the restraints of law."2 In his opinion, the British police system sustains British civilization and promotes simultaneously "the freedom under the rule of law without 1Steve Uglow, Policing Liberal Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 7. 2T. A. Critchley, A History of Police in England and Wales (Montclair, N. J.: Patterson Smith Publishing Co., 1972), xiii. 3 which civilization is worthless."3 Thus, in a democratic state, the police are challenged and equipped to deal purposely with the conflict between order and liberty. Ideally, a democratic police system must serve to maintain public order and to advance personal freedom. This job is controversial and difficult. Somehow the police must determine whether they are exercising a justified power of intervening in the public expression of thought. In his essay On Liberty. John Stuart Mill argues that individuals and government must refrain from interfering with the thought, expression, and action of any individual unless the individual's activities, proved by the public, are harmful to others or the safety of society.4 But this has to do with the question of how threatening the thought, expression, and action must be to public security to justify legal suppression through police power. It appears difficult for law itself to obtain a general and precise answer to this puzzling question. And it will certainly create an inevitable controversial issue: the legitimacy of the police power to intervene in the public expression of thought. Sir Howard Vincent, author of The Police Code and General Manual of the Criminal Law, believes that "most of the errors committed by the police . were 3Ibid., xiv. 4Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 476-512. 4 due to ignorance of the law and deficient training in their duties."5 The police system, like all other institutions, therefore cannot dominate circumstances or rise above the quality and training of its personnel; performance always falls promise. The period from 1870 to 1914 witnessed, as historian R. C. K. Ensor states, "the conversion of English government into a democracy."6 By about 1900, when the rule of law was well established, the British had armed the police with prestige rather than power. They acted "as a force of unarmed civilians, in contrast to the soldiers who had in earlier times provoked as much violence as they repressed."7 Historian Elie Halevy regards the period from 1905 to 1914 as "the rule of democracy."8 But it was also a period of great unrest in Britain. The British police had to contend with the struggles of the militant suffragette 5Samuel Henry Jeyes and Frederick Dauglas How, The Life of Sir Howard Vincent (London: George Allen & Co., Ltd., 1912), 83. 6R. C. K. Ensor, England, 1870-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936), xix. rT. A. Critchley, The Conquest of Violence: Order and Liberty in Britain (London: Constable & Co. Ltd., 1970), 25. 8Elie Halevy, A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century, vol. 6, The Rule of Democracy, 1905-1914 (New York: Barnes & Noble Inc., 1968). 5 movement, as well as labor unions' mass mobilizations.9 The disruptions caused by the suffragettes and the unions created a grave threat of anarchy and a great challenge to British democracy. The period from 1906 to 1912 showed that the British were not in agreement on whether the suffrage should be extended equally to males and females. Women, the only remaining disenfranchised group, moved gradually to adopt deliberately violent methods of protest. The suffragettes and their sympathizers saw the militants' actions as the necessary and proper means of struggling for their political rights and individual liberties. But the Liberal Government regarded the suffragettes only in terms of public order, and made efforts to repress the*movement. Thus, the real conflict between order and liberty became a confrontation between the police and the militants. The years from 1906 to 1912 also saw the working class present a threat to established order through strikes and demonstrations. Workers formed labor unions, made legal only relatively recently, to improve their economic status and working conditions. These unions bargained with employers over wages, working hours, job security, and other matters. Strikes, however, raised the issues of the rights 'wherever in this dissertation the British police are mentioned, the reference is to all the civil forces of police in Britain including the London Metropolitan Police, the City of London Police, and the provincial police forces.