Love on the Dole (28 page)

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 and was lost in the surging masses.

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?’

‘Why, the cigarettes. Y’know, don’t y’? Bill Simmons and Tom Hare? They’ve been caught stealin’ out of a shop …’

Harry ran a finger round his neckcloth; he could not withdraw his gaze from Helen’s; he began to beat Larry’s hat against his leg. Bill and Tom ‘pinched’! And they’d invited him join them in their felony.

He felt a tug at his hand: startled, he heard Sally’s voice: ‘Whose hat’s this? Where’ve y’ got it from?’ She looked from it to him: ‘Where did y’ get it?’

The group of neighbours, noticing Harry, and thinking that he might have been in some way connected with Bill’s and Tom’s misdemeanour, clattered to him, curious. Harry saw the unspoken question in his mother’s eyes; he reassured her, then, turning to Sally, took a deep breath and related the occurrence of the clash with the police, deeply conscious of the impression his narrative was making on his audience.

‘… and they told us at dole as we’d all bin knocked off so we marched t’ t’ city hall and they charged out wi’ their truncheons. An’ a copper collared hold o’ Larry an’ laid him out … an’ two slops (policemen) dragged him off t’ prison. Aye, unconscious, too. Ah saw ‘um. Ah tell y’. Knockin’ fellers out all over t’ show. … He was unconscious, Ah tell
y’,
an’ he was doin’ nowt, neither. None of us were. An’ women coppin’ (catching)

it too. … Thousands and thousands o’ people there Aye, ‘n

coppers walked wi’ us all way t’ city hall. They could ha’ stopped us at fust if they didn’t want us t’ go…’

Towards the end of his story his auditors began to exchange glances of wild surmise; then, as with one accord, they inundated him with questions.

‘Was our Dick there, Harry?’

‘Oh, my God. Ah knew summat had happened. My bloke weren’t ne’er so late home from dole in his life before. Ah’ve bin on pins this last hour. … An’ me thinkin’ he’s broke teetotal.’