EVENT: Liverpool’s “Bloody Tuesday”?

A Centennial Commemoration Organised by the North West TUC
11am, Monday 15 August 2011
Meet at the Eldonian Village Hall, Vauxhall Road, Liverpool L3 6LG,

to be followed by laying of wreaths at the shooting sites and at Ford Cemetery

In the week following Bloody Sunday in 1911, Liverpool and the whole of Britain was poised on the edge of catastrophe. The railway strike, which had been started by rank and file action in Liverpool, had been declared official, the first national railway strike in history. The docks had been closed after the employers had declared a lock-out. The government response was to pledge unprecedented police and military reinforcements in support of the rail owners. More than 50,000 troops were mobilised across the country, and police were despatched wherever the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, thought they were needed. Brutal force was employed.

In Liverpool, troops opened fire on civilians on both Sunday and Monday night, and then on Tuesday, August 15th, the most tragic events occurred. A convoy of vans, containing prisoners who had been arrested on Bloody Sunday, was despatched to Walton Gaol. It was accompanied by thirty-two armed soldiers. A disturbance occurred on Vauxhall Road and the troops opened fire, injuring five civilians, two fatally. Five days later, on Saturday 19th August, two more unarmed civilians were shot by troops in Llanelli.

These are the last occasions in history when British soldiers have killed civilians on the streets of mainland Britain. As with Bloody Sunday, Churchill and the government whitewashed these events. No public enquiry was held, despite widespread calls for one. Very little attention has been given since to these outrageous state-sponsored killings. This Centennial Commemoration of the fatal shootings will help to redress this grave injustice, and will restore to public memory the names of the two men killed, John W. Sutcliffe and Michael Prendergast.

For further details, e-mail Sam Davies – r.s.davies@ljmu.ac.uk; or Ron Noon – r.p.noon@ljmu.ac.uk