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The case of the West End Riots
MAT COWARD remembers when the Conservative HQ at the Carlton Club got engulfed in some street-based class warfare
End of the meeting in Trafalgar Square (illustration from the Illustrated London News)
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THERE are some riots you just can’t help chuckling at, even if you’re not the sort of person usually given to inappropriate levity. The circumstances which led to the stoning of the Carlton Club, on February 8 1886, would surely be enough to make even the soberest cadre crack a tiny smile.
It began with a pressure group affiliated to the Conservative Party, called the Fair-Trade League, holding a rally in Trafalgar Square to demand “Free Trade within the Empire and Protection against the World.”
Interpreting this as an attempt to win working-class support for conservatism, the Social Democratic Federation, Britain’s earliest self-styled Marxist party, called its own demonstration — same time, same place. It argued that the unemployment then blighting the nation was caused by capitalism, not by beastly foreigners, and could be ameliorated by government support for new co-operative businesses.
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