Impartiality Against the Mob Read online

  “Commander, this is Information. We’ve had seven telephone calls from the Divisions asking if there are any special instructions about the Stop Press in the Daily News, concerning the docks.”

  “Not yet, but there will be soon,” Gideon said.

  “Thank you, sir.” Information rang off, and almost at once the same telephone bell rang, and when he plucked it up again, a man spoke in a north-country voice. “Dale of the Back Room here, sir.” The ‘Back Room’ was the office on the Embankment where the Press Officer ruled and where journalists waited when they scented news. “Is there any statement about the docks situation and the so-called Strike Breakers?”

  “No, but there will be soon,” Gideon repeated mechanically. “How many want to know?”

  “There are at least a dozen here now, sir.”

  “Stall them,” Gideon said, “and remember that Uniform may know more than we do.”

  “Right, sir,” said Dale.

  Gideon put down the receiver and wondered how long it would be before Debenham of the Sussex Police came through. There was a sudden, fierce development in the strike emergency as well as with the immigrants, and if he knew the Yard, something else would break soon, the saying that ‘it never rained but it poured’ was never more true than of crime. The expected bell didn’t ring but the inter-office one did again, and he picked it up. There was a sense of tension peculiar to the Yard at times of crisis.

  “Gideon.”

  “Honiwell, sir.” No one could have sounded more formal nor more tense; neither thing truly characteristic of the man. “Can you spare me five minutes?”

  “If it’s about Shoreham—”

  “It’s about the same subject, but in Lowestoft.”

  “Oh,” Gideon said, startled. “Yes, come along – but our discussion may be very disjointed, it’s one of those mornings.” He put down the receiver and stared at the blue sky beyond the window, could not resist temptation and got up and went to the window. The surface of the river was choppy but the sky was very bright. Traffic on the river was heavy, tugs and barges, small boats and pleasure craft were all on the move, and a police launch was chugging along.

  There was a tap at the passage door; this would be Honiwell.

  “Come in.”

  Simultaneously there was a movement at the communicating door; this would be Hobbs, back already from the Commissioner.

  And indeed, Honiwell came in from one door and Hobbs from the other, both looking at Gideon, neither aware of the other newcomer’s presence until they spoke, in unrehearsed unison.

  “Sorry to worry you—” That was Honiwell.

  “I thought you would like to know—” Hobbs began.

  Each broke off, staring at the other in surprise; and a cross current of wind, very strong whenever the window was open, took a door out of each hand, and so two heavy wooden doors banged simultaneously.

  “Alec, you’d like to hear Superintendent Honiwell, I know. Matt, will this take long?”

  “No, sir, it needn’t take two minutes. I would like to go up to Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft by the first train and have Mr. Piluski with me.” Piluski was the officer working on the immigration investigation with him. “There’s a report that a Belgian coastal vessel was hove-to off the coast between Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth last night, and the bodies of two Pakistanis, dressed in western style lounge suits, were found in the sea off Lowestoft early this morning, by coastguards. Both had died from suffocation.” The last statement hit Gideon like a physical blow. Both had died from suffocation. It was one of the things he had feared, part of the horror of a situation which at times seemed to have got completely out of hand.

  “How long had they been in the sea?” he asked gruffly.

  “The estimate is, several hours. And in view of what I reported last night”—Honiwell glanced at Hobbs, who nodded to show that he was au fait with that report—”I’ve a nasty feeling we might be on the trail of another sinking or sunken vessel with a hold crammed full of immigrants.”

  Gideon said: “What time’s your train?”

  “If I leave in five minutes I can catch the eleven forty-five to Lowestoft from Liverpool Street.”

  “Let me know what you find as soon as you get there,” Gideon ordered.

  “I will. Thanks.” Honiwell nodded to both men and hurried out; this time, there being no cross draft between the two doors, his closed quietly. Gideon pursed his lips and moved towards his desk, as if for the moment he had forgotten that Hobbs was there.

  Hobbs did not move or speak.

  Gideon sat at his desk, and said heavily: “Well, Alec, how did you get on?”

  Hobbs gave the impression that he had to bring himself back to the reason for his visit; that he was seeing those bodies taken from the sea.

  “While I was with the Commissioner, Uniform got in touch with him,” he said quietly. “I heard only the one side of the conversation but I don’t think Upway will do anything rash. He’s liaising with City and P.L.A, and of course I said we would do the same. We’re almost certain to recognise some of the Strike Breakers, and we can use Press photographs for a thorough scrutiny. The best people for photographs are the men at the Mirror. If we asked them to let us have some prints as soon as they’re ready they’ll probably get them round to us within half-an-hour.”

  “I’ll call them,” Gideon promised. “All the divisions are asking for instructions. Send out a general teletype telling them we want to identify the Strike Breakers and pick up anyone who uses an offensive weapon, will you? We’d better have as many plainclothes men as we can muster at each gate.”

  “I’ll see to it,” Hobbs assured him.

  Five minutes later, Gideon talked to the news editor of the Mirror, who in turn promised to rush pictures round to him as soon as any were ready, asked a few pertinent questions, seemed satisfied with answers which were not answers at all, and then asked:

  “Where do you expect the biggest showdown, Commander?”

  “Number One Gate, St. Catharine’s, is usually the storm centre,” Gideon answered. “But that’s not to say it always will be.”

  “Gideon’s opinion is good enough for me,” the Mirror man declared.

  The dockers put down their crates, came off the cranes, climbed out of the holds of the big and the small ships in the great Port of London, and made their way towards the dock gates, not in dozens but in hundreds. They came out of warehouses and sheds, off wharves and off bridges. They came from their homes and the pubs and the shops. They converged on the dock gates in swarms, and those who had not brought a weapon went to the hiding places and selected one. Each weapon, properly used, could cause grievous injury, while most could cause death.

  The tramp of feet was like a march to war.

  They laughed and joked and played the fool, the young and the old and those in middle life. They were ready for anything without knowing what ‘anything’ might be.

  Except for a few men who would normally be there when meetings were due and except for the plainclothes men, the police kept in their hiding places.

  The greatest gathering was at Number One Gate, St. Catharine’s. There, a platform had been erected and loudspeakers installed, and a protecting ring of the strongest men was about the great crowd which stood on shiny cobbles and rusty rails beneath a bright sun, hair and clothes ruffled by a strengthening breeze. Three of them moved towards the platform, big Willis Murdoch in the middle, a giant compared with the others. The sun glinted on his pince-nez and through his silky hair. It was five to twelve as he stood up on the platform and when those at the back saw him there was a roar of applause which grew louder and louder. It became a roar as loud as thunder; frightening and deafening.

  Alan Holmes, still encased in the blankets, woke from a dazed sleep to hear the noise.

  He wondered what
it was with a despairing fear.

  Something dreadful was happening among the dockers, and that awareness broke through his fear for himself. He did not know how long he had been here, but the last two or three times he had opened his eyes he had seen cracks of daylight in the rotting roof and on the wooden walls.

  He was past hunger but not past thirst; his mouth was so dry that it felt raw.

  His head ached terribly and his eyes burned.

  He knew that he had no chance to get out of here.

  Above and beyond him, the din grew louder. Now men were shouting, whistles were blowing, as if signals were being given for an attack. They couldn’t be, could they? They couldn’t be.

  Chapter 13

  RIOT

  As the dockers gathered at Number One Gate, as the police watched, ready to step in but anxious not to precipitate any trouble, cars and small vans began to slow down at the dock approach roads, and men sprang out of them, only the driver staying and moving on to make room for the next. At the same time men appeared from three ships already at the wharves, dozens, hundreds of them. Also at the same time, men who might have been dockers or workers from nearby factories, flung grappling irons over the stone walls of the dock so that rope ladders dangled and man after man climbed up and leapt down on the other side. In minutes, the outwardly peaceful scene became a riot, men bellowing, swearing, kicking, striking out, savage as beasts in their hatred.

  For a few moments it looked as if the police were caught unawares, in spite of the warning. It threatened a bloodbath with knives and knuckle dusters, hammers and chains were out and being used with a vengeance.

  Brill watched from a painter’s cradle at the top of a high building only a hundred yards away. Two photographers were with him, including one from the Mirror. Newspapermen were at windows and on the nearby roofs. The invaders surged through the gates themselves as the P.L.A. police on duty were dragged aside, and they rushed in so that the dockers, a thousand men or more, were attacked from all directions. At the microphone, Willis Murdoch stood and talked in a voice that was a miracle of self-control.

  “My advice is for you to stay at work while negotiations with the employers are proceeding . . . we ask for a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work . . . and we ask for security. Is this security? Why have these brutes been allowed to attack us? Why . . .”

  His voice died away. Someone pulled out the cable feeding the loudspeaker, a dozen men fought their way to his platform, six of them gathered round him in a protecting circle as the Strike Breakers hurled themselves into the attack. In three or four minutes the whole gate area was a shambles, it did not seem as if anything could stop the fury of this battle. The noise rose up like thunder in the distance, people half-a-mile away heard and paused and marvelled. As it grew, shrieking and screaming and crying, another noise became audible: the engines of three helicopters.

  These flew at about a hundred yards from the ground, comfortably clearing the walls and the sheds and the cranes. In line, they hovered over the fighting, and from their bellies policemen appeared, firing small canisters of tear gas. At the same moment police at the windows of the tall buildings and on the roofs of warehouses and sheds, fired the same gas, and as the canisters struck walls and cobbles as well as men and their weapons, the gas billowed out and there was an abrupt, almost incredible moment of silence; followed by gasping and choking and retching. From fighting like wild beasts in that confined area the antagonists ran to get out of the range of the stinging gas, and wherever they ran, they found police waiting. Black Marias, big private trucks, and lorries had been pressed into service, and the men were bundled into them without knowing what was happening. A constant stream of these big vehicles passed the open gates, only a few of the prisoners having the presence of mind to leap down for safety. The police made no great effort to stop these but drove towards one of the smaller docks, Millside, which was no longer used. Here, the captives were herded into big warehouses, thick with dust but weatherproof, and the police guarded the doors and the windows in great strength.

  Just the same method was used at the other dock gate battles, all with more or less the same result. At two gates more men escaped and one lorry was seized and crashed into a wall, but that was the only setback for the police.

  The screaming and the shouting died away.

  The gas crept into the shed where Alan Holmes lay, and he was aware of it although it did not make him feel much worse, for he was almost beyond feeling.

  What it did was to make the membranes of his nose swell so that breathing became more difficult. Every time he breathed in or out, he made a whistling sound.

  Holmes’ wife, Harriet, stood opposite Number One Gate as the fighting began and when it was so suddenly quelled began to look among the crowd for her husband but saw no sign of him. She was really worried by now, for there had been no word from Alan, and he had never before stayed away all night without telling her in advance. She recognised some dockers and several policemen and watched as man after man was bundled into a waiting truck. Everyone was so busy it seemed impossible to interrupt or to speak to anyone. Not until the crowd had nearly gone did she almost give up hope, but she still fought on. Breaking from a crowd of lookers-on, she crossed to the dock gates where a group of men stood, mostly photographers, although some were policemen. There was enough gas about to sting the eyes and nostrils but not to deter her.

  She recognised a Port of London Authority policeman, a man named Jackson. “Mr. Jackson,” she said, in as strong a voice as she could muster, “have you seen my husband?”

  The man, big, middle-aged, very smooth-faced, looked down on her.

  “Who do you mean?” he asked.

  “I’m Harriet Holmes. My husband is known as—”

  “Old Homer!” exclaimed one of the photographers, and she spun round to him in relief.

  “Yes! Do you know where he is?”

  “I haven’t seen him today,” the newspaperman answered, “but I often see him on his rounds.”

  “You mean the North Thames reporter?” asked Jackson.

  “Yes.” Now, she swung round towards the policeman again.

  That was how Malcolm Brill first saw her.

  He had come down from his ‘cage’ and had been inside the dock gates, talking to some senior police officers, who were all quietly pleased with themselves. No final figure of arrests was known but it certainly wasn’t less than seven or eight hundred. Brill, with no evening paper to telephone, would have time to write his piece in great detail for the morning Daily News. Already, a dozen Fleet Street men had congratulated him on the Stop Press item, but he had not talked much to anyone.

  Everywhere he went, he saw Rose.

  And everywhere he went, he ‘saw’ Ledden.

  He talked and listened and observed as effectively as ever, he made mental notes and put some down on paper, but he felt as if he were in two worlds: this one, where he had scored what others thought was a great triumph which really belonged to the police, and the nightmare world, the tormenting world of last night.

  He looked at the men by the gate, all shadowy figures: he even saw Willis Murdoch coming from the opposite direction on a motor cycle. Next moment he saw the woman. She wasn’t at all like Rose. She wasn’t beautiful. She had nice hair, rather dark, and a round face and a big but shapely figure; and none of these things mattered because he sensed that for some reason she was as distressed as he. The photographer who had spoken to Harriet recognised him and saw Willis Murdoch at the same instant, monstrous on his little motor cycle. He put his camera to his eyes and called out at the same time: “Have you seen Old Homer, Malcolm?” He was young and brash and anxious to impress everyone nearby with his acquaintance with a top newspaperman, and he wanted his photograph of the Union leader, too. Several things happened at once. Murdoch braked his machine and nearly skidded, and the P.L.A. man
Jackson said: “No need for your pass, Mr. Murdoch!” A little wizened man appeared from just outside the gates and, because all those who could forbid him entry were preoccupied, slunk forward.

  The woman now looked at Murdoch with such pleading in her eyes.

  “I saw him last night,” Malcolm Brill volunteered.

  “He hasn’t been home,” declared Harriet Holmes in a desperate voice. “Have you seen him, Mr. Murdoch? Was he at the meeting this morning?”

  It would have been easy for Murdoch to brush off the question; how could he reasonably be expected to see one individual in such a mêlée? But he got off his machine and pushed it out of the main entrance, raised its stand, and then said: “Only last night, Mrs. Holmes. D’you say he wasn’t home all night?”

  “No, he wasn’t, and I’m terribly worried.” Yes, thought Brill, she was; out of concern and out of love for her husband, while his Rose—

  He actually closed his eyes; and with them closed was aware of another, hoarse, coarse voice, of a man saying: “Mr. Murdoch, can I have a word with you?”

  “In a minute, Tig,” Murdoch said. “I’m sorry about this, Mrs. Holmes, I really am. When did you last see him, do you say?”

  “He left about six o’clock, he said he would be seeing you, he hoped you’d give him a story. He was worried about the strike, he couldn’t really think of anything else. He—but where can he be?”

  “Did you see him?” Murdoch turned to Brill.

  “Willis, I want a word with you, it’s urgent.”

  “Stop worrying me.” Murdoch sounded unharassed by Tig’s interruptions, and concerned only for the woman.

  Malcolm said: “Only at The Docker, when you were there.”

  “I saw him afterwards, but I didn’t talk to him – I’d been too affable to reporters already!”