The 1923 police strike: Melbourne’s thin blue line at breaking point as violence and chaos erupts
IT was a shocking weekend of anarchy with mobs rampaging in the streets and looters stripping the city bare. And it happened in Melbourne.
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BLOODY mob rule took hold of central Melbourne with the city packed with Melbourne Cup carnival revellers in 1923 when hundreds of police walked off the job.
But what sparked the strike that left Melbourne’s streets controlled by gangs of criminals?
A SHORT, BLOODY HISTORY OF BUSHRANGERS
MASSACRE IN THE BOTANIC GARDENS
At the time, police in Victoria had the lowest pay in the country. For years, the Police Association had sought parity with NSW officers.
Then there was the police superannuation scheme — or the lack of one. In 1902, the Victorian government cut a generous pension scheme for all police who joined the force after that year.
It saved the government a packet but created an inequitable two-tiered system in which newer members instead had to pay for their own life insurance.
ORIGINAL NAMES OF MELBOURNE SUBURBS
It was a sleeper issue. The move did not affect already serving officers, but as they began to retire and newer officers began filling more senior ranks, unencumbered by discipline imposed on old timers above them, tensions began to simmer and were ready to boil over by 1923.
But, most controversially, in late 1922 Chief Commissioner Alexander Nicholson created a squad of four plainclothes constables, dubbed ‘spooks’ by the rank and file, to covertly watch over police on the beat in the CBD.
Fed up with what they described as the spooks’ “humiliating espionage” by men of dubious character (one had been caught drunk on duty twice before he joined the squad) 30 police at Russell Street refused to go on night patrol on October 31, 1923.
The 30 were led by Constable William Thomas Brooks, a man who was already disaffected after the CBD licensing branch, an area of policing in which he excelled, was disbanded and he was returned to the beat.
PLACES THAT SHAPED MELBOURNE’S HISTORY
The 30 were threatened with the sack if they did not patrol the following night. More refused duty.
By Friday — Derby Eve — 636 police from a statewide force of 1808 were on strike.
The few police who remained on duty were almost powerless as the criminal class realised the streets were largely unguarded.
By Saturday evening, hooligans teemed through Melbourne.
A man was robbed and kicked to death at Princes Bridge, and many others were bashed as mobs rampaged through the city. Pick-pockets, thugs and two-up schools went to work.
A special evening edition of The Sun on Saturday, November 3, said: “anarchy, naked unashamed and drunken, ruled in Swanston Street tonight.
“Routing police, a savage mob smashed shop windows, stole valuable stocks and committed acts of violence in the streets.”
A cable tram was pushed off the rails.
“A corporal of the (Special) Citizens Forces appeared carrying a rifle. A yell of rage went up from the crowd. The corporal was instantly rushed, disarmed, knocked down and cruelly kicked where he lay,” The Sun said.
More than 400 plate glass windows were shattered as looters grabbed everything they could carry. One mob broke in and stole rifles, revolvers and hunting knives from a sporting goods shop.
Up to 70 police swooped during the evening and, with batons swinging, marched shoulder to shoulder across city streets with batons swinging to try to clear the crowds.
Over the weekend up to 1000 special constables, many of them returned soldiers, were sworn in under the command of General Sir John Monash and other wartime leaders.
Some were armed with makeshift batons fashioned crudely from cart wheel spokes as the force ran out of weapons to quell the rioting.
A special Sunday edition of The Herald reported that the block bounded by Swanston, Bourke, Elizabeth and Little Collins streets “appeared as if it had been sacked by a ruthless invading army”.
“One hundred thousand people rushed in from the suburbs this morning to view a scene of wanton destruction unparalleled in the history of Melbourne,” it said.
“Never has the city been so densely packed with surging crowds on a Sunday morning.
“They filled the church trains and flocked citywards in hundreds of cars, cabs and every other kind of vehicle.
“Mobs of menacing roughs with their lust for plunder still unsatiated were scouring the streets.”
By Monday, police and special constables had restored law and order but scars remained.
“Few people would have thought that an orderly city could so rapidly be captured by its criminal and semi-criminal element,” the editorial in the Cup Day edition of The Argus said.
None of the 636 striking police ever wore a uniform again.
Many civilian special constables stayed on until recruits could be retrained to replace them.
In the wake of the strike, the government swiftly granted a pension plan and pay rises for the police who remained, with improved leave instituted the following year.
The strike could have been averted.
The Monash Royal Commission into the strike found that the only demand the original 30 striking police made on October 31 was for the removal of the spooks from overseeing their shifts.
The next morning, the spooks were reassigned to other duties, but no-one was informed.
Constable Brooks met government representatives on the same day, both parties unaware Brooks and his supporters had already won.
Brooks was told the government backed the chief commissioner, that the spooks would stay, and that the strikers must return to duty. The strike escalated, with new demands for better pay and a pension scheme.
That night, Brooks was the first of the 636 strikers to be terminated.
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