"Royal Parasites!"

Times have changed since high-spirited British subjects used to fire an occasional shot (which always missed) at young Queen Victoria and her young Prince Consort, Albert.* In the humdrum present, British subjects could scarcely believe sworn testimony in a London court last week that when H. R. H. Prince George went to work in the slummy East End citizens shook their fists and shouted: "Give us food! We don't want royal parasites!"

Unperturbed, H. R. H. pursued his task of inspecting the squalid East End, a job Edward of Wales used to do before passing it on to his younger brother. Last week the mob grew less & less appreciative, finally broke a British law which provides that while Parliament is sitting no demonstration shall take place within one mile of Parliament.

Parliament had just returned to sit in the Palace of Westminster, diagonally across the River Thames from the citadel of the Church of England, frowning Lambeth Palace. The London mob, swarming up from way down East, broke into Lambeth Borough and crowded even Lambeth Palace Road. For 700 years the town house of the Primate of All England has stood in Lambeth Palace Road. Last week dignitaries of the Church left Lambeth Borough to the mob and to courageous London bobbies who fought (in some cases) for their lives. One bobby, cornered in a side street, had his face smashed and gashed by bottles before other bobbies could rush in and rescue him.

The fight lasted seven hours. Twenty times battling bobbies put on a truncheon charge. To defend the Houses of Parliament, to keep the mob from crossing the river, London's brave bobbies were obliged for the first time to rush motor cars up to Thames bridgeheads and park them close together as an impromptu barricade.

"Moscow!" Foremost to cry "This is the work of Reds!" was His Majesty's new Home Secretary, stern Sir John Gilmour, a Scottish veteran of the Boer and World wars. Scot Gilmour told the House of Commons that "about 10,000 persons attacked the police who, despite great provocation, acted with admirable restraint." The whole thing was organized, Sir John said, by the National Unemployed Workers Movement. "That movement, if such it can be called," he cried, "has a material connection with Moscow!

"Let me remind the House," Sir John continued, "that the police were met with stones, glass and pieces of iron taken from railings. I have seen some of these things myself and it is not playful to have a piece of railing weighing from six to nine pounds thrown at you. People who use that kind of missile are not really peaceful citizens."

Chiming in after Scot Gilmour, Scot MacDonald asked members of the House "not to say anything that would enable the organizers of the demonstration to pose as benefactors of the unemployed." No such thing was said (see below). Souvenir hunters, prowling over the seven-hour battlefield, collected bits of bloody rags, took snapshots of great dark stains before firemen washed them from the pavement of Boniface Street.

Another mob, this one of out-&-out Communists, scrimmaged one night in Fleet Street with Sir Oswald Moseley and 100 of his black-shirted British Fascists. Police dispersed them.

Within 24 hours swift British justice sentenced 50 mobsmen and four mobs-women to pay a fine of 40 shillings each ($6.80) or spend a fortnight in jail. Meanwhile a new danger threatened. From industrial centres all over England, Scotland and Wales thousands of jobless men were stubbornly walking toward London, lashed by high winds, whipped by pelting rain. Called "dupes of Moscow" by the London Press, these marchers will try to see the Prime Minister this week and on Nov. 1 will send a "Committee of Fifty" who will try to reach the Houses of Parliament bearing a petition for relief signed by 500,000 unemployed. A deputation preceded them to the London County Council, demanding for the unemployed free coal, boots & shoes, milk, a 25% reduction in rents and free housing for all the marchers upon London.

*See page 90, ALBERT THE GOOD--Hector Bolithoi--Appleton ($3.50).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.