Police officers who by law cannot put down their truncheons may be dismayed today as backroom staff go on strike in a dispute over the right to work from home.
More than 300 members of backroom staff will walk out for two weeks, meaning actual officers may have to step away from fighting crime to fill in.
But, back in the final months of the First World War in 1918 and again the following year – when no law existed to stop constables themselves from striking – officers in the Metropolitan Police did exactly that.
The action was triggered in part by poor pay, but also fury at the sacking of a constable who had been trying to recruit fellow officers to the recently-formed police union.
Further protests in 1919 spread to Liverpool, where public order broke down in the police’s absence and the city descended into what one newspaper described as an ‘orgy of looting and rioting’.
As a result of the action in both London and Liverpool, police banned what was the National Union of Police and Prison Officers (NUPPO) and made it illegal for officers to strike – the law has been in place ever since.
The action in the summer of 1918 came amid the government’s fears over the threat of revolution, after the rise of the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union.
Officers unhappy with their low levels of pay had seen other workers strike successfully for more money.
Some police were struggling to afford to eat and had to take on second jobs.
Police were also demanding recognition of NUPPO, which had been set up in 1913.
During the war, any officer who had found to be a NUPPO member was sacked.
One member of NUPPO was Boer War veteran Tommy Thiel, who served as a constable in the Met but was also a provincial organiser for union.
Thiel went up to Manchester, Liverpool and elsewhere to recruit officers to his cause.
But when the chief constable of Manchester found out, he complained to the Met’s commissioner and Thiel was sacked.
The constable was now a martyr for the cause being trumpeted by NUPPO.
On August 27, 1918, the union wrote to the then commissioner demanding a pay rise and war bonus and the re-instatement of Thiel.
They said that failure to agree within two days would lead to a strike.
The situation was complicated by the fact that senior officers and the home secretary were on holiday.
The home secretary promised to return, but by the time he arrived back in the capital – at 6pm the following day – hundreds of officers had already walked out.
The strike caused panic in the government, prompting prime minister David Lloyd George to insist that the action had to be stopped.
The 1918 strike was particularly damaging because the workforce was already weak due to officers going off to fight in the war.
The Daily Mail reported at the time that the normal strength of 22,000 had been reduced by around 8,000.
Officers thronged together and marched on Downing Street.
One reporter writing for London paper the Evening News wrote: ‘Not even in the days of the Suffragette disturbances had Downing Street been so ruthlessly invaded.
‘This narrow thoroughfare was one street in London that the police had relentlessly kept clear of the public, yet now they invaded it themselves in hundreds until it was packed from end to end.
‘Mr Winston Churchill was seen pushing his way through the crowd to enter Number 10. Several policemen swarmed up lamposts.’
The PM then moved quickly to end the dispute by agreeing to see the representatives of NUPPO.
He agreed to a pay rise for officers and for Thiel to be given his job back.
But Lloyd George refused to give official recognition to NUPPO, saying it could not be granted in wartime.
Although striking officers went back to work, the issue flared up again the following year when NUPPO still had not been given recognition.
In March 1919, when friction was getting worse, the Mail’s editorial heaped praise on officers, telling how ‘the country has always been proud’ of the force in London.
It said officers had carried out their duty with ‘great tact and restraint’, to the extent that ordinary people had come to regard them as ‘friends’.
It added that the country’s wish was that constables should be ‘well paid and well treated, that they should be of the highest character, and that any grievance should be promptly redressed.’
Neglect of their grievances the previous year led to the first ‘unhappy’ strike, the editorial continued.
However, it also said that it was ‘vital’ that discipline be maintained, because officers ‘represent the State and they have the whole force of the State behind them’.
‘Their task would be rendered much more difficult if the public had reason to suppose that they were asking or refusing to use their powers at the order of an organisation which was not directly responsible to the Government and to Parliament’.
In May 1919, NUPPO asked its members if they wanted to strike.
They initially said no, but the ballot was a warning – the government moved to rush through the Police Act 1919, which gave officers much better pay and conditions.
But it also made it illegal to go on strike.
In July 1919, NUPPO balloted its members again, and this time officers voted for action. Police in Liverpool also chose to walk out.
However, fewer than 10 per cent of officers in London chose to walk out the second time.
Furious that constables were not backing them, union officials even resorted to dirty tricks by telling officers who were turning up to Tottenham Court Road police station for their shifts at 6am that their colleagues were out on strike.
As a result, many of them went home – even though the union had lied to them.
But fewer than 2,500 officers walked out the second time. Nearly all who did were dismissed.
The Police Act received royal assent in August 1919, NUPPO was no more and the Police Federation – which continues to be the main representative body for the police was formed.