Hull Student Strike (1911)

Tue Sep 12, 1911

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Image: School children in Hull on strike in 1911 for “shorter hours and no stick”

On this day in 1911, a student strike in Hull, England began when a dozen older boys at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic school walked out during morning lessons. By that afternoon, the whole school was outside on strike.

Striking students formed a crowd at the school gates, denouncing “too much work” and shouting “blackleg” at pupils still in class.

The Hull Daily News reported the following day that “for weeks there has been a feeling of anxiety…first the sailors and dockers; then the millers, cement workers, timber workers, railway men, news boys, factory girls and now the school-boys”.

The strike soon spread to schools nearby which, according to the Hull Daily News, made local tradesmen “anxious about the whereabouts of their errand boys”.

According to historian Clive Bloom, most of these children had to go to work after school to help feed their families. A lone policeman riding through the poor dock area of Hull made at least one attempt to cow the crowd into submission when he charged at them on his bicycle.