On 14 June 1932, 200 men and women fought a pitched battle in a suburban street with more than 50 police officers. It was Newcastle's worse riot and would make Australian legal history.
14 June 1932
They came from as far as Merewether and Wallsend, workers from the Unemployed Workers Movement, Trade and Seaman's Unions, joining forces with the residents of Tighes Hill and Mayfield East.
The pressure-cooker situation had been building for days. At least 100 men had been on guard in Clara Street for the past week, determined to hold out against the eviction of the family of Lewis Woods, an oxy welder left unemployed by the Depression and behind in his rent.
At 2.45 in the afternoon, two police officers approached the home. There was a brief, formal exchange between the officers and Woods with a last chance to leave peacefully. Woods and his supporters refused. Then, the melee began.
Reports differ as to what happened next. Some say a police officer was called into the backyard and attacked - the catalyst for police officers to tear down the back fence and enter from a neighbouring house. Irrespective of the trigger, police and rioters poured into the property. Hand-to-hand combat broke out in the backyard, on the veranda and spilled out onto the street where more than 1000 residents and rioters had now gathered. Police swung their batons liberally, aiming for the heads of civilians who fought back with fence palings and bricks. The women barricaded themselves inside the house, reportedly armed with ladles and a copper full of boiling water to throw at the police.
Then, witnesses say, police drew their revolvers and opened fire. With shots ringing out, rioters took off in all directions and over the back fences, but many continued to fight. Neighbours massed in the street, shouting and jeering at police. When an officer wielding his baton chased a rioter across the road, he was set upon by the crowd. Struck with an iron bar he was swiftly felled, feet and fists followed until a neighbour rescued him from the fray.
"Go them boys, we'll give them fight!"
As residents and supporters continued to protest outside, Police attempted to make arrests and force the eviction by dragging women screaming from the house.
The quiet suburban street resembled a war zone. Inside the home, furniture and possessions lay broken and blood splattered the walls. Outside, palings and stones littered the ground. Civilians and police lay bleeding and broken where they fell. Others stumbled from the scene bloodied and with torn clothes. Many needed to be carried. The police batons had caused numerous fractured skulls. One member of the public was in such critical condition he was unlikely to survive. Policemen also joined the list of men ferried to hospital. One constable was struck so hard by a brick that the metal badge of his helmet left an imprint on his forehead.
Although the battle only lasted 20 minutes, it was Newcastle's worst riot and one of the worst in Australia at the time. In all, 17 civilians and 7 police were treated at hospital while 30 men and 2 women were arrested and charged. As one of the country's most controversial eviction pickets, it left a trail of physical destruction as well as political and social ramifications.
Resistance turns to Riots - Social issues of the Depression Era
Three years after the economic crash of 1929 the depression was still being sharply felt. Around the world, millions were out of work and few of the working class were able to get by without handouts.
In Australia, the government provided the dole, or relief work, while charities provided food and clothing to those who needed it. But little was provided in the form of actual cash, making it impossible for the unemployed to pay their rent. As a result, many families were evicted and forced to live in make-shift "humpies" in the ever-growing squatter camps on the outskirts of the cities they once worked in.
As more working families were pitched onto the street and their belongings sold off, industry associations and political groups, such as the UWM, began to speak out publicly and take matters into their own hands. In the early days, a few hefty union boys going around and making a 'strong case' to the landlord was enough to avoid eviction proceedings and even result in a reduction in rent.
Picketing of homes under eviction notices also became a regular occurrence. Unions encouraged their members to show solidarity with fellow workers and resistance against greedy landlords. Their mere presence would often prevent the bailiffs from entering and delivering the eviction notices. The pickets became an event in themselves. There were speeches on human rights and capitalism, live music, food and such a general jovial sense of togetherness locals were often disappointed when the picket broke up.
By late 1931, however, pickets had turned into violent battles between the occupants and their supporters and the police. The Union St eviction riot that occured in the Sydney suburb of Newtown on 19 June 1931 was a turning point from peaceful picket to armed resistance. The picketers, many of whom were returned servicemen, barricaded themselves inside the home behind sandbags and barbed wire. Shots were fired and one person died. Almost a year to the day the Clara Street Riot eclipsed it.
"And they call me a Capitalist!"
Sydney's Daily Telegraph alluded to the eviction riot being the work of "Communists" but the majority of the people who showed up at Clara Street that day, and at the numerous other eviction riots and picketing around the country, were not Communists at all. They were ordinary labourers, seamen, tradesmen, trade unionists and Labor Party supporters. Many were returned servicemen. They'd put their lives on the line for their country only to find their government failing them in their family's hour of need, leaving them fighting backyard battles with bricks and fence posts against armed police.
The day after the battle, reporters found a diminutive older lady in the Clara St house wielding a broom in an ineffectual cleanup attempt. She was Eva Franklin, the 60-year-old landlady. Like many of their neighbours, her husband had been laid off at the BHP steelworks due to the depression. They had mortgaged their small house in Clara St and moved to Weston, living in a slab hut while trying to eke a living from a market garden and the Clara St rental. But Mr Franklin's age and arthritis, as well as the poor soil at Weston, meant the garden brought in little income. Neither did the tenancy as the Woods' had not paid rent since late 1930. Of the original £200 mortgage, they owed almost £150 in loan and rates.
This was the sad reality of the Depression: those with not much found themselves in a pitched battle with those who had even less.
"So there it is, I have nothing; nothing but debts and old age and a ruined home! A fine capitalist that makes me" - Eva Franklin, Landlady
The Trial & Political Aftermath
A month after the riot, 30 men fronted Newcastle Court in what would become one of Australia's longest and most exhaustive trials in legal history.
The courtroom was packed. Hundreds of supporters remained in the street outside and police presence was strong. The defendants were represented by Clive Evatt, KC, a barrister experienced in trade union and social cases. He was also the brother of prominent barrister and Labor politician Herb "Doc" Evatt, who would go on to draft the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
The first trial enden in an acquittal for 20 of the accused. As the Jury were unable reach a verdict on the remaining 10, they were to be re-tried. Concerned that the re-trial would be tainted by a sympathetic local jury, the subsequent trial was moved out of the district to Singleton. It commenced in September with the accused and their posse of supporters travelling 2 hours by train every day.
The trial was subject to sensational and long-winded arguments, plagued by adjournments and courtroom antics with one of the accused even rolling into court one day in a bed while suffering appendicitis. Much of the defence relied on witness after witness attesting that they did not recall the defendant at the Clara Street riot, or at least not involved in any fighting. On the other hand, almost all recalled the police firing their revolvers - a claim the police firmly denied.
A total of 60 court days stretched out over ten months. When the jury returned their verdict on 14 July 1933, more than a year had passed since the riot. They acquitted two men and delivered 'no verdict' on the other eight.
The cost of the trial to the State was phenomenal in both a monetary and political sense. Each accused had been eligible for legal aid, and Evatt KC did not come cheap. Politically, trying working-class men for a spirited defence of their home during the Depression, with questions of police brutality hanging over the whole event was a PR nightmare in a staunch working-class city like Newcastle. The retrial was quietly shelved.
Although not a single rioter was found guilty of an offence, a looming question remained: how to deal with the rising number of evictions in the economic crisis. It was a question governments were failing to address all over the world.
In Australia, the NSW Premier, Jack Lang, had introduced protections for mortgagors and tenants only to have them removed by the Liberal Party government in 1932. All over the country workers, who were the backbone of Australian progress, continued to face eviction at the end of a baton.
The Clara Street riot and trial brought the social challenges and desperation of the Depression to the surface. From 1933, the economic effects of the depression started to dissipate, but the experience left many workers more radicalised and organised than ever before.
Today, the house in Clara Street still stands. The quiet treelined street belying the chaos that occurred here almost 90 years ago.
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