UK race riots – The murder of Charles Wotten

Charles Wotten was a 24-year-old ship’s fireman from Bermuda who was murdered by an angry white mob during the Liverpool race riots of 1919.

What led to Charles Wotten’s murder?

Since the 16th century, the Black presence in London and Liverpool had been noticeable but Liverpool’s Black population grew dramatically during the war as Black people were made welcome by industries such as chemicals, sugar refining and munitions in order to fill the labour shortage created when white British workers enlisted in the armed forces.

Liverpool became a powder keg at the end of the First World War thanks to large scale demobilisation and unemployment. The city’s Black population swelled to 5,000. Tensions mounted as black and white ex-servicemen competed for work.

The situation reached boiling point when 120 Black workers employed in the sugar refineries and oilcake mills were sacked because whites refused to work alongside them. Many were low on money and were evicted from their lodgings. They joined several hundred destitute black ex-servicemen, some of whom had lost limbs in the war.

The Colonial Office was petitioned to repatriate the men with a 5 shillings bursary for food, clothing and tools. At the same time, a deputation representing 5,000 jobless white ex-servicemen complained that black workers were undercutting them in the wages market.

Mob mentality

The situation reached boiling point when 120 Black workers employed in the sugar refineries and oilcake mills were sacked because whites refused to work alongside them. Many were low on money and were evicted from their lodgings. They joined several hundred destitute black ex-servicemen, some of whom had lost limbs in the war.

The Colonial Office was petitioned to repatriate the men with a 5 shillings bursary for food, clothing and tools. At the same time, a deputation representing 5,000 jobless white ex-servicemen complained that black workers were undercutting them in the wages market.

The port was a racial tinderbox – and on 4 June of that year, it exploded when West Indian, John Johnson, was brutally stabbed in the face by two Scandinavian sailors because Johnson refused to give them a cigarette in a pub. The following night at around ten o’clock, Johnson’s friends went back to the pub in retaliation. During the fight, a policeman was kicked unconscious.

The police responded by raiding a row of hostels and other houses in Upper Pitt Street, occupied by the Black community. There was resistance to this incursion and four officers were injured two of them sustained gunshot wounds, seemingly from the same bullet.

An enraged mob gathered outside the houses. Charles Wotton who had no involvement in the fighting ran out and was pursued by two policemen and a crowd of around 300.

They chased him half a mile to the Queen’s Dock and surrounded him at the water’s edge. A police officer took hold of him but Wotton was ripped out of the officer’s grasp by the mob. Bricks and stones were thrown at him, driving Wotton into the water.

Some reports say that members of the crowd at that point shouted, ‘Let him drown’… as Wotton floundered in the water trying to swim. A detective climbed down a ship’s rope and was about to pull the man out of the water when a stone thrown from the middle of the crowd struck Wotton in the head and he sank. His battered corpse was later recovered. Although a number of police officers were at the scene on the night of the murder no arrests were made.

Inquest

The police raid on Upper Pitt Street continued and eleven Black men appeared in court the next morning, several with bandaged heads. One was wearing his naval uniform. All were charged with attempted murder on the flimsiest identification evidence.

Over the next three days, white mobs up to 10,000 strong ruled Liverpool’s streets, attacking any Black people they saw.

As for the actual murder of Charles Wotton, no one was questioned. The inquest into his murder opened and closed in a single day a week later. It was said that the dead man was reasonably believed to have fired at the police and that he was escaping lawful arrest. The stone that hit him was thrown from the middle of the crowd while a police officer tried to rescue him. The jury recorded these events without even calling the event an unlawful killing.

In his book, Black & British: a Forgotten History historian David Olusoga concludes that Charles Wotten was lynched, given the public nature of the act and the inability or unwillingness of the law to determine who was at fault.

In May 2016, a BBC commemorative plaque was dedicated to Wotten at the site of his death. The plaque restores his correct name, which was misspelt in the police, coroner and newspaper reports as Wooten or Wootten.