Truncheons against punks
Ademo in the sacred Square Mile — whatever next? Answer, no doubt: another one. They have become quite familiar: miners marching through with bands and banners, or occasional Stop The City days, when the place is invaded by (mostly cheerful) anarchists, known to the beleaguered inhabitants as Punks Against Profits. Old heads shake glumly. When, they ask, was the City ever subject to such indignities? In the Gordon Riots? In the Peasants' Revolt — when the Lord Mayor knifed Wat Tyler, and earned the City the dagger in the first quarter of its coat of arms? But perhaps peace in the City is a rarity. H. G. de Frayne, who joined the Bank of England almost a hundred years ago, describes in his memoirs the scene he found: Unemployment was rife . . . Day after day, men in their thousands poured along Corn- hill and King William Street with banners saying 'Give us Work or Bread!' and here and there 'We will have Work or Bread!' They looked half-starved and hopeless to me, with very little fight in them. But there were of course professional trouble-makers amongst them, and there was widespread damage and looting in the West End. The Old Lady, after consultation with the City Police, sounded the alarm and called for volunteers from the staff as special con- stables.
De Frayne was issued with a pair of armlets and a large wooden truncheon, which had apparently been kept in reserve since the Chartist riots of 1848. It would, he said, have broken any head it hit. Today's City men, and maybe today's punks, do not know what they are missing.
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