On 31 October 1923 Melbourne was rocked by riots and looting lasting 3 days. Trams were overturned, three people died, 78 stores looted, and a third of Victoria’s police was discharged.

On Wednesday night, 31 October, 1923 and on the eve of Melbourne’s Spring Racing Carnival Victoria Police went on strike, initially with 29 constables refusing duty. At the time, Victoria Police was understaffed and poorly paid and had no pension to protect them into their retirement. To add insult to injury, the Victorian government sent in supervisors in plain clothes to secretly monitor police and haunt them as they went about their duties. This was the final straw. Just before 10pm on the 31 October when the night shit was about to begin some officers refused duty.

The Commissioner of Police immediately summoned 100 other cops to take over night shift but when they arrived they too joined the strike. Two days later, hundreds more police had joined the strike leaving only the smallest contingent of cops patrolling Melbourne, retired police were recalled to help during the strike. Striking police formed picket lines in the centre of the city and they would yell out to the "scab” police that didn’t strike with them. Let’s call the group of cops that didn’t strike “scabs” from now on because it’s just easier.

At the corner of Swanston and Bourke Streets, one of these scabs was directing traffic when he suddenly became surrounded by hundreds of angry people, so he fled into a shop. When reinforcements arrived to help free him the mob of striking police and their supporters turned on the scabs and chased them into Town Hall. By midnight the scabs had managed to control the city again, but things were about to get worse because the following morning was Derby Day and thousands of people were expected to pour into the city.

With most police still on strike, at Melbourne Town Hall, Victoria Police clerks enrolled anyone off the street who wanted to be a cop and gave them special armbands to denote their status as newly appointed “Special Constables”.

Melbourne was a tinderbox, on the afternoon of Derby Day a scab was charged by the rioting cops and the scabs fought back smashing anyone they could with batons and suddenly it was a melee. The scabs were outnumbered and retreated for their own safety, leaving the city to the mob. This happened at the worst time possible because pubs were beginning to empty as they all closed at 6pm by law and sunburn crowds were also pouring in to the city after Derby Day, everyone joined in.

Things went wild.

People started throwing bottles, bricks, glass, metal, rocks, sticks, whatever they could get their hands on- they weren’t fighting for better working conditions anymore, everyone was just fighting because they could. There were people bleeding and wounded everywhere in the streets. It was estimated there by the evening of Derby day 12,000 people were rioting in Melbourne.

Some drunk sailors coming in from the Port of Melbourne tried to control the crowd by swinging metal boot stands at the mobs to hold them back, they failed miserably. Looters broke in to the Leviathan department store in the city to take whatever they could grab.

It was all stolen. 

Other shops were targeted all over Melbourne with tobacconists being particularly popular. One looter almost had his hand severed by the glass in a shop front as he reached in to take what wasn’t his. Some of the Special Constables tried to bring some order to the crowd by smashing anyone they could with batons.

Things were so desperate that the Victorian government requested that all men in the theatres and picture shows in the city that night immediately volunteer to become Special Constables. At Hoyts Pictures some 200 people agreed on the spot. The Scabs fired shots above the crowd to try and dispel them but they just managed to cause a stampede making everything worse.

By 9:30 pm that night the government had enlisted hundreds of Special Constables, in this photo you can see them patrolling Bourke Street, and they managed to calm the rioting. When the dust had settled, there were 78 city shops looted, over $5,000,000 in damages (in today figures), 400 injuries, 55 arrests, and at least three deaths. The following day 100,000 people came just to gawk at the mess from the day before fuelling fears of another day of rioting.

Defence personnel leave was cancelled and all men had to report to their bases. Soldiers arrived at Flinders Street armed with bayonets and live ammunition, the machine guns at Victoria Barracks on St Kilda Road were readied. Even though there were some small bursts of violence and rioting by this time there were 2,000 police, mostly Special Constables and they quashed the remaining violence.

Did you know this happened? No? That’s for a reason, the government wanted this forgotten.

The federal government banned any export of the newsreels of what had happened in Melbourne so that no one would see the anarchy in the streets. Not one of the 636 police strikers got their jobs back even though largely they got what they were striking for.

The Special Constables remained on duty and were led in their service to Victoria by a certain Sir John Monash.

Sources:

• https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12177894

• https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/flashback-1923-police-strike-melbourne-descends-into-anarchy-20181031-p50d58.html