In the eighties Trafalgar Square became the scene, and, in a way, ...

In the eighties Trafalgar Square became the scene, and, in a way, the symbol, of Metropolitan disaffection, and in 1886 the police and the nerves of the capital were put to the test and found wanting. A demonstration, or two demonstrations,' met in the Square on a Sunday in February, and before the police recovered control of the situation the attendant roughs had helped themselves, it was rumoured, to some £150,000 of shopkeeper's goods.

A second performance in 1887 was more vigorously encountered; for the rest of the reign London maintained its habitual good-humoured tranquility; and the Dock Strike of 1889 showed the world that patience and self-discipline under suffering were not the virtues of Lancashire alone.

The alarm had been intensified by the magnitude of the London underworld, and the unknown efficacy of dynamite.

Assassination was the rarest of crimes in England, and the indiscriminating violence of the time fuse and the bomb had always been associated with foreigners. Now, in quick succession, there were attempts on Westminster Hall, on the House of Commons, three great railway stations, the Tower, London Bridge, and the Nelson column.