1946 "Piccadilly Disturbance"

On a snowy evening on 27 September 1946, two white women and two Jamaican RAF servicemen were walking through the city after a meal at the Cosmopolitan. Between the Grand Hotel and Woolworths, they were abused by a group of whites, resulting in a brawl that led the death of one of the latter, John Smith aged 22 from Fallowfield. Jamaican Gerald Beard, aged 23, who was stationed with the RAF in Cambridgeshire was charged with murder. In response, Ras Makonnen and some of the Jamaican service personnel in Manchester organised for Norman Manley, King's Council, to travel from Jamaica to Manchester to lead the defence. As Makonnen remembered:

"we could easily get some of our European friends to help us, but I think that we should really get a black lawyer to defend this man here. We want to project the image that the Black man is capable of carrying on his own defence".

Manley successfully argued that that there was no direct evidence linking Beard to the killing, and that the wounds appeared to have been caused by a right-handed assailant while the accused was left-handed. The case was dismissed.

Sources: Makonnen, Pan-Africanism from within (1975), pp.141-143; The Times, 28/11/1946, p. 2.; Manchester Guardian, 28/9/1946, p.6; Manchester Guardian, 23/10, p.8; Manchester Guardian, 28/11/1946, p. 3.