WE’VE heard of bread riots, race riots, and even cheese riots — but the category of “peace riot” must surely be a pretty select one.

It sounds a bit like a joke, but the Luton Peace Riots, which took place between July 19-21 1919, weren’t funny at all: there were many injuries, hundreds of thousands of pounds-worth of damage was done to the town centre, the town hall was burned down and subsequently demolished, and eventually only a military occupation ended the uprising.

And all of this was over the handling of the armistice celebrations.

Men returned from the first world war (the earliest recorded use of that phrase, by the way, was 1914) to find that life had indeed changed — it had changed for the worse.

Rents and prices were up, wages were down, jobs were fewer, and the poor old soldier, as is always the case, was abandoned by king and country the moment he got off the boat.

Unsurprisingly, then, clashes between ex-servicemen and the authorities were common throughout Britain. There were several rival ex-service groups, each trying to organise the demobbed into a politically influential force.

Although it’s not something you’ll hear mentioned often on Poppy Day, what is now the Royal British Legion has its roots partly in revolutionary ex-military militants who, at the end of WWI, were demanding the nationalisation of land, abolition of the Lords, universal suffrage for men and women, sexual equality in wages, no more war, and a welfare state. War profiteering by businessmen was a major sore point among those who had gone to war while the rich got richer.

Luton, a manufacturing town in Bedfordshire, suffered terrible losses in battle. It’s estimated that about one in 50 of the population died; if you remove from that calculation all women, children, the elderly and so on, you’re left with an astonishing figure.

“Peace day” on July 19 — formally the National Celebrations of Peace — was a government-mandated combination of thanksgiving and beano, in which everyone would have a glass or two, and a twirl round the dance floor, and end the evening misty-eyed and thankful.

It’s hard to imagine how Luton council could have screwed this up any more thoroughly if they had set out to do so as part of some bizarre competition.

This was a day on which to mark the peace won for the nation by its valiant soldiers, sailors and airmen. So, naturally, the well-to-do and politically powerful of the town decided not to include any actual soldier, sailor or airman in its planning.

The best thing to do, the burghers of Luton agreed, would be to have a mayor’s banquet at the town hall, for men only, which the mayor’s invited guests would enjoy free of charge (financed by a rate rise), while others could get in by paying 15 shillings per head.

Obviously, working-class ex-servicemen and other such riff-raff wouldn’t be able to afford that, thus ensuring that only the right sort attended.

The Discharged Sailors and Soldiers Association applied for permission to hold a drumhead mass in a local park; this was refused. It was as if the Luton Establishment was saying to those who had actually fought in the war: “This day is nothing to do with you lot, mind your own business.”

On “peace day” itself, a march past the town hall of discharged servicemen turned violent when the mayor refused to appear to defend the council’s decisions to the crowd.

A small police presence failed to prevent the masses entering the building, finding the room set up for the banquet, and setting about the noble task of smashing everything they could get their hands on. Windows were broken and furniture was hurled through them onto the street below. The bunting and lights of the celebration were destroyed.

Police reinforcements managed to clear the town hall, and into the evening baton charges were used to keep it and other targeted buildings safe. But the anger of the people was not to be denied, and finally, with generous applications of petrol, several fires were successfully started. The fire brigade had no chance against the protesters, who hacked their hoses to pieces.

Selective looting of shops kept the rioters in both fuel and bottles. (And pianos. I’ve come across this detail in reports of several British riots — music shops being broken into so that their pianos can be dragged into the street for the purpose of entertainment and morale-boosting singalongs. In Luton, apparently, the tune chosen for the job was Ivor Novello’s Keep the Home Fires Burning.)

In the early hours of the following morning, the army arrived in number and several days of martial law ensued. Many of those arrested after the Luton Peace Riot received harsh prison sentences.

Where the town hall once stood, a war memorial in the form of a peace statue was erected in 1922. It carried the names of the local dead and, of course, a generation later, of those who died in the second world war (a phrase first used in 1919).

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