When the violence began in 1948, the hostels in which black sailors lived were once again targeted. When, on the second day of the disturbances, a mob two thousand strong attacked one hostel, the police responded exactly as they had done thirty years earlier during the disturbances in Great George Square that led to the death of Charles Wootton: they raided the hostel and arrested the black men trapped inside. What followed in Liverpool was intergenerational distrust of the police by the black community that lingered on into the 1980s.
