The YWRSL Rifle Sections

The rifle sections are the mainstay of the armies of the York and West Riding Socialist League. They are made up of workers fit enough to fight, but without the specialist skills that make them suited to driving, engineering, or assault actions. They have no formal uniform beyond a plain red armband that marks them out as socialists, and most wear the same clothes they wear at the factory floor - hardwearing denim trousers and jackets, good solid boots, and the ubiquitous flat cap. Unlike the more professional storm sections and the elite Martyr's Brigade, many of the riflemen remain in employment in their factories and collieries, downing tools to pick up weapons when called upon for the defence of the people.

Because the YWRSL has no prior stockpile of weapons or formal routes of supply, the riflemen are armed with a wide variety of common rifles. British Army SMLEs are available, though rare, and usually captured from fallen enemies. More common are Krag-Jørgensen and Swedish Mauser pattern rifles, acquired at high cost in the early days of the war from North Sea gun runners from Scandinavia. In recent years, links with the forces of the Liverpool Free State have allowed numbers of Soviet-made Mosin rifles and DP machine guns to travel along the Leeds-Liverpool canal and into the hands of YWRSL militiamen. At polytechnics and engineering plants across the county, trials are being made into locally designed and locally made weapons to reduce reliance on outside sources, but unlike the cheap and successful Dawson pattern sub-machine gun, no rifle has emerged in any number that is more affordable than the guns of Liverpool. Whatever weapons they are armed with, they are amply supplied with ammunition from the former Royal Ordnance Factory in Leeds, now under the control of the Barnbow Workers’ Union.