Dod Street gave rise to the expression "the Dod Street trick" used in socialist politics.
 The police felt these meetings were subversive and sought to prevent them by arresting demonstrators for highway obstruction.
 Since there was no traffic to obstruct — it was a street of canal-side factories on a Sunday — the police were perceived as denying freedom of speech.

  The Dod Street trick, devised to counter this, was thus described by Bernard Shaw:
Find a dozen... who are willing to get arrested at the rate of one a week by speaking in defiance of the police.
 In a month or two, the repeated arrests, the crowds which they attract, the scenes which they provoke, the sentences passed by the magistrates... and the consequent newspaper descriptions, rouse sufficient public feeling to force the Home Secretary to give way whenever the police are clearly in the wrong,
 which is what happened.
 Public indignation gathered enormous crowds of people — only a very few of which were socialists — and they were let alone.

The image captioned The law blacks William Morris' boots is a political caricature mocking class justice and Morris' genteel socialism.
At a trial in Arbour Square magistrates court, plebeian demonstrators had been found guilty and punished, but Morris was only dismissed with a warning.
It symbolically has the law blacking Morris' boots in Dod Street — his foot rests on comrades who did get jail time or "smarting" fines — while on his banner is an ironical reference to his high-flown poem The Earthly Paradise.
Dod Street gave rise to the expression "the Dod Street trick" used in socialist politics.  The police felt these meetings were subversive and sought to prevent them by arresting demonstrators for highway obstruction.  Since there was no traffic to obstruct — it was a street of canal-side factories on a Sunday — the police were perceived as denying freedom of speech.
  The Dod Street trick, devised to counter this, was thus described by Bernard Shaw:
Find a dozen... who are willing to get arrested at the rate of one a week by speaking in defiance of the police.  In a month or two, the repeated arrests, the crowds which they attract, the scenes which they provoke, the sentences passed by the magistrates... and the consequent newspaper descriptions, rouse sufficient public feeling to force the Home Secretary to give way whenever the police are clearly in the wrong,
 which is what happened.  Public indignation gathered enormous crowds of people — only a very few of which were socialists — and they were let alone.
The image captioned The law blacks William Morris' boots is a political caricature mocking class justice and Morris' genteel socialism. At a trial in Arbour Square magistrates court, plebeian demonstrators had been found guilty and punished, but Morris was only dismissed with a warning. It symbolically has the law blacking Morris' boots in Dod Street — his foot rests on comrades who did get jail time or "smarting" fines — while on his banner is an ironical reference to his high-flown poem The Earthly Paradise.
Limehouse Cut