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100th ANNIVERSARY OF THE GENERAL STRIKE (UK)

The General Strike of 1926

In 1925, the year before the General Strike, the Conservative Party—led by Stanley Baldwin—replaced the Labour Government.  That had been the first ever Labour Government in the UK:  it was a minority administration holding less than 200 seats in a 700 seat parliament.

Under the Conservative Government which replaced Labour,  Winston Churchill was Chancellor, and one of the first acts of his administration was to return the pound to the Gold Standard—a connection which was suspended on the outbreak of  WW 1 in 1914.  

However this change meant that the value of the Pound fell in real terms, which made British exports artificially expensive.

With profits falling, the mine owners set out to cut miners’ wages.

In1925, the Baldwin-led Government stepped in to avoid immediate conflict by subsidising miners’ wages.

It set up the Samuel Commission to investigate the Coal industry.

The Commission later recommended reorganising the industry:  but it still advocated wage reductions, which angered miners. 

When subsidies ended in 1926, Mine Owners announced:  Lower Wages and Longer Hours.

The miners refused to countenance this, claiming that they were already worse off than they had been in 1914.   Miners  summarised it all up by their slogan: “Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day”.

In April 1926, the owners posted notices saying employees would be locked out—sacked, in other words—unless they agreed to a much lower wage and a longer working day. 

It was a deliberate move designed to provoke a showdown and the miners took up the challenge.

They turned to the Union movement to support them, arguing that, if the miners were forced to take pay cuts, then other workers would be forced down the same route. 

The Trade Union Congress (TUC) agreed and declared a General Strike for the first week of May:  Monday, 3rd May, 1926.

On that day, Britain’s miners walked out and, in a move of solidarity, workers from other industries joined them.   This was the first ever General Strike in Britain!  By 4th May 1926 the number of strikers had reached 1.5 million.

While the Trade Unionists finalised their plans, the Conservative Government prepared to foil the strikers. 

The Government was well-prepared and kept essential services running using volunteers and Emergency Powers.

Hyde Park in London was turned into a vast depot for food and essential supplies:  3,000 lorries were parked there, with military guards posted on the gates.  The Times wrote—

“that unless councils of reason prevail, we are within a few hours of the gravest domestic menace which has hung over this nation since the fall of the Stuarts.’* 

It was almost impossible to be neutral:  everyone was either for the Strike or adamantly against it.

The Middle classes were almost uniformly against;  the ranks of the pro-Government supporters were swelled by students from Oxford and Cambridge.

Breaking the Strike was placed on a patriotic par with fighting the Germans in 1914. 

On 5th May 1926, at the height of the Strike, the Government announced that it intended to recruit 50,000 Specials in London and to mobilise 200,000 second-Reserve policemen throughout the country.

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TRADE UNION CONGRESS position—The General Council’s responsibilities and field of activities had become very wide;  but the powers they had been accorded by the Unions in Congress were still limited.  Some of these limitations were exposed in the course of the “General”, or national, Strike of 1926:  in which the TUC’s powers to  “co-ordinate industrial action”, including action for the settlement of disputes, were shown to be still incomplete.

At the time, when the miners themselves had failed to make any headway towards the settlement of their claims, a Conference of Trade Union Executives was called by the General Council, to consider co-ordinated action in support of the miners, and to give the TUC Authority to handle the dispute. 

Mr, Herbert Smith, for the Miners, said they understood the position was that all negotiations would now be carried on through the General Council but that they, as the Miners’ Federation, would be consulted.

The General Council came within an ace of negotiating a fair settlement;  but, when printers at the Daily Mail refused  to print the paper because of a leading article hostile to the Strike, the Conservative Government—whose brutally deflationist back-to-the-Gold-Standard policy had led to the situation—seized the opportunity to break off the negotiations with the General Council.

The National Strike began on 3rd May 1926;  and, as it proceeded, it become clear that the question of who was entitled to agree a settlement on behalf of the striking Unions had not been explicitly decided in advance. 

The General Council and the Miners’ Federation each claimed that they themselves were the only people so entitled.

Both sides stuck to their guns, which by now were pointing  in quite different directions.   And so, in this disastrously un-co-ordinated situation, the General Council called off the General Strike, on Wednesday 12th May 1926, and the miners were left to go it alone. (The History of the T.U.C. 1868-1968 – A Pictorial Survey of a Social Revolution-Published by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress, 1968)

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The TUC became increasingly worried the Strike was losing momentum and could turn into a broader, uncontrollable conflict.   There was little sign of concessions from the Government or Mine Owners. 

The TUC feared potential violence or revolutionary escalation, which they wanted to avoid.

The Strike ended without achieving its main goal:  protecting coal miners’ wages and working conditions. 

The miners themselves continued striking on their own for another seven months, but were eventually forced back to work on worse terms.

In 1927, the Government passed the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927, which restricted Trade Union power, including banning General Strikes.

The Strike ended in a clear defeat for the Unions, weakening organised labour in Britain for years afterward.

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TYPOGRAPHICAL ASSOCIATION: 

The 1926 General Strike—

“The strike was only short-lived, from 4 to 12 May, the status quo being restored by an agreement on 27 May, but it left a residuum of bitterness and distrust among employers very harmful to industrial relations in the next few years.  Many firms refused to reinstate strike hands and went non-union, or became ‘open houses’, or established ‘house unions’, to weaken trade union loyalty and guard against future ‘lightning strikes’, The anti-union attitude become much stronger: many Typographical Association [TA] Members were induced or forced, on threat of dismissal, to drop their cards, while the Federation of Master Printers seems to have deliberately encouraged the ‘open’ house’ system.

“The General Strike cost the TA about £55,000. The Association was now practically bankrupt and remained so until the end of the depression in the early thirties” (The Typographical Association:  Origins and History up to 1949 by A.E. Musson, Oxford University Press, 1954).

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Support?

There was very little violent conflict during the General Strike, despite the fierce pickets and armoured cars on the streets.  Talk of ‘Revolution’ was just that:  talk, a fact noted by King George V who wrote in his diary that 

“. . . our dear old country can well be proud of itself.  It shows what wonderful people we are”.

The King himself was more even-handed in his attitude to the strikers than many among the upper and middle classes, once declaring:   “Try living on their wages before you judge them”.

On Sunday, 9th May 1926, Cardinal Francis Bourne, Archbishop of Westminster, made a public declaration that the strike was “a sin against the obedience which we owe to God”. 

• The fall of the Stuart dynasty (1603–1714) was not merely a threat to the nation, but a direct response by the nation to the profound threats it perceived from the Crown.  The Stuart era was defined by intense conflict over the absolute power of kings, religious freedom, and the constitutional rights of Parliament, leading to civil war, the execution of one king, and the deposition of another. 

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Irish Consequences!

When the General Strike started in Britain on Monday, 3rd May 1926, the Free State Government announced that the situation should not be used as an excuse for any increase in the price of essential commodities.  Coal was immediately rationed in the Six Counties, and steamship services between Britain and the Free State were greatly curtailed:  with the result that before long 400 labourers were laid off in Dublin Port;  within a few days that number had grown to a 1,000. 

A State of Emergency was declared in the North, and the mails for Belfast were carried by naval destroyers.

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“The Irish Transport & General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) was “not called upon to take a direct part” in the ‘great struggle of the British Miners in May 1926.  But matters were “closely watched”, not least for the “effect on our membership”, by a specially convened NEC meeting.  They were “prepared to co-operate in any way that would serve the common interests of the working-class in both islands”.  

It suggested to the TUC & LP that the British TUC should delegate control of the strike“so far as it might be necessary to supplement action in Great Britain”. 

Were this done the ITGWU “would be prepared to respond to any instructions given”.  A “small token of recognition” was made, with £100 being sent to the Miners’ Lock-Out Fund, not least in “recognition of help received from the Miners by this Union in past years”—a reference to 1913.  

Branches assisted visiting Miners’Delegations “during their long and heroic struggle” (Organising History-A Centenary of SIPTU, 1909-2009, Francis Devine.  Gill & Macmillan, 2009))

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