On 29 April 2026, a special panel discussion was convened by the History & Policy Trades Union and Employment Forum at the IHR to launch Jonathan Schneer’s Nine Days in May: the General Strike of 1926 (Oxford University Press). The event was chaired by Forum member and IHR fellow, Dr Jim Moher, author of the first biography of Walter Citrine, Forgotten Statesman of the Trades Union Congress. Speaking on the panel were Emeritus Professor Jonathan Schneer (Georgia Institute of Technology), Paul Nowak (General Secretary of the TUC), Dr Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite (Associate Professor of History at University College London), and Jon Cruddas, (former Labour MP and Shadow Minister and author of A Century of Labour).Jim Moher has written the following account of the discussion.
Professor Schneer recalled the scene a century ago when coal was key to the British economy and the Miners Federation of Great Britain, (the MFGB), were over a million strong in all the coal districts of the north of England, South Wales and Scotland. At the time, they were the strongest union organisationally in Britain and had a proud record of political as well as industrial involvement, originally with the Liberal Party and then with the Labour Party from 1911.
The MFGB sponsored over twenty-five Members of Parliament and actively supported the TUC Parliamentary Committee to 1921, while helping sustain the Labour Party generally in Parliament. They assisted the passage of much progressive social as well as union-friendly legislation over the years, but were especially strong in pressing for legislation to introduce a minimum wage, reduce working hours and nationalisation of the coal industry. Since 1911, with leaders such as Robert Smillie, (a leading member of the ILP with Kier Hardie and an MP), they campaigned vigorously in Parliament to have the industry nationalised. Their members’ wages and standard of living had improved during the world war due to peak production and shorter hours (seven hours a day to six by a 1917 Act of Parliament). For a short time during the absence of German (Ruhr) and French mines in 1923/4, they enjoyed better wages and conditions, but now they faced severe cuts in wages and longer hours as the coal owners reacted to tightening export markets, inflated prices in an industry which had many uncompetitive small mines. The industry, which had just been returned to the private sector by the government after the war, also faced many challenges, such as from new energy sources, electricity and oil. The coal exporting areas (Scotland and South Wales especially), were also hit badly by the decision of the Conservative government in 1925, (Winston Churchill was Chancellor of the Exchequer), to take Britain back to the pre-war ‘Gold Standard’ parity of $4.86 to the Pound. This overvalued the Pound by over 10% and contributed to making British coal exports uneconomic.
Nine Days in May describes a dispersed industry, spread across the country (reproducing a rare map of the coal districts), in 2,500 collieries owned by 1,400 separate companies, but 613 of them produced nearly 95% of the country’s coal. Some were vast operations, employing thousands of men owned by large magnates such as Lords Londonderry and Northumberland (Durham), who got rich mineral royalties also. But the majority of coal-owners were small, “little petti-flogging pits knocking about five or six owners and four or five sons living out of them watching about twenty men work.”’
After the return of the industry to these private coal-owners in 1919, they revived and strengthened the employers’ association, the Mining Association of Great Britain (MAGB). They were now represented by two ‘hard-nosed’ directors, the President, Sir Evan Williams and vice-President, Sir Adam Nimmo, ‘both from the hard-hit coal exporting regions of Scotland and South Wales’. Empowered to act for their smaller Council, they soon set about proposing wage cuts or reduced longer hours, with the threat of dismissal notices to every miner. They won their first big national battle in 1921 against the Miners Federation of Great Britain (MFGB), after a fourteen week strike, when the Triple Alliance with the train and road transport workers/dockers unions, collapsed.
Again in 1925, the MAGB returned to impose further cuts in miners’ wages by between 10 and 32% per shift, or to add an hour to their six hour working day. After futile negotiations with MFGB, they posted notices at every pit announcing wholesale dismissals if the miners would not accept the cuts. Naturally, the miners were determined to resist and their members in the mining villages were led by tough leaders of a union which referred all key decisions to their votes in lodges, districts and counties. Herbert Smith, the Yorkshire area President, a man of few but unflinching words; Arthur Cook, the passionate Secretary from the militant South Wales Miners Federation (‘the Fed’), and W. P. Richardson, the Secretary of the Durham Miners Association and MFGB Treasurer. Cook popularised what became the miners’ slogan, ‘not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day’, which turned out to be their rigid response in all discussions with the TUC negotiators also (whom they had initially given authority to negotiate for them with the government).
In this way, Professor Schneer went on to present an outline of Nine Days in May for the 100th anniversary of the General Strike of 1926. Our other speakers’ – Jon Cruddas, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite and Paul Novak, made strong contributions on the same or related themes, a summary of which are captured below.
The panel of our General Strike event: left to right Jon Cruddas, Jim Moher (chair), Paul Novak, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite and Jonathan Schneer.
Big players in this historic confrontation were, of course, the workers and their unions of Britain and the Trades Union Congress, with over four million members. The miners were always a special case, their appalling conditions of work evoking strong sympathy in their many contests, (local, district and national) with the mine-owners. Jonathan captures vividly the condition of the coal miner underground hewing coal, even in 1926.
Memories were still vivid of the 1921 defeat, known as Black Friday when the leaders of the NUR (‘Jimmy’ Thomas), the Transport Workers Association, Robert Williams and Ernie Bevin (since become the massive T&GWU), were blamed for that collapse of solidarity with the miners. In 1925, the miners’ leaders appealed to the TUC to embargo coal from the pits to industry, power stations and ports. This time, a left-led TUC responded positively and the transport unions, rail and road, refused to transport that coal to the power stations, industries or ports. This threat persuaded the Conservative government, led by Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, to take an interest and so, they got the coal-owners to give ground by withdrawing their dismissal notices. Baldwin also relented over the miners’ demand that they continue the government subsidy of coal-mining, at least until an inquiry was conducted on the state of the industry. Baldwin appointed a leading Liberal politician, Lord Herbert Samuel and other commissioners (William Beveridge was one), to investigate the coal industry and report by March 1926. But that Conservative government, furious about being ‘held over a barrel’ by the TUC, determined to prepare to meet any such future challenge to a government.
The miners, the TUC and the whole trade union movement reacted exuberantly, and immediately celebrated a great ‘victory’, which became known as “Red Friday”, a redemption for ‘Black Friday’ of 1921, which had hung like a cloud on the conscience of all union activists. Citrine, as Acting General Secretary, reminded the Special Industrial Committee of the TUC handling the dispute, that that they had only won a ‘conflict of outposts’, not a major battle.
In September 1925, as a very left-wing Assistant General Secretary, Citrine had produced an article for the labour movement publication, Labour Magazine entitled, ‘Lessons from the Mining’ Dispute,’ backed up by speeches. He warned the entire labour movement publicly against an ‘inflated sense of victory’ and the need to prepare for the real contest. Interestingly, this article was sent to fellow cabinet minister, Winston Churchill by the Minister of Labour, Arthur Steel Maitland MP, who said, ‘it is well worth reading’. It would have been forwarded to Baldwin also and his Cabinet ministers dealing with the preparations, by Churchill and the ‘hawks’ as evidence of the TUC’s intentions. This would have strengthened the case in the Cabinet for ‘taking on’ the unions and not negotiating terms. As Jonathan noticed, Citrine followed this up when Acting General Secretary in January/February 1926 with a seven-page memorandum setting out the steps needed in his opinion to prepare for a Strike if the Samuel Report failed to deliver. This was discussed with the key miners’ leaders (Smith, Cook and Richardson) and referred to the MFGB executive. It was again considered on the TUC Special Industrial Committee (SIC), but it was ‘not proceeded with’ or copied to the General Council or Congress at Scarborough that year. Jonathan thought it was because he was then too ‘junior’ to carry sufficient influence with the senior SIC members, Pugh and Thomas. Smith and Cook expressed their appreciation to Citrine, but also wanted to wait for the Samuel Report. [Jim Moher, Walter Citrine, Forgotten Statesman of the Trades Union Congress, pp. 79-80].
Even the miners’ leaders preferred to await the Samuel Report in the hope that it would provide a basis for settling the underlying dispute. But they hadn’t bargained for the feverish and comprehensive state machine’s preparations then taking place quietly all over the country on the government side!
But Baldwin’s government’s ‘retreat’ was tactical, though some in the Cabinet and Conservative Party saw it as bowing to union power. Union militants were growing in confidence and assertiveness, as seen at the exuberant Scarborough TUC Congress in September 1925. But Baldwin’s hesitations and parleying with the TUC disguised a firm determination to confront the unions when (and not before), ‘he was ready’. This was after intensive preparations by their Supply & Transport Committee under John Anderson, an under-Secretary in the Home Office. They mobilised every agency of the state after ‘Red Friday’ in July 1925. As Prime Minister, Baldwin made many effective presentations to the Commons, in the governments’ British Gazette, in newspaper coverage and especially in his BBC broadcasts, ‘framing’ the strike effectively as a challenge to the constitution and parliamentary government. BBC broadcasts were even denied to the leader of the Opposition Ramsay MacDonald and for a time even to the Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, which sought a settlement. At the same time , John Reith at the BBC, extensively covered the Catholic Cardinal Bourne’s denunciation of the Strike as ‘sin’! Baldwin and his government would use the nine months of the inquiry to get ready to face down that union power, even in a general strike, if necessary. By comparison, the TUC efforts in the British Worker to disclaim any such challenge failed to convince.
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The Samuel Report recommendations were released on March 10, 1926. It was a “curate’s egg”, but was thought to generally favour the miners (certainly the coal owners didn’t like it, preferring to face a strike). It rejected an increase in working hours from six to seven, and criticised the current organisation of the mines, making many recommendations for positive reforms. The leading members of the TUC team, Arthur Pugh of the Iron and Steel Workers and chair of the General Council and ‘Jimmy’ Thomas MP of the NUR and an influential former Labour Minister, close to Ramsay MacDonald, thought further negotiations on that basis could transform and modernise a re-organised industry. However, Samuel also said that the government subsidy should end and stipulated that some wage cuts were inevitable and must be negotiated as part of that re-organisation. For six weeks (March to April), owners’ and miners’ representatives haggled mainly over that.
So, on the day the government subsidy expired, 30th April, the owners, backed by Baldwin, ended those talks. The owners did want a strike. They thought they would win it, thereby permanently crippling the miners’ union. Conscious of the government’s preparations now, the TUC negotiators, and other leaders like Bevin, outside the main talks, tried desperately to get the miners’ leaders to compromise. To this end, those like Thomas and Bevin at the General Council, drafted and haggled over different ‘formulas’ (as wage negotiators do), criss-crossing London to meet eminent conciliators and arbitrators as intermediaries. At numerous meetings in Downing Street, they met with the miners’ leaders and then a small committee (Pugh, Thomas and Swales with Citrine as liaison Officer) met Baldwin, Lord Birkenhead and the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Horace Wilson), where they thought they were close to getting a deal. They sought to shift the miners’ leaders from ‘Smith’s ‘Nowt doing’ style,” to agreeing to discuss some wage reductions (not of the lower paid miners), as part of the radical reorganisation of the industry recommended by Samuel.
So, it was ‘a slap in the face’ for those TUC efforts when Baldwin called off the talks. Churchill for the Daily Mail rushed into the Cabinet to denounce an unofficial Fleet Street printers’ action in refusing to print that paper’s objectional editorial attacking the TUC. Baldwin and his Cabinet now treated the printers’ action as the start of the general strike (though they had already made ‘precautionary’ arrangements for the King to sign a State of Emergency Order, as had the TUC in sending notices to all unions as a precaution also). They ended the negotiations on that pretext. Professor Schneer thought the TUC leaders ‘reluctant’ (which they clearly were, hence, their efforts to avert the Strike), but even the Arthur Pugh, and Thomas, now recommended that the Strike should be decided by the meeting of hundreds of union executive’s delegates convened by the TUC at the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street on Thursday, 29 April. Pugh for the General Council (seconded by Thomas) and strongly supported by Bevin, now sought and obtained each union’s authority for a strike. One after the other (with three exceptions – one of them, ‘Havelock Wilson’s strikebreaking Sailors & Firemen’s union, would be quite damaging), they all went to the rostrum to support the General Council’s call for a general strike in support of the miners. Even Ramsay MacDonald, hardly a supporter of industrial as opposed to parliamentary action, made ‘a glorious speech’ (Citrine) in support.
This enthusiasm would be mirrored for the first few days of the strike, as almost two million workers in most industries and every part of the country, ‘downed tools’ in support of the miners. Even Baldwin and his Cabinet were surprised, but they were not deflected by this demonstration of union power, having framed it as a challenge to parliamentary government with the full support of the press and BBC. The unions ‘shuttered’ Britain’s heavy industries and much else. The country ground to a halt. There never had been anything like it. Strikers were giddy.
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Some on the far left and indeed in the government, thought the general strike could lead to revolution. Despite the TUC leaders’ insistence that their intention was purely for the government to bring the coal-owners back to the negotiating table, the sheer scale of the stoppage and impact on daily life, meant that Baldwin’s efforts to frame the Strike as a challenge to parliamentary government proved successful. His novel BBC broadcasts, in particular, were very effective. He persuaded many that the Strike threatened everything a government is supposed to ensure, most obviously provision of essential foods and services. Increasingly, the TUC leaders worried as to where it was going – their refusal of Russian funds showed this as they justifiably feared they would be pilloried for accepting ‘Russian Gold’. Their readiness to attach so much faith in Lord Samuel’s private initiative and church leaders’ conciliation efforts, showed their anxiety as did their attempts to persuade the miners’ leaders to compromise on the key wages’ issue. But Baldwin was playing to win, while the TUC, calling merely for a resumption of talks, was playing, at best, for a tie. The government, which had had nine months to prepare, now mobilized the army, navy, even the air force. Cabinet Ministers, civil servants, newly-appointed “Civil Commissioners” and their assistants, swung into carefully considered action. They recruited, trained, sent to work and paid hundreds of thousands of strike-breakers called “Volunteers;” also brutal “Specials” to augment the police force.
The TUC’s offer of cooperation with the government to manage essential services, especially food, was contemptuously ignored. However, they managed, despite some differences between road and rail unions, to keep some control. Their production of a bulletin by Daily Herald staff– ‘The British Worker’, (almost closed by the Home Secretary)though no match for the government andLords Northcliffe and Beaverbrook’s scandal sheets, served their efforts in controlling the Strike effectively. As Schneer concludes: ‘They did indeed perform prodigies of improvisation: when push came to shove, they did indeed know almost everything that they needed to do. The TUC’s General Council established committees to oversee Food and Essential Services, Public Services, Publicity, General Purposes, Enquiries and Transport, Powers and Orders. It appointed chairs and members; it apportioned staff. The committees swung into action. Some performed better than others, but by and large they imposed rough order over a vast terrain. Thus, the TUC counterposed against the government’s sleek machine, a spatchcocked but serviceable pickup truck which really did chug forward against mighty odds.”
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In 1926, there was no better-organized working class than the British, but powerful as it was, it could not force the British government to do something it did not want to do. Once the leaders of the TUC figured that out (some of them knew it from the beginning; they joined the battle against their better judgement) — and moreover realized they did not want to force it because victory would mean much more than a decent contract for the miners, it would mean they had defeated the government to get it for them — they called halt. They feared wining more than they feared losing. Of course, they wanted to replace the Conservative government, but only as the result of Labour winning a general election. None of the TUC leaders were revolutionaries.
Professor Schneer gave the audience a vivid flavour of what it was like during those Nine Days in May and vividly captures all sides of that titanic struggle. In addition to the army and navy, the activities of the “Specials,” a quarter million of them in the end, are tracked. The government gave them armbands, tin hats and Billy-clubs. The “Specials” were a hallmark of the General Strike, but mostly unloved. “We viewed them as “strike-breakers” plain and simple,” said a picket. In Ipswich, gentlemen “Specials,” belonging to the Ranelagh Polo Club, astride great galloping steeds, rode down picketers. Humbler “Specials” patrolled in mere automobiles and trucks. Brawls occurred everywhere, often. “
To do practically every job the strikers would not do, the Government also employed “Volunteers,” most of whom thought they were engaged in “a lark for the sake of their country.” Half a million of them staffed every sort of enterprise. Usually, the learning curve was not steep — unless they wanted to drive a train, in which case it was so steep they sometimes fell off. To cite one example, maybe the worst: on May 11, in Edinburgh, a passenger train and a goods train collided head on. Four died, thirteen suffered injuries requiring hospitalization. Perhaps needless to say, the train was manned by a volunteer crew.
Strikers hated “Volunteers” almost as much as they hated “Specials.” They thought the “Volunteer” strike-breakers stood between themselves and a decent standard of life. Again, citing one example among many: on Friday morning, May 7, five hundred miners “armed with stones and other missiles” descended upon the Glasgow tramway depot in Ruby Street “to prevent student volunteers who were sleeping there from coming out with the Corporation [tram] cars.” A melee ensued. “Windows were smashed.” Police arrived. “Sergeant McClintock suffered head injuries and a concussion when someone hit him with a brick. Robert McCartney was dashed through a shattered window and was so seriously injured that his condition is reported as critical.” Later, the undaunted miners “marched to the Student’s Union and challenged the students to a fight… Another conflict occurred in the evening, lasting fully three hours.”
And yet, when the strike finished, some ill-informed, boastful Britons congratulated themselves for living in a country where so peaceful a stoppage had taken place. True, there had been no armed rebellion, but violence bubbled beneath the surface almost always, almost everywhere. Whenever it broke through, however, it was disorganized, conducted by men armed with sticks and stones, never firearms, and with no greater purpose than to defend an aspect of the strike. Almost always police contained it; anyway, everyone knew that the army and navy stood behind the police.
As Professor Schneer concluded, in 1926, a spectre haunted British Conservatives and it was communism. According to the Member for Hitchin, Major G.M. Kindersley, Communists were undermining his country “not merely by destroying the patriotic and religious instincts, but also by deliberate sex corruption.” According to Viscount Blediso, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, “the tyranny of Bolshevism is becoming intolerable, and is ruining many poor & ignorant people,” by which he meant workers in the coalmines he owned. Moreover, according to none other than Conservative Home Secretary, William Joynson-Hicks (Jix), “Scratch a Socialist and you will find a Communist,” by which he meant scratch a member of the Labour Party, or the TUC, and you will find one. But in fact, as Home Secretary, he calmed down in chairing the Supply & Transport Committee. He had the cooler management of John Anderson, his junior minister, who ran every aspect of the impressive police and armed forces’ intervention and operations so effectively. Churchill, who had sought to ‘strangle Bolshevism in its cradle’ by intervening in the Russian civil war to support the Whites, though now Chancellor of the Exchequer had lost none of his bravado still. He urged the Cabinet to treat the miners’ union as an enemy and as we saw, triggered the Strike by his excited announcement of the unofficial printers’ actions. But Baldwin handled him skilfully, sidelining him to run the British Gazette during the strike, while the more sober ministers, Lord Birkenhead and Minister of Labour, Steel-Maitland and Sir Horace Wilson, the Cabinet Secretary, got on with dealing with the unions effectively.
Professor Schneer says that Joynson-Hicks did not understand what British Communists were up to in 1926. But then, who did? They should have been in their element in a General Strike. But he had twelve leading communists arrested and jailed for 6-12 months on charges of sedition, just before the Strike. A lot more could have been written about the Soviet communists’ role but historians seem to have concluded, that they were taken by surprise by the TUC’s action in calling it, that the failure of solidarity in 1921 (‘Black Friday’) would repeat itself in 1926. Yet, when it happened they were quick off the mark to offer to fund it, offering £26,000 to the TUC and practically bankrolling the MFGB for as long as they stayed out. The TUC naturally refused that ’Russian Gold’, so refuting the Daily Mail and Daily Express charges that they were ‘in league’ with communists. Although the CPSU archives on this episode have long been open, very little original research has been carried out and so the precise Soviet role (as opposed to that of local communists – 1200 of whom out of 6,000 CPGB members were arrested, an ‘astonishing proportion’).
In 1926, few Britons were thinking of the Russian Revolution of October 1917, but many were remembering the first days of World War I in August 1914. Some, volunteered to defend it from strikers. An equal number jumped to help the miners. Two million workers did back them up, just as their elders had backed up the soldiers eight years before. They were waging “an industrial crusade for emancipation.” “They were laying the foundations of a new society in which men, women and children would enjoy life in accordance with civilized conceptions.” “What we want in this country is a republic. I shall live under one yet,” declared a miner who was being questioned by police Another said that she stood for the “practical operation of Christ’s teaching, and the same spirit that animated His disciples. Jesus said, ‘Feed My Lambs.’ He did not say ‘Give thousands of pounds to the Duke of Northumberland.’”
In launching the strike, the TUC inadvertently opened Pandora’s box. Over nine days, it caught a glimpse of what was escaping from it — and slammed the lid shut — saving not only the government but themselves.
TUC leaders feared to win; and as the government machine reached high gear, began to think they could not win. So, they seized upon the return from holiday of Herbert Samuel, the main author of the report. He thought he was the man to end the strike. He interviewed the principals again, and followed up the Samuel Report with the Samuel Recommendations. These advised the government to reconvene negotiations; the miners to agree to discuss wage cuts; the employers to not victimize employees when they returned to work. Although Samuel told the TUC men that he had no remit from the government, he unscrupulously let them believe the government would accept his proposals. The TUC men accepted them, but not the miners who answered: “Nowt doing” once again. They would not discuss wage cuts until the wolf was scratching at their door.
By now, the TUC negotiators had had enough of miners’ intransigence: two million workers had risked all on their behalf, and faced what could be devastating defeat as a result. At noon on the nineth day of the Strike, May 12, a TUC delegation appeared at 10 Downing Street to call it off unconditionally. The delegation assumed that Baldwin accepted all Samuel’s recommendations. In fact, he accepted none. But finer feelings were absent later said Professor Schneers: ‘employers had no pity for local strike leaders who wanted their jobs back, they blacklisted them. And mine-owners had no sympathy for miners driven to accept what one owner himself called “a miserable wage,” after six months more futile resistance that left their cupboards completely empty and the wolf through the door and stalking the house. Yes: the miners had defied not only their hard-hearted employers, but also the hard-headed TUC general council when it called off the Strike — they continued to strike on their own, and went down to complete defeat.
In a masterful outline of his book to the large History & Policy Trade Union Forum audience, the author concluded: ‘the General Strike was a unique event in British history: an extraordinary demonstration of generosity on both sides; a matchless example of worker solidarity; all of it leading up to the greatest defeat British labor ever would experience. It takes its place as a monumental event in the country’s history for these reasons alone. But also, British workers and their leaders (most of them that is, not Arthur Scargill), learned vital lessons from it: first, never to strike when it suits your employer — unless it suits you better; second, to be very wary about declaring general strikes in the future, since an effective general strike inevitably threatens the government; third, and a corollary to number two, stick to the parliamentary road if possible. These lessons are as relevant today as they were a hundred years ago.’
Jon Cruddas followed by highlighting points for discussion. First, the venue of the Memorial Hall, Farringdon as the historic meeting place of generations of non-Conformists and Labour movement audiences. Ernest Bevin, a one-time Baptist preacher, exhorting all the union executive members that they must all throw in their lot with the miners – which they did! Secondly, the importance of ‘exiled or forgotten’ history but sadly, who writes it today? This book is a rare but so important piece of scholarship to pitch people back into our history. Thirdly, the lessons. Although there is no comparable turning point, it raises enormous questions. If the Strike won, what would have happened? Was the TUC challenge to that Conservative government a ‘game of bluff’ on both sides?
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite took a different approach recalling the miners’ recovery by 1976, when they won two major strikes in 1972 and ’74, but then lost the later titanic (but comparable battle of 1984/5. This reminded us of the British miners and Labour movements’ subsequent fortunes. She was mindful of how much things have changed since the 1920s – over 50% of trade unionists today are women and five major unions are led by women. She saw a stark contrast with the general strikers of 1926 and dwelt on women’s ostensibly minor role then. Nevertheless, whilst few women were involved in the Strike directly, many had a considerable, if traditional female, supportive role (apart from leading figures like Margaret Bondfield, Mary Quaile, Ellen Wilkinson, Jessica Stephen and Jenny Lee). Some women were against the Strike mobilised by the government and organisations like the Women’s Guild of Empire. She was struck by the profoundly gendered culture of the trade union and labour movement then, but also by the marvellous display of solidarity by so many men who came out in support of another group of workers. In the end, she agreed with Jonathan’s conclusion, that the TUC leaders and all the unions were caught up in a Greek tragedy, balancing the future of their own unions against what they owed to the miners.
Paul Nowak found it a really great book, a great read and important addition to the literature on the General Strike. As the current general secretary of the TUC, he had two important connections: first as leader of the organisation which has advanced the cause of Labour since it was established in 1868. The second is with Walter Citrine, the General Secretary during the General Strike, who grew up in Wallasey just a couple of miles from where he was born. It is clear from Professor Schneer’s marvellous book, how important Citrine was in keeping the ramshackle TUC jalopy going throughout those Nine Days in May. Paul claimed to be extremely proud of his role in holding the TUC together after the defeat of the Strike, which threatened to pull the unions apart. He went on to play a pivotal role in the war against fascism, to build international trade unionism and to turn the TUC from a poorly resourced, effectively second rank organisation, into a coherent, professional, effective and powerful actor on the political and industrial stage.
The current General-Secretary of the TUC, Paul Novak, addresses our General Strike event.
Paul Novak made three further observations. First, the General Strike was a defeat for the trade union movement. The miners were forced back to work and suffered the indignity of wage cuts, longer working hours, victimisation and job cuts. But it is also fair to argue that 1926 represents one of the greatest acts of solidarity in British history. With three million workers answering the TUC’s call to stop work in May 1926, it showed the power of working-class solidarity and organisation that shook the establishment to its core. His second point was that the dispute was a national sympathy strike, designed to bring the mine owners and the government back to the negotiating table. It was not an effort to topple an elected government or to usurp parliamentary democracy, as it was portrayed by the government, the press and the establishment generally. For some on the left, that speaks to the inherent failings and timidity of the leadership of the British trade union movement. But this was never Britain’s 1917 moment – it was a moment of solidarity – of sympathy action – not revolution.
In Jonathan’s words, Stanley Baldwin was ‘playing for keeps’. He couldn’t afford a draw. Once the strike was launched, the only outcome the government could countenance was outright victory. As a result, the plans laid by Baldwin and by ‘Jix’ and others in advance of the strike were comprehensive and mobilised the full force of the state. Despite the evident mismatch in both resources and capacity to plan, Paul confessed to being somewhat in awe of the operation run out of the TUC’s offices in Eccleston Square. As Jonathan puts its – ‘the ramshackle TUC jalopy’ – lurched forward and succeeded in bringing large parts pf the UK’s economy to a standstill.
Thirdly, the General Strike undoubtedly set the cause of trade unionism back – but its retrenchment proved temporary. In 1925, TUC affiliated membership stood at 4.3m, falling to a low of less than 3.7m in 1929. But by 1938, membership had grown to 4.5m, and by the end of the second world war – when Walter Citrine stepped down as general secretary – the TUC had over 6.5m workers in affiliation, and continued to grow the next half century or so. Partly this reflected the reshaping of the TUC itself by Citrine and others, learning in part from the experience of 1926, modernising and recasting the organisation. Partly it reflected the vital role the trade union movement played during the War in the fight against fascism. And partly, as Mark Twain might have said, despite the best efforts of the state, of hostile politicians, of aggressive government policies, rumours of the death of the trade union movement following the great strike of 1926 were – and continue to be – greatly exaggerated. A hundred years later, we have with the new Employment Rights Act – an opportunity to once again rebuild our movement. Its essential we grasp it.
Discussion
A lively session followed with a series of speakers complimenting the author for producing such a vivid account of a truly historic trade union and national event.
Participants raised a range of diverse issues such as the amount of violence e.g., by former soldiers as ‘Special’ police; historical parallels with the Chartist ‘general strikes’ and why the miners and TUC had not adopted more selective guerrilla tactics. We dipped into matters as diverse as the influence of events at that time in Ireland i.e., the Civil War there; parallels with the 1984/5 coal strike and whether the 1926 battle was the greater defeat for the labour movement. The impact of the 1927 anti-union Act was also referred to. The arrests of CPGB leaders in 1925 was raised. Jon, Florence and Paul fielded all those questions well and their contributions were appreciated as fully complementing the occasion.
Dr Jim Moher
