Speaker 1: Welcome back to the final installment of our mini series
about the British General strike of nineteen twenty six. If
you haven't listened to parts one or two yet, I'd
go back and listen to those first.
Speaker 2: Oh you men, I've done Pundy dig events of coal
with me little pick and shove for the boss man
the callery. But I'll never own your soul with me,
little pick and shove up.
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in the show notes. Where we left off last time,
the strike was causing havoc around the country and the
British state tried to use all the legal powers at
its disposal to break the strike. The most crucial of
these was the Emergency Powers Act, a law passed in
nineteen twenty which allowed for a state of emergency to
be declared in the event of an action taken or
threatened quote on so extensive a scale as to be
calculated by interfering with the supply and distribution of food, water, fuel,
or light, or with the means of locomotion end quote.
This basically meant that any big strike could result in
a state of emergency being called and any disobedience punished
with prison, hard labour, a fine, the seizure of goods,
or any combination of all of them.
Speaker 3: They could use this to really harass the left and
to harass any oppositional voices during the strike, so they
invaded the Communist Party headquarters. They arrested communists for sedition.
I think something like well over a thousand Communist Party
members were arrested during the strike, which some people say
is about a quarter of their whole membership.
Speaker 1: This is Judy Cox, co author of Revisiting the General
Strike of nineteen twenty six. When workers were ready to.
Speaker 3: Dare, I think there were something like nine thousands arrests altogether,
so large numbers of people were arrested. I mean some
were obviously arrested during confrontations with the police, but many
communists were arrested for sedition, which was simply asking troops
not to fire on workers, talking about international solidarity and
those sort of questions. In the sitting MP for Battersey
Sakala was arrested and sentenced to Timunth's Hard Labor and
he was a sitting MP, the Communist MP. So yeah,
they were very repressive and they were very prepared to
use the power of the state to crush not only
strikers but communists who might be arguing for striking to
go further. I think the organization of the strike fed
from that kind of the seeds of class fear that
had been sown, this idea that if we don't fight
this battle, it will be the end of civilization. The
Communists are taking over.
Speaker 1: The state cracked down severely on the Communist Party, with
three hundred and seventy four communists being arrested on the
tenth of May alone, and even before the strike had begun.
In October nineteen twenty five, twelve Communist Party leaders were
arrested and charged under the incitement to mutiny Act from
seventeen ninety seven. The majority of those arrested were still
in prison during the general strike itself. One Communist Party
member who was arrested during the general strike was Abe moffat,
a minor in Scotland's Fife coal fields. Unfortunately, the audio
quality of this section from Abe's interview was quite poor
and might be difficult for some listeners to unders stand.
But I'll go over the main points afterwards, and they'll
also soon be a full transcript on the web page
for this episode. Link in the show.
Speaker 4: Notes our senses during the Fintasics. There's more for leading
a ride to Smart. As a matter of fact, young
gllla Alec and another young lads and Wade Ellis we've
got two months under that. We've got two months each
under that, right Smart. It was mostly although we've got
a lot of manor paistic during the demo site for
example for Scott.
Speaker 5: For Scott, the traffic on the roads, you.
Speaker 4: Know what I mean, the higher road color. I had
another brother there he wild on the GMO straight along
with another six that start the traffic exactly under the
such and the disconsil. That time you have a permit
from a case council to grow up the young just
at the end of the state and in the other
end stated almost finished miles downstation up with respect against
the black lights.
Speaker 1: So to summarize Abe, two of his brothers and another
miner named Jim Watt all got arrested and sentenced to
two months in prison for leading a riotus mob. This
also happened to a number of other miners around the
Five Coalfields who were arrested for stopping traffic. These traffic
stops were done under the instructions of the local Trades
council to check the vehicles had the proper permits for
the goods that they were carrying, and in the event
they did not, workers would refuse to allow them to
continue their journey. As for Harry Watson on the East
London Docks, he felt that the police were getting increasingly
heavy handed as the strike wore on.
Speaker 5: The police were becoming more and more not only trucking
up as they were in the beginning, but vicious and
when they were attacking the workers, they didn't discriminate whether
you were men or woman, or whether they were boy
or girl, or what if you was one of the
people who was messed there, then you were fair game
for their truncheons, and they used to bring them down
and all.
Speaker 1: And Harry was in no uncertainty about whether those police
attacks were spontaneous or premeditated.
Speaker 5: Oh no, they're around rawers. It was organized. I mean
a question about a fact. Someone has given them a signal.
I don't know who it was, but it was obvious
that they moved when they were told the move, and
they were told to move in a certain fashion, and
they did just that, and someone was given them the
orders because it was I mean, we were unsuspecting of
anything like that. We were there without any question or
doubt in our mind about who's going to win, and
what did we have to do anything about it for
other than stand firm and our action of being on
strike and refusing to go to work. In a situation
like that, then suddenly from behind you or you get
a whack on the neck or a wap on the shoulder,
or the arm you temporary immediately flairs. You know it's
an unprovoked attack in the met whichever way you look
at it, and tipically, in a situation like that where
there's not just one of them, but dozens and dozens
of them laying about them, and when you see women
getting hit and all your blood balls and them, it's
like more. I mean, you've become as vicious as they
do in the finish and get down to their level
in order to make them understand that they are nothing anyway,
you know what, right and authority they got to come
barging in people like that and laying about them in
the fashion they did, and bloods being still everywhere as
a result of it. No, they were being instructed. It
was an organized assault on the public wherever the public
was gathering at the time.
Speaker 1: Harry's views of state violence during the general strike was
no doubt informed by the lengths that the government went
to to break the picketing of the East London docks.
No more than about forty out of fourteen thousand dock
workers were available for work, so the government had to
bring scabs in by boat along the river, even using
the navy, as Harry mentioned in the last episode, but
even using strike breakers was itself useless while East London's
docks were picketed and its surrounding streets filled with strikers.
To deal with this. On Saturday, the eighth of May,
the government sent twenty armored cars manned by soldiers to
the East India docks to escort lorries transporting goods. To
top it off, a machine gun placed at the dock
gates was trained on the strikers to discourage any attempts
to interfere with the convoy. Despite this, strikers across the
country remained resolute. For the most part. Workers continued to
respect the strike and clashes even continued in numerous places
around the UK, while more workers were gearing up to
be called out as part of the second line of
the strike. By contrast, however, the General Counsel of the
Trades Union Congress was seeking ways to bring the strike
to an end.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is one of the most criminal, kind
of inexplicable capitulations. When you read the accounts of how
the strike was getting stronger, how people were still coming
out on striking. Yet the trade union leaders at some
point begin to fear that they're going to lose control,
that more workers are going to come out on strike,
and so they moved from saying we're going to stand
by the miners, We're not going to let the miners
fight alone. Because this whole strike is about solidarity with
the miners. It's not about people fighting for their own
pay rise. It's all about standing by the miners. And
they begin to say the miners are living in a
fool's paradise if they don't think they're going to accept
where so these carving out of the miners and their leaders,
these negotiations begin.
Speaker 1: Much of these negotiations were based around the report of
the Samuel Commission, named after its chairman, Sir Herbert Samuel,
the former High Commissioner of British Colonial Palestine. The report
was published in March nineteen twenty six and recommended a
number of reforms to the mining industry. However, those reforms
most beneficial to the miners, like amalgamating smaller mines into larger,
more efficient ones, were to be postponed for the future. Meanwhile,
the immediate reforms it suggested were around the reduction of wages,
either through increased hours or straightforward pay cuts. The report
also stopped short of calling for nationalization. Unsurprisingly, the Miners'
Union rejected this, but other leaders on the TUC's General
Council insisted on pushing through an agreement based on the
Samuel Report. They met multiple times with Samuel during the
strike and lobbied him to encourage the government that the
strike could be brought to an end and on the
basis of his report. However, the government repeatedly rejected Samuel's
offer of mediation and underlining that no negotiations could take
place until the strike had been completely called off. As
the strike wore on and the TUC's desperation to call
off the strike became increasingly obvious, the position of the
government hardened, but among the rank and file workers were
still standing by the strike, despite the claims of union
leaders to the contrary.
Speaker 3: They start rumors that the strike is crumbling. That's the
one of their biggest tactics is to say, really it's crumbling,
and people going, well, that's strange because it's not crumbling
around here. But there's no national network where people can
exchange alternative views. So they start these rumors that the
strike is crumbling. And the truth is they're fearful of
losing control of it. And one of the people involved,
a rank and file worker, in a brilliant quote, says
they were more afraid of winning than they were of losing.
They couldn't envisage that, so it was better for them
to lose and to leave the miners to fight on alone.
Speaker 1: As an example of this, Ben Turner, the textile workers'
union representative at the TUC, claimed that workers were abandoning
the strike, particularly in the railway centers. Similarly, John Bromley,
leader of ASLEFT the train Drivers Union, also claimed that
his members were going back to work, but as the
government's own statistics show, the percentage of railway workers still
out on the final day of the strike was mostly
ninety percent or more, with engine drivers, fire and motormen
in particular being closer to ninety eight percent. The main
exception to this were clerical and supervisory workers, most of
whom were unable to drive trains anyway, and according to
the TUC's own internal intelligence report on the morning of
the twelfth of May, quote, reports coming into this office
do not confirm or explain the government's claims that large
numbers of railway workers were returning to work end quote.
On Wednesday, the twelfth of May nineteen twenty six, the
the TUC had referred to as the second line of
workers were due to be called out to join the
general strike, but instead at midday, a delegation from the
TUC arrived at ten Downing Street to meet the Prime
Minister and were only let in once they'd confirmed that
they were there to call off the strike. Despite hopes
that this would allow for negotiations around the satisfactory settlement
to the dispute, TUC leaders left without having the chance
to discuss either their members returned to work or what
would happen to the miners and the Samuel Memorandum that
they'd pinned their hopes on. Shortly after one o'clock, the
BBC announced that the TUC's first and only general strike
was over. For many workers, this could only have meant
one thing.
Speaker 5: And when the new was tang fu that the strike
was over, course, we was overjoyed. We won. You know,
never dawned on us that the strike had been called
off in that situation. The only reason it would be
called off was because we'd won. It wasn't until a
long while, some hours afterwards, when they come through that
had been called off, and it had been a capitulation
by the trade union leaders at that time. Of course,
when that come through, it was well, it was technifying.
The I think there was more resentment and more signs
then of spontaneous violence from the men and women in
the East end that the sellout than they'd ever been
right the way through up until then in the strike itself.
That's what caused the eruption, when I say, such a
transformation from being happy and singing and everybody dancing at
the end of the strike tree supposing that it had
been one. So it's all kinds of gaiety. And it
was some hours later when we did find out, and
it was hard to believe to begin with, but when
it was established and we understood that it was a betrayal,
nothing short of a betrayal.
Speaker 4: Oh oh.
Speaker 5: And I might say that the trade union leadership as
such was, in my opinion, the course of a lot
of the discuss that were shown by the men in
leaving trade unions and ceased membership of trade unions after that,
because that was their way of showing theirs.
Speaker 2: Just with.
Speaker 5: The people who were supposed to be in positions of
trust and authority, supposed to be giving leadership and guidance, generals,
supposed to be leading the army in battle as it were,
abandoning winning positions and turning tail, you know, and leaving
the army as it were to clear up the mess
as it were afterwards. Oh that was a terrible experience, really,
the one I never forgot all forgave eiver.
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for Betty Harrison, a textile worker who's due to be
called out as part of the second line of strikers.
The betrayal was not a big surprise.
Speaker 6: Well with your scheduled words, because you see, the working
class people never did to us Baldwin or any of
those people, particularly those of the Sueke crop mining families.
And I don't think anyone in the working class woman
in the Black fed earlier believe Baldwin when I thought
it was on the side. We're also given the nice
words to calm down the workers and of course it
proved to be true too. It was just making nice
sounds till the time. Yet the workers to sell out,
and the nice sounds apparently convinced that UC.
Speaker 5: But they they gave up. They strike in a very
short time.
Speaker 3: So they kind of went crawling back to Downing Street
and said, oh, we'll accept these conditions. And then of
course the government and the mine owners who stood behind
them smelt blood and they said, no, no negotiations, no conditions,
you come back. It's a complete and utter surrender. And
the trade union leaders went, okay, hands up, it's a
complete and utter surrender. So they went back with no
guarantees that workers wouldn't be victimized, with no guarantees at all,
having one, absolutely nothing. So they span it. They said,
you know, we've shown that the miners won't fight alone.
We've shown this great solidarity. They pretended it wasn't a
huge defeat, but it absolutely was. And there was a huge,
huge rage amongst the millions of people who had been
out on striking solidarity with the miners. I mean, if
you read any of the memoirs in accounts, they will
say people said, we heard the news, we didn't believe it.
People were crying. People refused to accept that this is
what had happened. People were saying, you know, a deluge
of telegrams were sent to the TUC the leaders saying,
why with this is furious, you can't believe this. We're
still out, and many people testified to the fact there
were more people out the day after the strike was
called off than when the day that the trade union
leaders said it was crumbling because people were furious. The
people who went back to work and were humiliated and
walked out again. You know, there was this great ground
swell of a fury from people, but of course it
had nowhere to go. There was no kind of national
ranconfile network it was capable of saying, well, let's not
go back, let's forge a different paths, let's keep fighting.
Had there been such a thing, the result could have
been different because there was no way the strike was crumbling.
Speaker 1: Betty was in no uncertainty about who workers were most
angry with at the end of the strike.
Speaker 6: But do you see, you see amongst the workers at
that time in Britain, they expected the employers to be
backed up by the government and we didn't expect anything
but methods of any kind and every kind to push
us back and to keep us down, so that when
the TUC looked as if it was going to do
something at last by welding the workers together to fight
this opposition of government and employers, which we classed as won,
then there was a high hope tinged with apprehension now
I come to think of it. We were never quite
sure whether it was going to come up or not.
But the bitterness was with the t U see to
a large extent. I think, to some extent, you know,
we were not surprised when they called it of it
I if I can catch my mind back as far
as that, we were furious, and we were outset, and
we were disgusted. But I think really in our hearts
we weren't surprised because we didn't think that they were
the kind of people who were prepared to face the
deeper issues of such a thing. Because the general strike
didn't set out to be a revolutionary movement, nor was
it ever revolutionary in content so far as the TUC
were concerned, and was a revolution in the fact that
never been a general strike before. There had never been
as much cooperation between UH the unions to work together
for a common end, but we hadn't all that confidence
in that to you see and say, I don't think
we were really very surprised when it didn't last very long,
although we were hoping that it would duh develop and we
should get the workers would get really something out of it,
because the failure of the general strength was the end
of uh hopes of advancement for the workers for many years,
many as and the bitterness which I don't think it's
ever gone. I think even the younger ones who are
now in the twenty thirties, when they're here are a
reader of the General's strike, feel something of the bitterness
that we felt at the time.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, the strike was called off just as it was
about to be extended, because the leaders on the TUC's
General Council had simply never wanted or even expected to
go on strike in the first place, as was clear
from the complete lack of preparation until literally the days before.
Real Union leader James Thomas was probably the most exaggerated
and at times ridiculous example of this. Before the strike
had even begun, he was worried that members of the
General Council would be shot by Britain's nascent fascist movement,
and when the miners' union leaders asked him for assurances
that the government would accept the Samuel proposals, Thomas replied,
quote you may not trust my word, but will you
accept the word of a British gentleman who has been
the governor of Palestine? End quote. What really scared TUC
leaders was hinted at in another passage from the intelligence
report mentioned previously, specifically where it said quote, many reports
show that the strike is extending, and that factories and
workshops not directly involved are slowing down or shutting down.
The situation is one in which we are holding our own,
but the government's organization is improving and its policy is
gradually becoming more aggressive. Every day. The intensity of the
struggle will increase end quote. Two things were becoming increasingly clear,
First that in order to win, TUC leaders would have
to match the intensity of a struggle that they never
wanted in the first place, And second that, in the
absence of direction from the center, local trades councils were
taking the initiative themselves. The attitude of the TUC to
this local initiative was best summed up by Thomas himself
in a speech to Parliament the day after the strike
was called off. Quote. What I dreaded about the General
Strike more than anything, was this, if, by any chance
it should have got out of the hands of those
who would be able to exercise some control, every sane
man knows what would have happened. I thank god it
never did. End quote. We spoke earlier about the myriad
of tasks taken on by local councils of action during
the strike, but to really get an idea for how
well they responded, there is no better text than Emilburn's
excellent survey for the Labor Research Department called General Strike
Trades Council's Inaction. As Burns explains, local trades councils were
quote suddenly asked to take on a new and urgent
task without any but the vaguest suggestion of how they
should carry it out. With very few exceptions. Indeed, the
councils displayed an energy and initiative to an extent that
astonished all who had known them in the preceding period.
Councils became the real expression of the local movement end quote.
It was this energy and initiative which so terrified union
leaders like Thomas. Ultimately, however, this level of initiative was
not enough to resist the call back to work, and
with the strike called off, the government and employers soon
took advantage.
Speaker 3: It was heartbreaking because for a few days people held
off and Stanley Baldwin said, you know, we want responsible
trade unionism. We don't want to destroy the unions. We
want these institutions we can negotiate with. And then within
a few weeks, once the first wave of fury that
the sellout had died down, then the bosses absolutely went
on the offensive and there was huge victimizations and bitterness
that lasted for years and years. The miners fought on
until November when they too had to admit defeat terrible
wage cuts and attacks on working conditions. And then in
nineteen twenty seven the government passes the Trade Union Dispute Act,
which outlawed solidarity strikes. So you have employers victimizing militants
and indeed anybody who's been on strike. And then you
have the employers imposing an open shop instead of the
close shop that the trade unionists had fought for, so
you could only come to work if you renounce the
union and then you have the government legislating against solidarity
strikes in the trade union dispute. So the combination of
the employers in the government, we're going to make sure
as far as they could that this would never happen again,
That never again would you have two million workers out
in support of another million miners in our country.
Speaker 1: When the TUC called off the strike, they released the
message telling members returning to work to not accept any
changes to their conditions from before the strike. Desperate to
demonstrate its respectability, the message continued quote, our whole duty
is to forget all recrimination. Let employers act with generosity
and workers give their whole hearts loyally to their work.
It is of utmost importance that the whole of the
British people should not look backward, but forward and resume
work in a spirit of cooperation and goodwill, putting behind
them all malice and vindictiveness end quote. Employers however, were
not so willing to put that malice and vindictiveness behind them.
As Chesterfield rail worker and member of the National Union
of Railwaymen C. S.
Speaker 7: Hollis remembers the General Council the TSA yard as a
general return to work on the twelfth of May, but
the railwaymen continued on strap for another two days because
the railway companies would not at first promise a general
reinstatement of the strikers.
Speaker 8: Even after an improve settlements of being negotiated on the
fourteenth of May, many men were employed only on a
back time basis on del April nineteenth, twenty seventh.
Speaker 1: The agreement that Hollis mentions here was the one reached
by the railway companies with the three rail unions. As
part of that agreement, rail companies agreed to take workers
back on the basis of seniority, but only as and
when work could be found for them. The unions were
also forced to admit that the strike was a wrongful
act and undertake to ensure that no similar action would
ever happen again. As a result of this agreement, forty
five thousand rail workers remained out of work for some time,
and meanwhile employers would come back to take away the
guaranteed work week as well.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 8: As I say, this's not only affected me, it affected
one or two more men. I mean, one man in
particular was a release thing, and then another one that
was what was now known as a relief. Border coupled
a variety of days other than party, and there was
a man with Lenka, but there was June here in
that particular grade. And the result was that there was
three others the two chaps in the missile that we
didn't a start for six weeks and go up, and
so we've had a bit disfunded. I've lost my father
in nineteen twenty five, and another Netherwood is spending the
cast I was over sixteen. That kind of there would
us if he got the son over sixteen. He didn't
get one because he was regarded them in the forty
and I suppose. So there was a mother and myself
here and then for six weeks wim and he's done
twenty four other week that was the end your strip.
Speaker 1: Paid bob here is another word for a shilling. So
in today's money, Hollis and his mum spent about a
month and a half living off what would now be
the equivalent of about thirty six pounds or forty eight
dollars a week.
Speaker 8: And we used to wonder how this start pay once
a week, and we got obviously got very very despondent.
There was, as I said, just us, particularly three out well.
Then the railways, although we wasn't started a tow the
guarantee week was suspended in order to allow then work
because they said they wasn't to work for them. So
the unions agreed to suspend the guarantee week and Chaps
was working four days a week. Well, eventually after six
we got back and we go back until four days
a week some weeks, some weeks, the fall a week,
some weeks beyond that three theirs then new and the
fall a week. And of course, as I said, and
Tom nineteen twenty seven, when things that they got about
last aftergook that was a position, they came out down
strapped to say it was a general start. But again
observedly nothing coming nothing at that, And I don't think
there's much motter. I been over th hunted.
Speaker 1: This experience on the railways was fairly general throughout the UK.
On the fifteenth of May, employers in the printing trades
came to an agreement with the printers union that allowed
workers to be rehired, but only as and when they
were required. The agreement also accepted short time work and
allowed no holidays to those who'd walked out with no notice.
The following day, London newspaper workers were told management could
hire and fire staff as they wished, and that union
meetings could no longer be held during working hours, and
around one nine hundred bus and transport workers never got
their jobs back at all. And of course, in all
of this, over a million miners were still locked out,
having refused to return to work after the general strike
was called off.
Speaker 3: I mean, the miners had these incredible traditions, and many
of them were influenced by Communist party politics. They were
seen as the vanguard of the working class, to use
that phrase. They fought on and were determined to fight on.
They experienced terrible hardship, but also that sense of collective
power and a little bit of that glimpse of liberation
that we talked about earlier. They did have to organize collectively.
They you know, they dug their gardens, they made use
of everything. The miners wives turned sour milk into cheese.
There were all these kind of but it was basically
a huge community effort.
Speaker 1: The importance of miners wives to the struggles of their
husband was something that continued for decades after the general strike.
In our episodes, one and eight and one hundred and
nine we cover the involvement of miners wives during the
nineteen eighty four and eighty five minor strike in the UK.
The miners even got support from the Soviet Union, whose
trade union sent a substantial sum of money, as did
groups of workers elsewhere as well, and they got.
Speaker 3: Lots and lots of support from other workers both in
this country and abroad, and organizations associated with the Communist
International did a lot of fundraising and supporting, including among
German miners in the RUH, which again is a wonderful
thing when you think that only eight years earlier people
had been fighting each other with bayonets, and now there
was kind of international solidarity of people giving money to
the Welsh miners. And there were a lot of flashpoints
again with the police with miners and particularly miners wives
surrounding poor rely centers that refused to pay up. They
tried to change all the laws so that miners and
their families couldn't get poor relief which they were entitled to.
Speaker 7: So there was.
Speaker 3: Already a contentious aspect to poor relief. So poor relief
there was a legal case at the end of the
nineteenth century which stipulated that minus families were entitled to
poor relief, and this ruling suggested it could also be
claimed by striking minus families, not minus themselves. So there
was this debate about whether people's families should be entitled
to it. The local ratepayers didn't like this because they
thought they were subsidizing strikers by supporting strikers families helping
workers to stay out longer. So there was a kind
of a big contestation about whether relief should be paid
to miners, and they said, they forgive it to minus families,
what are they going to do, They're going to share
it with the striking miners, So we can't do that.
But so there was a lot of arguments from national
government against local government because in the mining areas, the
poor law guardians were likely to be miners. Ex miners
related to miners and tended to treat them more sympathetically
than the ratepayers, and the national government wanted.
Speaker 1: This pressure from national government to stop providing miners families
with poor relief meant that some local boards of guardians
began to cut them off entirely. One such place was
in Westbury On seven in the southwest of England, where
in response to being cut off from poor relief, three
hundred miners, wives and their children occupied the local workhouse.
Women also played a role in confronting scabs, including in
some places through the practice of something called white shirting.
Speaker 3: So in a lot of the mining communities, white shirting
had been used as a way of humiliating women who
stepped out of line, were immoral in inverted commas, or
who were scolds, and they'd be four to wear a
white dress strapped in a wheelbarrow and paraded around the town.
But during the miner's lockout this was reversed, so women
would get scabs, they would strip them, put them in
a white shirt and tie them into a wheelbarrow and
wheel them round town to accordion music. Well, the other
thing they would do was hang a pole with women's
underwear on outside their bedroom windows, so that when they
woke up in the morning, what they would see as
a pair of women's pants being waved up them on
a stick as a threat that they were going to
be white shirted. So I love the fact that women
took on what was a deeply misogynistic tradition and turned
it into an expression of class of vengeance against the
scabs who were breaking the strike.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, after seven months locked out from the mines, the
miners were staffed back to work. In the final settlement,
everything the miners had fought for over the years was
torn away from them. Sought a national agreement for conditions.
They were forced to accept settlements on a district by
district basis. The hours they worked were longer than they'd
been before the strike, and their pay in many cases
was now lower than what they had earned when they'd
worked those shorter hours. It was a defeat whose effects
were felt for many years.
Speaker 4: Well, it effect and them peering up, and they're only
began to divide in them. I came for and then
piece of a chef. Not much, but there was something
at that time.
Speaker 1: Well. Aide notes that the demoralization of the miners lasted
well into the thirties. The effects of the strike's defeat
were felt far beyond the UK's mining villages. A year
after the general strike, the government passed the Trade Disputes
and Trade Unions Act, which made solidarity strikes illegal and
placed restrictions on picketing so vague yet also so severe
that it basically made any kind of picketing liable to prosecution.
That year also saw union membership fall by hundreds of
thousands to a low not seen since nineteen sixteen, and
the two years following the General Strike saw the number
of workers involved in industrial disputes dropped to little more
than one hundred thousand, the lowest number since nineteen oh five.
During the nineteen twenty six dispute, as well as the
months leading up to it, the General Strike was absurdly
portrayed in the media as part of a Bolshevik conspiracy
to overthrow the British state. In the aftermath, however, it
became important to downplay its seriousness and portray the strike
as essentially a non event. From being a revolutionary threat
to the rule of law, it supposedly became a very
British strike, marked by good cheer and fair play on
all sides. These episodes show the strike and its aftermath
were marked by bitter struggle, clashes between police and strikers
across the country, and the military mobilized against its own population.
And despite its defeat, the General Strike and subsequent miners
lockout cost British trade around four hundred million pounds the
equivalent of over twenty one billion pounds today. Ultimately, the
strike was probably lost long before the General Council's humiliating capitulation.
As is often said, battles are won or lost before. Therefore,
in the case of the general strike, it was arguably
lost when after Red Friday the government began planning for
a showdown with the unions, while union leaders sat on
their hands and did nothing until the very last minute.
Workers showed their willingness to respect the call to walk out,
but the nuts and bolts of how to conduct the strike,
how to ensure strikers could be fed, and how to
share information, whether locally between strike committees, regionally between trades
councils or nationally within union leaders was all left to
be worked out on the fly. Even the idea of
the TUC publishing its own newspaper, The British Worker, only
came about once the strike had already started, almost as
an afterthought. It took a full decade after the strike
for union membership to recover, and while still generally lower
than the years before the general strike, the numbers of
workers involved in industrial disputes continued to grow as well.
Even during the war, when strikes were actually illegal, and
once the war was over, miners engaged in a wave
of wildcat strikes, which was still illegal under those wartime laws,
against the recently elected Labour government's policy of wage restraint.
It should be noted as well that the General Council
of the TUC sided with the government's wage restraint policy
and against its own members. Soon after decades upon decades
of struggle, Britain's coal mines were nationalized and a nationwide
system of collective bargaining instituted, alongside a host of other
social democratic reforms like the National Health Service. However, while
the post war era began to lay some of the
ghosts of the General Strike to rest, then nonetheless remained
a great regret for many participants for what might have
been the bards.
Speaker 5: I used to think, yourself, there string us along again,
you know, with a lot of bleeding old twelvel even
if they hadn't have won, if they'd have had a go,
and one could sense.
Speaker 7: That I was having a go.
Speaker 5: But they got all right, You didn't get beat No
one was going to be critical of that. But you
all get beaten sometimes. But you learn lessons from being
beaten so that you avoid that one again the next time,
like you could be going on into something different, but
you learn from that and each time the chances of
getting beaten get less with each time. That's if you're
sincere about what it is that you're involving yourself with.
You go into this thing to learn and learn the win.
Speaker 2: Oh you known of time, did events with me, little
pick and shovel for the boss man, the callery. But
I'll never own your soul with me, little pick and shove. Ure.
Speaker 1: That's it for our miniseries on the nineteen twenty six
General Strike. If you enjoyed that and want to hear
more from two of the strike's participants, we also have
a bonus episode with Betty Harrison and Harry Watson exclusively
on Patreon, in which they talk more about their life
and work around the time of the strike, as well
as union politics more generally. It is only support from you,
our listeners, which allows us to make these podcasts, So
if you appreciate our work, please do think about joining
us at patreon dot com slash working class history link
in the show notes, and if you can't spare the cash,
no worries, please just tell your friends about this podcast
and give us a five star review on your favorite
podcast app. Also, be sure to check out General Strike
one hundred dot com to find out more about events
commemorating the General Strike in your area and beyond. You'll
also find a ton of historical markers highlighting the locations
of specific incidents that took place in towns and cities
across the UK during the General Strike itself. Also, if
you'd like to get a copy of Judy's book Revisiting
the General Strike of nineteen twenty six, you can find
a link to buy a copy on the web page
for this episode. On the web page, you'll also find
more information, including further reading, images and sources link in
the show notes. Thanks to our Patreon supporters for making
this podcast possible, and a special thanks to jazz Hands.
Our theme tune for this episode is Montanne's version of
When the Coal Comes from the Ronda, a folk song
originating from Welsh miners in the early twentieth century and
sung during the General Strike. The song is performed by
Montaigne and mixed by Wave Racer. You can find a
link to download the song on our website. All proceeds
go into medical aid for Palestinians. For more from Montanne,
check the links on the web page for this episode.
This episode was edited by Jesse French. Anyway, that's it
for today. Hope you enjoyed the episode and thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: From the Ronder with shovel and me, pick can be
a little lamp and a wick when the call comes
from the Ronda. With we shovel and repick can be
little lamp and a wick when the call comes from
the Rondave