Paul Salveson draws some lessons from the strike of 1926
It’s a cosy myth on the Left that the General Strike of 1926 was a sign of the revolutionary potential of the working class. It was anything but, and it’s perhaps worth confronting that myth today and having the sense to recognise what the General Strike actually represented – a major defeat for the unions.
The unions in the inter-war years were increasingly fighting a defensive battle against wage cuts and unemployment. A small number of activists supported campaigns by the Communist Party, and in a few unions, like the miners, took on leadership roles. By and large, the unions remained dominated by cautious men and a very few women.
The General Strike of 1926, if anything, confirms this cautious view. Far from being an embryonic revolution, the nine-day strike in support of the miners was undertaken with great reluctance by the TUC leadership and the earliest possible settlement was grasped, leaving the miners to struggle on for months longer, increasingly isolated and ultimately defeated. There was strong support in towns and cities across the North for the miners though even at the community level, there was little evidence of insurrection. In West Yorkshire and Lancashire, the strike was strongly supported, but there were only minor clashes between strikers and police.
The authors of a history of the Labour Party in West Yorkshire during the inter-war years laconically noted that “apart from a march to Leeds, organised by some communists at Castleford, the only notable event for West Yorkshire communists was the police raid on the headquarters of the Shipley branch. Vic Feather, who eventually became General Secretary of the TUC, was present. An instinctive urge drove him to the toilets when he heard a knock on the door. When he returned, the communist activists and their printing equipment were gone.” (Jack Reynolds and Keith Laybourn, Labour Heartland, 1987)
In some of the mining areas, things were less placid. The derailment of “The Flying Scotsman” at Cramlington by striking Northumberland miners is well documented and was recently the subject of a play; at the time, their actions were widely condemned by the striking unions. However, the placement of machine guns on Newcastle Central station had more to do with Government “PR” than defence against any imminent revolutionary upsurge.
The Government followed up on its victory by passing the 1927 Trades Disputes and Trades Unions Act. The act outlawed secondary industrial action and required union members to contract-in to political funds. Meanwhile, many employers sacked “troublesome” rank-and-file activists who had taken part in the strike.
Ben Turner, who had started life as a weaver in Holmfirth and received his political education in William Morris’s Socialist League, became a key figure in the attempted “historic compromise” between Labour and Capital in the late 1920s. He represented the TUC side of the “Mond-Turner Talks” of 1928 between a group of employers, led by ICI’s Sir Alfred Mond. The talks were strongly opposed by the ‘left’ in the labour movement as “class betrayal”.
However, the talks potentially could have led to the sort of industrial peace which post-war Sweden experienced, but the main stumbling block proved to be the employers, who were unwilling to grant the unions any greater role in industry. With hindsight, far from being an attempt at class betrayal, the talks could have led to a modernised industrial relations landscape which would have strengthened British industry’s post-war competitive position.
A hundred years on, there are some things we should celebrate from the General Strike. Above all, the sacrifices made by other trade unionists, notably the railway workers, but many thousands more, to take strike action in support of the miners. Many who took part in that solidarity action lost their jobs or were demoted with a loss of earnings. Hardly a victory, in any form.
Should the TUC have been more forceful and confronted the Government? It was not going to happen. The Government – and the state apparatus behind it – was far more prepared for violent class conflict than any of the unions. The Labour Movement would still have lost, but even more catastrophically.
Looking back, working-class leaders like Ben Turner were on the right track, but the time wasn’t right. A social democratic consensus following the War might have led to a new approach featuring co-production and industrial democracy, but neither the unions nor the employers really wanted it. The newly-nationalised industries – mines, railways and steel – remained largely mirror images of the previous privately-owned companies, often with the same people in charge. There were alternatives being suggested, amongst some working-class rank-and-file leaders in the mines and railways, but they fell on deaf ears in both the Labour Government and the TUC.
As the railways move, once again, towards nationalisation and creation of “Great British Railways” it seems to me that none of the lessons, nor opportunities, of the past have been seized.