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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2008
The British General Strike of 1926 was one of the turning points of the inter-war years. The defeat which the trade unions suffered at the hands of the Government successfully discredited the idea of widespread industrial action as a method of obtaining the demands of labour. It did much to ensure the relatively quiescent acceptance by labour of the persistent unemployment of the thirties. It removed the threat to the established order which had existed since the turbulence of the immediate post-war years and provided the necessary preliminary to the increasing respectability of trade unions as a pressure group. The definitive history of the general strike has yet to be written, and that the subject remains open to differing emphasis and interpretation is evidenced by the most recent writing on the subject by A. J. P. Taylor and John Saville. The Public Records Act of 1967, by making available a large collection of Cabinet and Departmental papers, has opened up the possibility of a revision of our view of the strike and provided much important additional detail, notably about the Government's role in the events of 1925-26. Of the matters which still exercise the minds of historians of the General Strike, four main questions have been selected for consideration. First of all, there is the intriguing problem of the 1925 industrial crisis when the Government averted an embargo on the movement of coal by granting a subsidy to the coal industry and appointing a Royal Commission to enquire into the future of the industry.
page 1 note 1 Taylor, A. J. P., English History 1914–1945 (Oxford, 1965), pp. 239–249,Google Scholar and Saville's criticism in: Society for the Study of Labour History, Bulletin No 12, Spring, 1966, pp. 52–53.
page 3 note 1 The day on which the final negotiations took place, a Friday, was christened Red Friday in order to differentiate qualitatively from Black Friday, the day on which the other members of the Triple Alliance, namely the railwaymen and the transport workers, withdrew their support from the miners in 1921.
page 3 note 2 Young, G. M., Stanley Baldwin (1952), p. 99.Google Scholar
page 3 note 3 PRO Cab. 27/259, CP 314(23), p. 1. The war-time arrangements were closely linked with the powers which the Government possessed under the Defence of the Realm Acts which were still in operation during the crisis year of 1919. This meant for example, that the Government were able to call on army transport drivers and to use local officials of the central government agencies, like the Food Officers in the emergency organisation which functioned during the railway strike of 1919. Interestingly the French Government requested information as to the measures contemplated by the British Government for the maintenance of essential public services and the preservation of order in the event of a general strike, in a note from the French Chargé d'Affaires dated April 15, 1920. A memorandum on the Government's emergency organisation was drawn up but apparently never sent. PRO, Cab. 27/82.
page 4 note 1 PRO, Cab. 27/259, EC (24) 1, p. 3. This was, of course, a very significant action. The idea of a Labour Government using the powers of the State to coerce the trade unions was one of the first clear indications that a Labour Government was not going to be “obstructed” by its supporters outside Parliament. “The Government must govern” has been heard on many occasions since. See also Symons, J., The General Strike (1957), p. 24,Google Scholar and Lyman, R. W., The First Labour Government 1924 (1957), pp. 219–222.Google Scholar PRO, Cab. 27/259 EC (24), Conclusions 2–8.
page 5 note 1 PRO, Cab. 24/174, CP 356(25).
page 5 note 2 PRO, Cab. 23/50, 42/25.
page 6 note 1 PRO, Cab. 23/50, 43/25.
page 6 note 2 187 HC Deb., 5 s., c. 1612.
page 7 note 1 PRO, Cab. 23/50, 45/25.
page 7 note 2 Wheeler-Bennett, J. W., Anderson, John, Viscount Waverley (1962), p. 102.Google Scholar Earl of Scarborough, , “Maintaining Supplies in a General Strike”, in: English Review, Vol. 43, 03 1926.Google Scholar Rt Hon. Winterton, Earl, Orders of the Day (1953), p. 136.Google Scholar J. Symons, op. cit., p. 20. Bullock, A., The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin, Vol. I (1960), p. 279.Google Scholar
page 7 note 3 See also Mowat, C. L., Britain Between the Wars 1918–1940 (1955), pp. 289–290.Google Scholar
page 8 note 1 Glasgow, G., General Strikes and Road Transport (1926).Google Scholar Glasgow was a well known journalist who was author of the Foreign Affairs section of the Contemporary Review 1923–1925 and wrote on diplomatic and foreign questions for the Observer and the Manchester Guardian. He died in 1958.
page 8 note 2 PRO, Cab. 23/51, 47/25, 50/25, 52/25, 53/25; Cab. 27/259, ST (24)7, 10, 11, 12. CP 390 (25), CP 416 (25), CP 427 (25), CP 439 (25), CP 441 (25), CP 457 (25), CP 463 (25). The Cabinet wondered whether the Ministry of Health circulars to local authorities should be held back until after the November municipal elections.
page 8 note 3 PRO CP 81 (26). The report actually states that “new lists of volunteers had been obtained from Technical Institutions etc.”. There do not appear to be any further details.
page 9 note 1 Times, March 18 1926.
page 9 note 2 PRO, Cab. 23/52, 11/26, 12/26, 13/26.
page 9 note 3 The Trades Union Congress. This was very perceptive of the Cabinet and provides an illustration of the way in which suggestions of rank and file militancy can be diluted by institutionalisation. PRO, Cab. 23/52, 15/26.
page 10 note 1 PRO, Cab. 23/52, 19/26, 20/26. At the meeting of April 30, it was agreed that the Home Secretary should warn the Minister of Transport of the risk of sabotage “(e.g., by dropping a spanner or other instrument in some delicate part of machinery) by electrical workers immediately before leaving work, which might dislocate the Government's emergency arrangements.”
page 10 note 2 See Crook, W. H., The General Strike (Chapel Hill, 1931), pp. 361–364;Google Scholar C. L. Mowat, op.cit., pp. 304–310; A. Bullock, op.cit., pp. 308–315.
page 11 note 1 It is possible to obtain a glimpse of the views of particular ministers in the memoranda which some of them addressed to the Cabinet and which usually appear in the form of Cabinet papers. For example, Lord Percy, the President of the Board of Education, set out his views on the coal crisis in such a document dated May 3, 1926. PRO, CP 183/26. Unfortunately there are insufficient of these personal statements.
page 12 note 1 PRO, Cab. 23/52, 21/26.
page 12 note 2 L. S. Amery, My Political Life, Vol. II (1953), pp. 483–484.
page 12 note 3 PRO, Cab. 23/52, 21/26.
page 13 note 1 PRO, Cab. 23/52, 22/26.
page 13 note 2 Respectively, Mr Stanley Baldwin, Lord Birkenhead, and Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland.
page 14 note 1 PRO, Cab. 23/52, 23/26.
page 15 note 1 Confidential Papers on the General Strike 1926. A memorandum by C. W. K. MacMillan, p. 44. PRO, Lab. 27 No 9.
page 16 note 1 PRO, Cab. 23/52, 25/26. Cab. 27/260 ST (24) 15.
page 16 note 2 See Flynn, C. R., An Account of the Proceedings of the Northumberland and Durham General Council Joint Strike Committee (1926), pp. 12–16.Google Scholar This is a fairly rare document, a copy of which can be seen in the Brynmor Jones Library, the University of Hull. See also The General Strike in the North East, History Group of the Communist Party, Pamphlet No 22 (1961), pp. 12–14.
page 17 note 1 The Attorney General was Sir Douglas Hogg who was created Viscount Hailsham in 1928.
page 17 note 2 PRO, Cab. 23/52, 27/26, 28/26. But of course there was one piece of punititive legislation passed after the General Strike, the Trades Disputes and Trades Union Act, 17 & 18 Geo. 5, ch. 22 1927. Not surprisingly it was a fairly moderate measure.
page 18 note 1 The Dillon Papers, Box L to O (1926). A collection of correspondence between the Marquis of Londonderry and his Agent, Mr Malcolm Dillon, located in the Durham County Record Office. Newcastle Journal, January 7 1926.
page 18 note 2 The Home Secretary set out his views in a letter sent to “a correspondent who consulted him about the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies”. Times, October 1 1925. Of course it is probable that the OMS received unofficial encouragement from individual Government members. After all, both OMS and Cabinet leaders belonged to the same clubs.
page 19 note 1 PRO, HO 45/12336. For a similar difficulty in Bradford see PRO, Cab. 27/260 ST (24) 14.
page 20 note 1 This is certainly true. The OMS and the Government's emergency organisation tended to be looked upon as one and the same by the strikers. OMS was a conveniently short collective term of contempt.
page 21 note 1 See for example Viscount Templewood, Nine Troubled Years (1954), p. 31. As we have noted above, these three only attended the Supply and Transport Committee regularly during the strike. It was Churchill who wanted to form a Defence Force as in 1921, but he failed to gain sufficient support. PRO, Cab. 27/260, May 3, 1926.
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