: The General Strike of 1926 lasted only ninedays and directly involved around 1.
8 million workers. It was the short butultimate outbreak of a much longer conflict in the mining industry, which lastedfrom the privatisation of the mines after the First World War until theirrenewed nationalisation after the Second. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-* Copyright DueNow. com Inc. *Category:HistoryPaper Title:General Strike of 1926Text:The General Strike of 1926Essay written by Michael FunkWhy did the General Strike of 1926 fail and what were the effects the strikehad upon industrial relations in Britain?The General Strike of 1926 lasted only nine days and directly involved around1.
8 million workers. It was the short but ultimate outbreak of a much longerconflict in the mining industry, which lasted from the privatisation of themines after the First World War until their renewed nationalisation after theSecond. The roots of the General Strike in Britain, unlike in France or othercontinental countries, did not lie in ideological conceptions such assyndicalism but in the slowly changing character of trade union organisation andtactics. On the one hand, unskilled and other unapprenticed workers had beenorganised into national unions since the 1880s to combat sectionalism and tostrengthen their bargaining power and the effectiveness of the strike weapon. Onthe other hand, at the same time and for the same reason trade unions haddeveloped the tactic of industry-wide and ‘sympathetic’ strikes.
Later duringthe pre-war labour unrest these two forms of strike action, ‘national’ and’sympathetic’, were more often used together which in an extreme case could havemeant a general strike. The symbol of this new strategy was the triple alliance,formed in 1914, which was a loose, informal agreement between railwaymen,transport workers and miners to support each other in case of industrialdisputes and strikes. As G. A.
Phillips summarised:The General Strike was in origin, therefore, the tactical product of apattern of in-dustrial conflict and union organisation which had developed overthe past twenty-five years or so in industries where unionism had beenintroduced only with difficulty, among rapidly expanding labour forcestraditionally resistant to organisation, or against strong opposition fromemployers. Therefore, a large majority of the British Labour movement saw a generalstrike along the traditional ‘labourist’ view, which emphasised the separationof the political and the industrial sphere, as a purely industrial act. Thisnotion was supported the developments in the 1920s when the depression and theemployers offensive weakened the militant and revolutionary forces , whereas thesuccess of the Labour Party and the reorganisation of the TUC General Councilfurther strengthened these ‘labourist’ forces. The government’s and the employer’s view, of course, was a different one. Since the French syndicalists in 1906 had drawn up the Charter of Amiens,reaffirming their belief in direct political action and the general strike as ameans of overthrowing the Parliamentary system, governments and industrialistsall over Europe saw a general strike as a revolutionary challenge for theconstitution and the economic system.
Although the British Labour movement hadnever been really committed to this idea, during the post-war boom when it wason the offensive, there were two examples of semi-syndicalist conceptionsconcerning the use of industrial action against the war and British interventionagainst the Soviet Republic. Government and employers were warned and did nothesitate to condemn every notion of nation wide industrial action asunconstitutional and revolutionary. The mining dispute which caused the General Strike emerged after the FirstWorld War when the triple alliance broke and the miners were left to fight aloneagainst the government’s plans to privatise the mines. As a result the minessuddenly returned to their private owners and the miners faced demands for verysubstantial wage cuts of up to 50 per cent . The dispute escalated because thecrisis was seen by all the key players -the government, the em-ployers and theTrade Union Council (TUC)- as an example for future industrial relations inBritain. The trade un-ion movement saw its opportunity to challenge the notionthat wage reduction could solve Britain’s economic diffi-culties and decidedtherefore that a future united action in support of the miners would take theform of a general strike.
But as Margaret Morris emphasised. “It was theabsence of any possibility of finding an agreed solution to the difficulties inthe mining industry which made a confrontation on the lines of the GeneralStrike almost inevita-ble, not any generalised will to class conflict”. The Conservative government, however, saw its role as a neutral, standingbetween the contending parties and rep-resenting the British people as a whole. Its industrial policy included the application of the principle ofco-partnership in industry, in the hope that workers and management would beginto see their interest as identical, a policy which was ultimately challenged bya general strike. The Government was completely aware that a trade union victorywould have important political implications such as government intervention inthe coal industry as well as encouraging further industrial action of a similardimension.
Moreover, in 1926 the government was very well prepared for a majorindustrial dispute, whereas unemployment and uncertain economicallycircumstances forced the trade union movement in the defensive. Due to this, the scene was set for a nation-wide strike in May 1926, whichwas condemned to fail from the outset. After five years of struggle the minerscould not accept any wage cuts while the mine owners did not see anypossi-bility of running the mines profitable without any. Furthermore, theowners’ case was supported by the government, which did not want to interfere inindustrial relations. Moreover, becouse the government saw the strike as arevo-lutionary challenge to the constitution and the economic system it demandedunconditional surrender from the be-ginning. But in fact, as Magaret Morrisemphasised, the General Strike was neither a revolutionary act nor an industrialdispute.
“Only if the Government had intervened by additional subsidies orby coercing the coal owners could the difficulties of the coal industry havebeen solved in some other way than at the expense of the miners. The GeneralStrike, therefore was a political strike and needed to be pursued as such if itwas to make any progress” . Therefore the General Council of the TUC, whichalways emphasised the industrial character of the dispute, by the very nature ofthe General Strike was not fighting the owners but the government, which wasforced into taking part in negotiations and put this pressure on the owners. Asthe government refused to intervene and the TUC could not openly challenge thegovernment there was no chance for a successful end and the TUC had to call offthe strike.
A general confusion on the side of the trade unions and a principal lack ofcommunication between the different parties surrounded the circumstances of thissurrender. Sir Herbert Samuel lead the final negotiations based on hismemorandum, but he did not have any authority from the government. TheNegotiating Committee of the TUC was well aware of this fact but nonetheless itexpected Samuel to provide an accurate reflection of what the gov-ernment wasprepared to do. However, the trade union side thought that the strike was indecline and was losing more and more of its faith in its success, and thereforeaccepted the Samuel Memorandum without the miners ac-cepting, which, of course,would have been crucial for the signing of a final agreement. Therefore neitherthe government nor the miners, and of course, neither the employers wereinvolved in the negotiations which the Nego-tiating Committee thought to haveturned in its favour. Only after they had called off the General Strike did theyrealised that they had nothing in their hands.
While the miners were left to fight alone until their humiliating defeat inNovember 1926, the other workers re-turned to work where they faced theirstrengthened employers. In some trades, such as railways and printing, work-erssuffered widespread victimisation . The real extent of victimisation, however,is very difficult to estimate be-cause besides the dismissal of militants andthe replacement of workers by volunteers, there was also an increase inredundancy due to the reduced circumstances of many trades. Nevertheless mostemployers tried to reinstate their men under new conditions which meant newbargaining arrangements and some times substantial wage cuts.
In the long term,however, employers did not exploit their victory and showed an increasinglymoderate behaviour and the willingness to collaborate. The symbol of this newclimate became the Mond-Turner talks where the General Council together withprominent industrials discussed the future of industrial relations. Thisdevelopment was not only the result of the General Strike but, as Phillipsemphasised, also due to the “sectional conflicts which took place in theearly 1920s, which had been in many cases more costly to the firms involved, andwhich certainly seemed a likelier mode of resistance to further attack on wagesnow”. After the end of the strike the Conservative government emphasised itsindustrial neutrality again and continued to refuse any responsibility formanaging the economy. Nevertheless, after the General Strike it responded with anew Trade Dispute Act which made general strikes illegal, tried to severe thefinancial link between trade unions and the Labour Party and made picketing muchmore difficult.
The government’s intentions was to drive the trade unions backinto their ‘labourist’ line, but because the trade unions lost the GeneralStrike, among other reasons, exactly because they were too much committed tothis ‘labourist’ line, this policy was highly superfluous and in fact the newlegislation had virtually no effect. The government, therefore, was never ableto capitalise on its victory, but as the history of the strike showed that wasnever its intention. Among historians the most controversial issue concerning the General Strikeis its impact on the development of the Labour movement. For Marxist historians,such as Martin Jacques and Keith Burgess, the General Strike marked a centralwatershed in this development.
They emphasised a shift to the right of the wholeLabour movement and a further strengthening of traditional ‘labourist’ forces ,whereas the left and especially the Communist Party was isolated and lost itsinfluence. Jacques described this new direction as a general rejection ofmilitancy and the use of industrial action for political ends, the strictseparation of the political and the industrial spheres, the notion of solvingLabours’ problems within the capitalist system and finally the acceptance of thecommon interest between wage-labour and employers. For Burgess, the idea ofclass collaboration which was symbolised in the Mond-Turner talks especiallymarked a sharp watershed. “The extent to which the TUC as a whole was wonover to these ideas marked the final stage in the containment of the challengeof labour to the existing social order”. Besides the impact of the GeneralStrike both historians also emphasised other factors for this shift, such as thechanging eco-nomic environment , but as Jacques suggested:”Mass unemployment, structural chance and the rise in real wages do notthem-selves explain the politics and ideology of working-class movement duringthe inter-war period.
Nevertheless, they provide an essential explanation. Forthey help to reveal what might be de-scribed as the objective basis of the shiftto the right on trade union movement”. Although mass unemployment influenced the Labour movement from the beginningby forcing the workers on the defensive, undermining multi-sectionalconsciousness and weakening sectional solidarity, it was not until the Gen-eralStrike that it played a crucial role in determining the politics and ideology ofthe trade union movement. This notion of a watershed has been challenged by several other historians,above all by G.
A. Phillips. He suggested that the General Strike had “asignificant short-term effect upon union strength -measured primarily in termsof membership and its distribution- but almost no lasting consequences. Onindustrial tactics, and especially the use of the strike weapon, their impactwas rather to provide a further restraining influence where inhibiting factorswere already in evidence, than to initiate any change of conduct”.
Furthermore he emphasised this the reinforced trend towards industrial peace washappening anyway, as well as the long-established faith in a regulated system ofvol-untary collective bargaining. Thus he described the shift to the right ofthe whole Labour movement and the isola-tion of the Marxist left more as afurther strengthening of already familiar principles than as a significantwatershed. Moreover, the strike itself and especially its failure was the resultof the structural development of the trade union movement along these familiarprinciples -especially the ‘labourist’ one- over two generations. Altogether,from this point of view it seems that the pattern of trade union activity andindustrial relations was not altered by the General Strike. The only thing thatreally changed was the Labour movement’s rhetoric style and as LaybournEmphasised, the isolation of the rank and file activists from the trade unionofficials and therefore the final decline of the shop stewards’ movement.
However, there is little doubt that the 1920s saw a transition of the wholeLabour movement towards the separation of the political and the industrialspheres, collaboration and moderation. At the end of the 1920s the Labour Partywas much stronger and even the trade unions, despite their defeat in the GeneralStrike and their reduction in both finances and members, were now much moreeffective. The General Strike, of course, played an important role in thistransition, but more for its final consolidation than as a crucial watershed. Moreover, its origin and its failure seem today like a paradigm of thistransition.
Nevertheless, in the long term the General Strike left some marksupon the Labour movement, which determined its future fate. Most importantly,after defeat the miners lost their crucial position within the Labour movementand great bitterness and frustration emerged among the miners in particular, butalso within the Labour movement as a whole. Bibliography:Burgess, Keith: The Challenge of Labour. Shaping British Society 1850-1930,London 1980. Clegg, Hugh Armstrong: A History of British Trade Unions since 1889. VolumeII 1911-1933, Oxford 1989.
Jacques, Martin: Consequences of the General Strike, in: Skelley, Jeffrey(ed. ): The General Strike 1926, Lon-don 1976. Laybourn, Keith: a History of British Trade Unionism. Ch.
5: Trade Unionismduring the Inter-War Years 1918-1939, Gloucestershire 1992. Mason, A. : The Government and the General Strike, 1926, in: InternationalReview of Social History, XIV 1969. Morris, Margaret: The British General Strike 1926, The Historical association1973. Phillips, G.
A. : The General Strike. The Politics of Industrial Conflict,London 1976. Renshaw, Patrick: The General Strike, London 1975. Wrigley, Chris: 1926: Social Costs of the Mining Dispute, in: History Today34, Nov.
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