The General Strike Of 1926 Essay, Research Paper
The General Strike of 1926
Essay submitted by Michael Funk
Why did the General Strike of 1926 fail and what were the effects the strike had
upon industrial relations in Britain?
The General Strike of 1926 lasted only nine days and directly involved around 1.8 million
workers. It was the short but ultimate outbreak of a much longer conflict in the mining
industry, which lasted from the privatisation of the mines after the First World War until
their renewed nationalisation after the Second. The roots of the General Strike in
Britain, unlike in France or other continental countries, did not lie in ideological
conceptions such as syndicalism but in the slowly changing character of trade union
organisation and tactics. On the one hand, unskilled and other unapprenticed workers
had been organised into national unions since the 1880s to combat sectionalism and to
strengthen their bargaining power and the effectiveness of the strike weapon. On the
other hand, at the same time and for the same reason trade unions had developed the
tactic of industry-wide and ’sympathetic’ strikes. Later during the pre-war labour unrest
these two forms of strike action, ‘national’ and ’sympathetic’, were more often used
together which in an extreme case could have meant 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 industrial disputes and strikes. As G.A. Phillips summarised:
The General Strike was in origin, therefore, the tactical product of a
pattern of in-dustrial conflict and union organisation which had developed
over the past twenty-five years or so in industries where unionism had
been introduced only with difficulty, among rapidly expanding labour forces
traditionally resistant to organisation, or against strong opposition from
Therefore, a large majority of the British Labour movement saw a general strike along
the traditional ‘labourist’ view, which emphasised the separation of the political and the
industrial sphere, as a purely industrial act. This notion was supported the
developments in the 1920s when the depression and the employers offensive weakened
the militant and revolutionary forces , whereas the success of the Labour Party and the
reorganisation of the TUC General Council further 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 a means of overthrowing the
Parliamentary system, governments and industrialists all over Europe saw a general
strike as a revolutionary challenge for the constitution and the economic system.
Although the British Labour movement had never been really committed to this idea,
during the post-war boom when it was on the offensive, there were two examples of
semi-syndicalist conceptions concerning the use of industrial action against the war
and British intervention against the Soviet Republic. Government and employers were
warned and did not hesitate to condemn every notion of nation wide industrial action
as unconstitutional and revolutionary.
The mining dispute which caused the General Strike emerged after the First World War
when the triple alliance broke and the miners were left to fight alone against the
government’s plans to privatise the mines. As a result the mines suddenly returned to
their private owners and the miners faced demands for very substantial wage cuts of
up to 50 per cent . The dispute escalated because the crisis was seen by all the key
players -the government, the em-ployers and the Trade Union Council (TUC)- as an
example for future industrial relations in Britain. The trade un-ion movement saw its
opportunity to challenge the notion that wage reduction could solve Britain’s economic
diffi-culties and decided therefore that a future united action in support of the miners
would take the form of a general strike. But as Margaret Morris emphasised. “It was the
absence of any possibility of finding an agreed solution to the difficulties in the mining
industry which made a confrontation on the lines of the General Strike almost
inevita-ble, not any generalised will to class conflict”.
The Conservative government, however, saw its role as a neutral, standing between
the contending parties and rep-resenting the British people as a whole. Its industrial
policy included the application of the principle of co-partnership in industry, in the hope
that workers and management would begin to see their interest as identical, a policy
which was ultimately challenged by a general strike. The Government was completely
aware that a trade union victory would have important political implications such as
government intervention in the coal industry as well as encouraging further industrial
action of a similar dimension. Moreover, in 1926 the government was very well prepared
for a major industrial dispute, whereas unemployment and uncertain economically
circumstances forced the trade union movement in the defensive.
Due to this, the scene was set for a nation-wide strike in May 1926, which was
condemned to fail from the outset. After five years of struggle the miners could not
accept any wage cuts while the mine owners did not see any possi-bility of running the
mines profitable without any. Furthermore, the owners’ case was supported by the
government, which did not want to interfere in industrial relations. Moreover, becouse
the government saw the strike as a revo-lutionary challenge to the constitution and
the economic system it demanded unconditional surrender from the be-ginning. But in
fact, as Magaret Morris emphasised, the General Strike was neither a revolutionary act
nor an industrial dispute. “Only if the Government had intervened by additional subsidies
or by coercing the coal owners could the difficulties of the coal industry have been
solved in some other way than at the expense of the miners. The General Strike,
therefore was a political strike and needed to be pursued as such if it was to make any
progress” . Therefore the General Council of the TUC, which always emphasised the
industrial character of the dispute, by the very nature of the General Strike was not
fighting the owners but the government, which was forced into taking part in
negotiations and put this pressure on the owners. As the government refused to
intervene and the TUC could not openly challenge the government there was no
chance for a successful end and the TUC had to call off the strike.
A general confusion on the side of the trade unions and a principal lack of
communication between the different parties surrounded the circumstances of this
surrender. Sir Herbert Samuel lead the final negotiations based on his memorandum, but
he did not have any authority from the government. The Negotiating Committee of the
TUC was well aware of this fact but nonetheless it expected Samuel to provide an
accurate reflection of what the gov-ernment was prepared to do. However, the trade
union side thought that the strike was in decline and was losing more and more of its
faith in its success, and therefore accepted the Samuel Memorandum without the
miners ac-cepting, which, of course, would have been crucial for the signing of a final
agreement. Therefore neither the government nor the miners, and of course, neither
the employers were involved in the negotiations which the Nego-tiating Committee
thought to have turned in its favour. Only after they had called off the General Strike
did they realised that they had nothing in their hands.
While the miners were left to fight alone until their humiliating defeat in November 1926,
the other workers re-turned to work where they faced their strengthened employers. In
some trades, such as railways and printing, work-ers suffered widespread victimisation .
The real extent of victimisation, however, is very difficult to estimate be-cause besides
the dismissal of militants and the replacement of workers by volunteers, there was also
an increase in redundancy due to the reduced circumstances of many trades.
Nevertheless most employers tried to reinstate their men under new conditions which
meant new bargaining arrangements and some times substantial wage cuts. In the long
term, however, employers did not exploit their victory and showed an increasingly
moderate behaviour and the willingness to collaborate. The symbol of this new climate
became the Mond-Turner talks where the General Council together with prominent
industrials discussed the future of industrial relations. This development was not only
the result of the General Strike but, as Phillips emphasised, also due to the “sectional
conflicts which took place in the early 1920s, which had been in many cases more
costly to the firms involved, and which certainly seemed a likelier mode of resistance to
further attack on wages now”.
After the end of the strike the Conservative government emphasised its industrial
neutrality again and continued to refuse any responsibility for managing the economy.
Nevertheless, after the General Strike it responded with a new Trade Dispute Act which
made general strikes illegal, tried to severe the financial link between trade unions and
the Labour Party and made picketing much more difficult. The government’s intentions
was to drive the trade unions back into their ‘labourist’ line, but because the trade
unions lost the General Strike, among other reasons, exactly because they were too
much committed to this ‘labourist’ line, this policy was highly superfluous and in fact the
new legislation had virtually no effect. The government, therefore, was never able to
capitalise on its victory, but as the history of the strike showed that was never its
intention.
Among historians the most controversial issue concerning the General Strike is its
impact on the development of the Labour movement. For Marxist historians, such as
Martin Jacques and Keith Burgess, the General Strike marked a central watershed in this
development. They emphasised a shift to the right of the whole Labour movement and
a further strengthening of traditional ‘labourist’ forces , whereas the left and especially
the Communist Party was isolated and lost its influence. Jacques described this new
direction as a general rejection of militancy and the use of industrial action for political
ends, the strict separation of the political and the industrial spheres, the notion of
solving Labours’ problems within the capitalist system and finally the acceptance of the
common interest between wage-labour and employers. For Burgess, the idea of class
collaboration which was symbolised in the Mond-Turner talks especially marked a sharp
watershed. “The extent to which the TUC as a whole was won over to these ideas
marked the final stage in the containment of the challenge of labour to the existing
social order”. Besides the impact of the General Strike both historians also emphasised
other factors for this shift, such as the changing eco-nomic environment , but as
Jacques suggested:
“Mass unemployment, structural chance and the rise in real wages do not
them-selves explain the politics and ideology of working-class movement
during the inter-war period. Nevertheless, they provide an essential
explanation. For they help to reveal what might be de-scribed as the
objective basis of the shift to the right on trade union movement”.
Although mass unemployment influenced the Labour movement from the beginning by
forcing the workers on the defensive, undermining multi-sectional consciousness and
weakening sectional solidarity, it was not until the Gen-eral Strike that it played a
crucial role in determining the politics and ideology of the 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 “a significant short-term
effect upon union strength -measured primarily in terms of membership and its
distribution- but almost no lasting consequences. On industrial tactics, and especially
the use of the strike weapon, their impact was rather to provide a further restraining
influence where inhibiting factors were already in evidence, than to initiate any change
of conduct”. Furthermore he emphasised this the reinforced trend towards industrial
peace was happening anyway, as well as the long-established faith in a regulated
system of vol-untary collective bargaining. Thus he described the shift to the right of
the whole Labour movement and the isola-tion of the Marxist left more as a further
strengthening of already familiar principles than as a significant watershed. Moreover,
the strike itself and especially its failure was the result of the structural development of
the trade union movement along these familiar principles -especially the ‘labourist’ one-
over two generations. Altogether, from this point of view it seems that the pattern of
trade union activity and industrial relations was not altered by the General Strike. The
only thing that really changed was the Labour movement’s rhetoric style and as
Laybourn Emphasised, the isolation of the rank and file activists from the trade union
officials and therefore the final decline of the shop stewards’ movement.
However, there is little doubt that the 1920s saw a transition of the whole Labour
movement towards the separation of the political and the industrial spheres,
collaboration and moderation. At the end of the 1920s the Labour Party was much
stronger and even the trade unions, despite their defeat in the General Strike and their
reduction in both finances and members, were now much more effective. The General
Strike, of course, played an important role in this transition, but more for its final
consolidation than as a crucial watershed. Moreover, its origin and its failure seem
today like a paradigm of this transition. Nevertheless, in the long term the General
Strike left some marks upon the Labour movement, which determined its future fate.
Most importantly, after defeat the miners lost their crucial position within the Labour
movement and great bitterness and frustration emerged among the miners in particular,
but also 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. Volume II
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 Unionism during the
Inter-War Years 1918-1939, Gloucestershire 1992.
Mason, A.: The Government and the General Strike, 1926, in: International Review of
Social History, XIV 1969.
Morris, Margaret: The British General Strike 1926, The Historical association 1973.
Phillips, G.A.: The General Strike. The Politics of Industrial Conflict, London 1976.
Renshaw, Patrick: The General Strike, London 1975.
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