THE GENERAL STRIKE 1926
FAR LEFT:Pay Day at the Pit head,Miner's wages were cut by 50 per cent after the failure of the 1921 lock-out
The folk memory of the General Strike is full of quaint period charm. redolent of the Gay Twenties. In the popular picture, undergraduates i. Oxford bags drive buses and trains, medical students shift goods and big gage, and pretty typists thumb lifts to work in steam lorries and sports cars. But it was only half the story. The other side was the desperation felt by million's of men during the Great Depression, when wages were low and un-employment high and the photograph's also throw revealing light on the Two Nations which still existed in Britain in 1926. Those self-confident middle- class strikebreakers, with their pipes and plus-fours, those debutantes peeling potatoes perhaps for the first time in their lives, knew nothing of the lives of ordinary people. For though the strike brought industrial life to a standstill, it was not allowed to interfere with the social life of the privileged classes. Cricket continued, while audiences still flocked to opera. the theatre or night clubs.
With hindsight it is easy to minimise the danger of revolution. There were no deaths and only a few thousand arrests, while in Plymouth police actually played football with strikers. Certainly the mood of 1926 was less revolutionary than it had been in 1919. yet the Prime Minister. Stanley Baldwin, believed Britain was closer to civil war than it had been for nearly three hundred years, while the novelist Arnold Bennett noted his diary for 5 May General opinion that the fight will be short but violent Bloodshed anticipated next week. The tanks, armed convoys. troop battle order, special constables and wrecked trains and trams (pictures to follow) in this section all testify that such fears were not entirely groundless. Ultimately, anxiety that if the strike continued it might get out of control persuaded the T.U.C to call it off when solidarity seemed unshakeable. The moderate leaders in London feared that real authority might soon pass to militants and revolutionaries in the regions. Rather than risk this they surrendered. The result was a legacy of bitterness, a sense of betrayal and a belief that if the strike had continued it would have led to victon.
This seems doubtful. The Government had all the aces and was determined to win. But no one can be sure what might have happened: and unfortunately, this is the kind of question which we cannot resolve. What we can do with greater clarity than words is dramatise the clash of the Two Nations and reveal the violence lurking just below the surface of events, as troops and pickets faced each other across the barricades of the class war.
With hindsight it is easy to minimise the danger of revolution. There were no deaths and only a few thousand arrests, while in Plymouth police actually played football with strikers. Certainly the mood of 1926 was less revolutionary than it had been in 1919. yet the Prime Minister. Stanley Baldwin, believed Britain was closer to civil war than it had been for nearly three hundred years, while the novelist Arnold Bennett noted his diary for 5 May General opinion that the fight will be short but violent Bloodshed anticipated next week. The tanks, armed convoys. troop battle order, special constables and wrecked trains and trams (pictures to follow) in this section all testify that such fears were not entirely groundless. Ultimately, anxiety that if the strike continued it might get out of control persuaded the T.U.C to call it off when solidarity seemed unshakeable. The moderate leaders in London feared that real authority might soon pass to militants and revolutionaries in the regions. Rather than risk this they surrendered. The result was a legacy of bitterness, a sense of betrayal and a belief that if the strike had continued it would have led to victon.
This seems doubtful. The Government had all the aces and was determined to win. But no one can be sure what might have happened: and unfortunately, this is the kind of question which we cannot resolve. What we can do with greater clarity than words is dramatise the clash of the Two Nations and reveal the violence lurking just below the surface of events, as troops and pickets faced each other across the barricades of the class war.
Far Left:London Policemen go on strike to secure union recognition in August 1919.They were joined by other forces through-out Britain,notably Glasgow
