General Strike of 1926: Britain's Nine Days of Industrial Action

The General Strike of 1926 was the largest industrial dispute in British history. For nine days, from 4 to 12 May 1926, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) called out around 1.5 to 1.75 million workers in support of the country’s coal miners, who had been locked out for refusing wage cuts. The strike was solid but peaceful, and it ended in defeat for the unions, shaping British labour politics for a generation.

Background: the coal crisis

Coal was the foundation of the British economy and employed over a million men. After the First World War the industry was in trouble: many pits were old and inefficient, foreign competition was growing, and export markets had shrunk. In April 1925 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, returned Britain to the gold standard at the pre-war exchange rate, which made British exports, including coal, more expensive abroad.

The mine owners responded by demanding lower wages and longer working hours. In July 1925 the unions threatened to stop the movement of coal in support of the miners. On 31 July, a day labour remembered as “Red Friday”, the Conservative government of Stanley Baldwin backed down and offered a nine-month subsidy to maintain wages while a Royal Commission under Sir Herbert Samuel examined the industry.

The government used the breathing space to prepare. It organised emergency supply arrangements across the country under the Emergency Powers Act of 1920, and a private body, the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies, recruited volunteers.

The road to the strike

The Samuel Commission reported in March 1926. It recommended reorganising the industry in the long term but also an end to the subsidy and immediate wage reductions. The owners pressed for both lower pay and longer hours. The miners, led by their general secretary A. J. Cook and president Herbert Smith, refused, under the slogan “Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day”.

When the subsidy expired, the owners locked the miners out from 1 May 1926. The TUC agreed to call a national strike in their support. Last-minute talks with the government broke down in the early hours of 3 May, after printers at the Daily Mail refused to print an editorial condemning the planned strike. Baldwin’s cabinet treated this as an overt act and ended negotiations. The strike began at midnight on 3-4 May.

The nine days

The response was remarkable. Railways, buses, trams, docks, newspapers, iron and steel works, building sites and power stations stopped as workers obeyed the call. The TUC deliberately did not call out everyone at once: engineering and shipbuilding workers were added on 11 May as a “second line”.

The government kept essential services running. Middle-class volunteers, including many university students, drove buses and trains and unloaded ships. Troops and armoured cars escorted food convoys from the London docks, and Hyde Park became a central milk and food depot. Churchill edited a government newspaper, the British Gazette, while the TUC published its own British Worker. The young British Broadcasting Company, under John Reith, became a major news source and broadly supported the government’s position.

Violence was limited. There were clashes in some cities, hundreds of arrests, and the Flying Scotsman express was derailed by strikers near Cramlington in Northumberland, without loss of life. At Plymouth, strikers and police famously played a football match. On 6 May the Liberal politician Sir John Simon argued in the House of Commons that the strike was illegal, a view that worried the TUC leadership.

The battle for public opinion

With most newspapers shut down, information itself became a weapon. The British Gazette, printed on the presses of the Morning Post, claimed a circulation of over two million copies by the end of the strike and presented the dispute as an attack on the constitution. The British Worker answered by stressing that the strike was an industrial dispute, not a political revolution, and urged strikers to stay calm and avoid disorder.

The BBC was not taken over by the government, but Reith accepted that it should not broadcast material that might prolong the strike. Baldwin spoke to the nation by radio, while a peace appeal by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, was initially kept off the air and Labour leaders were refused airtime. Critics nicknamed the broadcaster, then still a private company, the “British Falsehood Company”, and the episode began a long debate about the independence of public broadcasting.

Why the strike ended

The TUC General Council had never wanted a revolutionary confrontation. Its leaders feared losing control, legal action against union funds and the slow erosion of support. Herbert Samuel, acting unofficially, drew up a memorandum proposing a settlement, which the TUC chose to treat as a basis for ending the strike, although the government had not endorsed it and the miners rejected it.

On 12 May 1926 TUC leaders went to Downing Street and called off the strike unconditionally. Many strikers were bewildered, and some employers took the chance to victimise union activists or impose worse terms, which led to further stoppages for several days.

Key people

• Stanley Baldwin: Conservative prime minister, who presented the strike as a challenge to constitutional government while appealing for calm.
• Winston Churchill: Chancellor of the Exchequer and editor of the British Gazette, among the most hardline ministers.
• A. J. Cook: the miners’ general secretary and a fiery orator.
• Walter Citrine and Ernest Bevin: leading TUC figures who organised the strike and favoured ending it.
• Sir Herbert Samuel: chairman of the Royal Commission and author of the memorandum used to end the strike.

Consequences

The miners fought on alone for about seven months. Hunger and debt gradually drove them back, and by the end of November 1926 most had returned to work on longer hours and lower wages, with settlements negotiated district by district. Largely because of the coal dispute, Britain lost about 162 million working days to strikes and lockouts in 1926, by far the highest annual total of the century.

In 1927 the government passed the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act, which made sympathetic general strikes illegal and changed how unions funded the Labour Party. It was repealed by the Labour government in 1946. Union membership fell sharply in the following years.

Legacy

The General Strike ended fears, and hopes, that Britain was close to a revolution like the October Revolution in Russia. Its failure turned the labour movement away from mass industrial action and towards winning power through Parliament, a path that led to the Labour victory of 1945. In mining communities the bitterness of 1926 lasted for decades and was revived in the miners’ strike of 1984-1985.

Timeline

• 1925, 28 April: Churchill announces Britain’s return to the gold standard.
• 1925, 31 July: “Red Friday”: the government grants a nine-month coal subsidy.
• 1926, March: The Samuel Commission report is published.
• 1926, 1 May: Miners are locked out after refusing new terms.
• 1926, 3-4 May, midnight: The General Strike begins.
• 1926, 11 May: Engineering and shipbuilding workers are called out.
• 1926, 12 May: The TUC calls off the strike.
• 1926, late November: Most miners return to work on worse terms.
• 1927, July: The Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act becomes law.

Why it matters

The General Strike was the high point of British trade union militancy between the wars and a test of the state’s ability to withstand it. Its defeat reshaped the strategy of the labour movement, while the orderly, largely non-violent conduct of both sides became part of its enduring reputation.