Everywhere the government had prepared and was thirsting for the fight. They were given the excuse for calling off negotiations with the TUC by the spontaneous actions of the Daily Mail printers. This was then, and is today, one of the most reactionary journals not just in Britain but in Europe and the world. It became infamous in the 1930s for its support for fascism – “Hurrah for the Blackshirts!” The writers on the Daily Mail invariably dipped their pens in mad dog saliva before writing rabid articles denouncing the working class and labour movement. It had already earned the deep-seated hatred of workers because of the role it had played, through its editor Thomas Marlowe, in the infamous Zinoviev letter, which had helped to defeat the minority Labour government of 1924. Now, in a vicious leading article entitled “For King and Country”, it compared the General Strike threat with a foreign war and called upon all “law-abiding men and women” to hold themselves ready to help the “nation” against the attack of the Red rebels. It declared that the General Strike was “a revolutionary movement intended to inflict suffering upon a great mass of innocent persons in the community… It must be dealt with by every resource at the disposal of the community.”1 The printers objected to this article, although the secretary of the printers’ union NATSOPA at the Daily Mail “would have nothing to do with a strike”.2 Marlowe then phoned the Cabinet. One of Baldwin’s aides then phoned the King’s assistant private secretary at Windsor: “The Daily Mail has ceased to function. Don’t be alarmed. Tell His Majesty so he should not go off the deep end.” There was no need for concern, came the reply from Windsor. “We don’t take the Daily Mail or the Daily Express”!3 Notwithstanding this, the government seized the opportunity to break off negotiations with the TUC, who for their part responded by grovelling even more. Pugh and Citrine returned to Number Ten with a resolution repudiating the Mail strike and protesting at the government’s peremptory refusal to go on with the talks. But Baldwin had gone to bed and they could only find the caretaker and a resident detective still on duty!
This incident is incredible for the light it throws on the hypocrisy of capitalism and the so-called “freedom of the press”. Here is a great struggle about to be embarked on between labour and capital with all the cards, most of the weapons for influencing public opinion, controlled by the latter. A virtual monopoly was exercised by the capitalist press – with the exception of the Daily Herald, the Workers’ Weekly, etc. And yet the action of one group of workers to veto a vicious, one-sided attack on the working class was taken as an attack on the “freedom” of the press. Just what this “freedom” amounts to under capitalism was shown later by the dictatorial actions of Churchill with his monopolisation of newsprint, the setting up of the British Gazette and the attempt to take over the BBC. The NATSOPA men, supported by the chapels in the machine room, foundry and packing departments, were prepared to print the paper if the offending leader article was deleted. The management refused and the Daily Mail was not printed that night.
Freedom of the Press
Most historians of the General Strike, including some who lean to the Left, argue that it was a “tactical error” for printing unions to come out in solidarity with the miners during the strike. In a “newsless world”, it is argued, the working class movement would not be able to have its voice heard. Better to allow the ‘liberal’ press, at least, like the then Manchester Guardian, to reflect some of the workers and trade unions’ views. It is suggested that, otherwise, these views would be suppressed by a news blackout. However, in all social upheavals, and 1926 certainly was that, the working class will find the means of communication no matter what obstacles are placed in their path. This sometimes takes the form of commandeering printing press facilities, from the private owners, to allow the voice of the working class to be heard. This is what happened during the 1917 Russian and 1974-76 Portuguese Revolutions. Capitalist papers were still produced but some of the facilities were now used by parties, in Russia, which enjoyed the mass support of workers and peasants. This is seen by the capitalists and their apologists as a violation of their God-given inherent right to own and manage “their property”. It is a grave infringement of the much vaunted “freedom of the press”.
But what does this “freedom”, both in 1926 and now, amount to? A handful of millionaires – some, like Rupert Murdoch who does not even live in Britain – are able to mould public opinion, even attempt to determine the outcomes of general elections; “It was The Sun wot won it!”. Yet the trade unions, still numbering seven million workers in their ranks in Britain, have no daily voice. Nor has the Labour Party, when it was a workers’ party at the bottom, had a single daily in recent history, although at one stage it commanded the votes of nearly 14 million people. Nor can the labour movement, socialists and Marxists count on support from the “liberal” press. Trotsky once remarked that The Times newspaper – this was in its pre-Murdoch days when it was a ‘journal of record’ – told the truth nine times out of ten the better to lie on that one crucial occasion which was vital for the system and the class which it ultimately defended, capitalism. The same applied to the “liberal” press in 1926 as it does today. An occasional airing is given to the case of the labour movement – otherwise, the newspapers would appear to be too biased – but little of the case for socialism or Marxism is ever allowed. The average writer on these journals, even when they may privately stand on the Left, know that they cannot go “too far” in reflecting views which would be unacceptable to the powers that be at the top. Crude censorship is not necessary with a policeman standing over journalists only because one exists inside the head of most of them, telling the journalist what can and can’t be written.
Forced to tolerate the lies of the capitalist media in “normal” times, in periods of social upheaval the masses invariably act against their slanderers. The courageous action of the Daily Mail printers was in this tradition. Instead of repudiating them, as the General Council did, it would, if it had been a serious workers’ leadership, have praised and supported them to the hilt, as did the mass of the working class. Moreover, it should have used this action to strike a blow against the hallowed “freedom of the press” by calling for the nationalisation of printing and broadcasting facilities. Not in order to establish a union or Labour “monopoly” as the capitalists would charge. On the contrary, only by a measure like this would real democratic access to the newspapers and the media be possible. Then, parties including minority ones, perhaps according to their votes in elections, would be allowed proportional access and time to explain their case. This would not amount to a “government-controlled press”, a monopoly of whoever happens to be in power at any one time, which Marxists and the Socialist Party implacably oppose. This would be not a measure to “suppress democracy” but would result in its flowering and growth. The General Strike would reveal the great initiatives from below in strike bulletins and newspapers, which showed flair and wit, produced working-class journalists who really knew how to write in popular language and, above all, tell the truth about the situation. This was in stark contrast to the official journal of the TUC, the British Worker, which was dull, bureaucratically conceived and executed and, above all, lagging way behind the development and the mood of the mass of the working class at each stage.
Daily Mail
Baldwin said of the action of the Daily Mail workers: “We felt that this was more than a threat. It was direct action, and direct action, in my view, of the worst kind because it was suppressing, or trying to suppress, the possibility of the dissemination of news to the public. In these circumstances and with infinite regret, we had to take the stand that we could go no further.”4 And yet he knew that the Mail strike had occurred not just without the knowledge of the General Council but directly contrary to their intentions, which was to keep the conflict in safe channels and under their direct control.
Churchill, in the Commons, declared that he could detect “no difference between a general strike to force some Bill which the country [read capitalists] does not wish for, and a general strike to force Parliament to pay a subsidy… it is a conflict which, if it is fought out to a conclusion, can only end in the overthrow of parliamentary government or in its decisive victory.”5 Baldwin developed the same theme, stating that the government had “found itself challenged with an alternative government… I do not think all the leaders, when they assented to ordering a general strike, fully realised that they were threatening the basis of ordered government, and going nearer to proclaiming civil war than we have been for centuries past… It is not wages that are imperilled; it is the freedom of our very Constitution.”6
Here is the clearest statement from a capitalist point of view of what is actually involved in a general strike of the character which developed in Britain in 1926. It does mean, in embryo, there is an ‘alternative government’ in the forms of organisation of the working class, which fights not just on an ‘economic’ issue but is against the very foundations of the system. This, of course, is not the way that the Labour or trade union leaders viewed the question. Thomas, in the same debate in the Commons, declared that there was no political motivation in the strike and that it could not be construed as a threat to the constitution: “I know the government’s position, I have never disguised that in a challenge to the Constitution, God help us unless the government won… but this is not only not a revolution, it is not something that says, ‘We want to overthrow everything’. It [the strike] is merely, a plain, economic, industrial dispute.”7 MacDonald confided to Citrine that his hair had gone greyer in one morning! Moreover “with the discussion of general strikes and Bolshevism and all that kind of thing, I have nothing at all to do. I respect the Constitution”.8
This was not the way the working class viewed the issue. The background to the meetings of the trade union executives on 30 April and 1 May was a great ferment in the working class with the giant London May Day demonstration passing by the hall in which the conference was deliberating. The only issue of the Workers’ Daily appeared on 3 May and commented: “It was impossible to count the numbers that took part in the London demonstrations… In one procession alone the tail had not reached Hyde Park until the head had been there an hour.” The demonstrators broke into the ‘Red Flag’ as the first section reached the hall and an observer said that ‘You had never heard it sung like this before’.”9 Even the delegates at the special executives’ conference were caught up in the mood and ended the conference with the ‘Red Flag’ being sung, which the leader of the Labour Party, MacDonald, joined in with gusto, “though he personally regarded Labour’s anthem as ‘The funeral dirge of our movement’.”10 Shades of Tony Blair today!
The right-wing leaders were caught up in a mighty wave from below which carried all before it. They had not foreseen either the mood of the working class as a whole nor the eagerness with which the government looked towards this struggle and its defeat as a means of teaching the working class a very brutal lesson. Even if the other unions had not joined in support for the miners, a movement of general strike proportions could still have developed without official control from the top. Bevin later commented: “It must not be forgotten that apart from the rights and wrongs of the calling of a general strike, there would in any case, with the miners’ lock-out, have been widespread unofficial fighting in all parts of the country, which would have produced anarchy in the movement.”11 The government and the trade union leaders feared “anarchy”, the spontaneous initiatives of the working class freed from bureaucratic restrictions. Ramsay MacDonald conceded that after the way in which the government had approached the negotiations over the miners’ conditions, “it was perfectly evident that had no general strike been declared industry would have been almost as much paralysed by unauthorised strikes”.12
A state of emergency was declared by the government. The signal for its strike-breaking organisation to move was one word: “Action.” Food depots had been set up in places like Hyde Park and most ominously, even while they were discussing with the TUC, “military precautions [had been] agreed by the Cabinet the previous week.”13 All army and navy leave was cancelled and troop reinforcements were moved into London, Scotland, South Wales and Lancashire. Although the Cabinet had decided that troop movements were to occur “as unobtrusively as possible”, in Liverpool two battalions of infantry landed from a troopship and marched through the city with steel helmets, rifles and full equipment, while the battleships Ramillies and Barham, recalled from the Atlantic Fleet, anchored in the Mersey. Warships also anchored in the Tyne, the Clyde and Humber and at Cardiff, Bristol, Swansea, Barrow, Middlesbrough and Harwich. Troops were to be used “as a last resort”.14
“Salt of the earth”
All the preparations, however, of the bosses and the government were puny when measured against the colossal response of the working class to the call for a general strike. After the humiliation of unemployment and grinding poverty, millions of workers believed that “their day had come”. This is best summed up by an Ashton, near Manchester, sheet metal worker who spoke for millions when he wrote: “Employers of labour were coming, cap in hand, begging for permission… to allow their workers to return to perform certain customary operations. ‘Please can I move a quantity of coal from such and such a place’ or ‘Please can my transport workers move certain foodstuffs in this or that direction’. Most of them turned away empty after a most humiliating experience, for one and all were put through a stern questioning, just to make them realise that we and not they were the salt of the earth. I thought of the many occasions when I had been turned away from the door of some workshop in a weary struggle to get the means to purchase the essentials of life for self and dependents… The only tactic practised by some of them was bullying, and that was no use in the situation such as this; some tried persuasion, referring to us as Mr Chairman and Gentlemen, but only a rigid examination of the stern facts of the case moved our actions. The cap-in-hand position was reversed.”15
There are many different kinds of general strikes. Some erupt spontaneously from below, taking by surprise not just the capitalists but also the summits of the labour movement who then have to run very quickly in order to keep up with the working class. One such example was the greatest general strike in history in France in 1968, when 10 million workers spontaneously occupied the factories. The spark for this struggle came from the students, which led to repression from the police, a mass demonstration of a million, which in turn led to the occupation of the factories, workplaces and offices of France and raised the spectre of revolution not just in France but throughout the whole of Europe. The historical and social soil of France and the consciousness of the working class in that country created a tradition of ‘spontaneous’ or semi-spontaneous movements from below. In this sense these occupations in 1968 were a revival of the great sit-down strikes of 1936. However, in other countries, like Britain, the tradition of the working class has been to channel its protests through the official trade union and labour movement organisations. The national leadership, therefore, has held in the past, and to some extent still today, huge authority in the eyes of the working class. This was evident in the 1926 General Strike. The national leaderships of the unions, forced into calling a general strike against their will, were determined to keep a bureaucratic grip on how it developed. The response to the strike shocked them as much as it did the capitalists: “It soon became clear that the response to the General Council’s strike call far exceeded even the Council’s expectations. Tuesday, [4 May] dawned with uncharacteristic stillness in the streets and railway stations of the cities: there were no trains preparing to bring suburban cargoes to town and no buses getting ready to heave the city millions to their shops and offices… The main approaches to London were choked with cars stretching in unbroken convoys across the Thames bridges to the city centre and from Marble Arch to Piccadilly traffic moved at the rate of only a few yards an hour.”16
Strike action by members of the NUR and ASLEF was unanimous on most lines and there was only isolated blacklegging by some members of the Railway Clerks Association, which was insufficient to allow anywhere near normal services. On the London Midland and Scottish Railway, only four per cent of normal passenger services and only one per cent of freight services ran, on the London and North Eastern Railway about the same number ran and on the Great Western Railway between three and five per cent. Despite all this, the government lied that “a limited railway service” was running from the north of England. On the London Underground, 15 out of 315 trains ran on the first day and only for short distances. Three hundred buses out of 4,400 were staffed by volunteer crews and blacklegs and by the end of the week this fell to 40. Only nine of the 2,000 tram cars in London were operating. The dockers joined their fellow transport workers and at the London docks an immediate crisis arose with the threatened shutdown of electricity to the vast refrigeration plant, where three-quarters of a million carcasses were stored. As one commentator put it: “It was not the kind of crisis which could be resolved by the jolly undergraduates and hearty middle-aged businessmen of the OMS. The Royal Navy had to sail to the rescue of submerged submarines which anchored in the King George V dock and rigged their own electricity supplies to the refrigerating plant.”17
Solid strike
Another historian, Julian Symons, indicates the solid character of the strike: “The workers’ reaction to the strike call was immediate and overwhelming. There can be no doubt that it completely surprised the government, as well as the TUC. From district after district reports came into the TUC headquarters in Eccleston Square, sending the same message in various words: the men were all out, the strike was solid.”18 The TUC also stated on the first day of the strike: “We have from all over the country, from Land’s End to John o’Groats reports that have surpassed all our expectations. Not only the railwaymen and transport men, but all other trades came out in a manner we did not expect immediately. The difficulty of the General Council has been to keep men in what we call the second line of defence rather than call them off. There are also no reports other than those acquired, orderly and good-tempered desire to keep the peace of all sections of the community.”19
The greatest dissatisfaction amongst rank-and-file workers was the calculated, bureaucratic and frustrating decision of the General Council to fight this battle in ‘stages’. The intention was to bring out a first line and hold back ‘in reserve’ key workers such as engineers and shipyard workers, for instance, who were held in check for another week. This was Bevin’s brainchild and ostensibly it was because he feared that if everybody came out, the strike would lose momentum very quickly. It seems that Citrine and Thomas opposed this strategy. But all were concerned really to lessen the impact of the strike. Thomas admitted: “Up to the evening of the strike the government thought it knew our power, but the strike exceeded their greatest expectation. The position is that they are staggered.”20
This prevarication of the TUC gave the government an extra precious week in which to perfect and reorganise its ragged, strikebreaking organisation. It also frustrated and dissipated the energy of the workers who were hammering at the door of the TUC to join the strike. Appeals to come out were not confined to the big industrial unions. For instance, operators at the Central Telegraph Office, the nerve centre of Britain’s telegraphic system, were incensed that there were no plans at all for calling them out. Even the 310 members of the Goldbeaters Trade Society wanted to know what role they could play. The General Council’s approach inevitably led to frustration, conflicts between different trade groups and a lack of coordination; at least as far as the TUC organisations were concerned. Even with the limited objectives set by the General Council, if all the organised workers had been called out at once, the government could have been completely paralysed, its strikebreaking organisations, including the armed forces, largely nullified and with every chance of bringing the government to its knees. Reform is a by-product of a radical or revolutionary struggle. A complete general strike had more chance – although not certain to succeed if it did not go further – than a limited one. Instead, what the TUC was organising was not a general strike but a ‘partial’ one, with workers brought out in stages. Nevertheless, two million came out on the first day, another half a million on the second day and the figure oscillated around this up to the end of the general strike. This meant two and half million were on strike at any one time and one million miners were locked out. In total, probably four million workers out of five and a half million organised came out on strike.
The inevitable confusion over which workers would come out on strike and which would stay to cover ‘emergencies’ – which was not always successfully carried out – arose from the decision of the General Council to keep power centralised in the hands of trade union officials in London. Its instructions were: “The General Council recommend that the actual calling out of the workers should be left to the unions, and instructions should only be issued by the accredited representatives of the unions participating in the dispute.”21 The pressure was for “trade union officials” to play the key role at all levels, thereby hoping to exclude rank-and-file worker participation in generalised councils of action or strike committees at each level throughout the country. The bureaucratic cast of mind which dominated the trades unions then and now is that everything must be prescribed from above. Yet history and experience have shown that in really successful strike struggles, improvisation and initiative of workers and their representatives, such as shop stewards’ committees, are vital even in a trade union and labour movement as in Britain with its traditions of going through the official organisations.
The British Gazette, the BBC and the British Worker
The Communist Party did attempt – and in some areas very successfully – as well as other sections of the Left and the working class, to propose and set up councils of action around the trades councils in many areas. The CP raised the slogan: “A council of action in every town! Every man behind the miners!”22 The National Minority Movement also proposed that the councils of action should be all-embracing, representing “every political, industrial, cooperative and unemployed organisation – no organisation should be left outside if we are to defeat the mine-owners and the government.” However, even the C P, through the Minority Movement, suggested that if a workers’ defence corps was set up, “They should be trade unionists of good character and under commanders who are trade union officials”.23 It also proposed that the local committees should work for friendly relations with the armed forces to explain to them the issues of the struggle, to show them how it was “the government which had declared war on the trade unions”.24 However, a clear call for delegates from the factories and workplaces – union and non-union – does not appear to have been made even by the C P.
The policy of the General Council and its conservative approach was summed up by its newly-created journal, the British Worker. On the fourth day of the strike it declared: “Meanwhile the mass of the labour movement is sound, sensible, straight-forward. It has folded its arms and quietly awaits the results.”25 The editor of this journal had declared that his aim was to keep out of the paper “anything which might cause uncontrollable irritation and violence.” He went on: “Our task is to keep the strikers steady and quiet. We must not be provocative; our line is to be dignified, calm in our own strength; to make our statements forcibly, but with moderation of language. We shall print every day very prominently and in bold type, well-displayed, this ‘Message to all Workers’; the General Council of the Trades Union Congress wishes to emphasise the fact that this is an industrial dispute. It expects every member taking part to be exemplary in his conduct and not to give any opportunity for police interference. The outbreak of any disturbances would be very damaging to the prospects of a successful termination of the dispute. The council asks pickets especially to avoid obstruction and to confine themselves strictly to their legitimate duties.”26
This stands in stark contrast to the militant, pugnacious way in which the government set about mobilising all its force, with Churchill in the vanguard, determined to crush the strike and inflict a humiliating defeat on the working class. The London print workers had followed the lead of their comrades on the Daily Mail and had ceased work before they were officially called out. When the London Evening News tried to quote part of the Mail’s ‘King and Country’ editorial, NATSOPA members halted production and both the Star and the Evening Standard failed to appear because the print workers objected to “the enthusiastic accounts which have been written of recruiting scenes [of strike breakers] in Whitehall”. The National Union of Journalists on national newspapers in the main did not follow the instructions of their executive not to work with blacklegs. Only in Glasgow did the editorial as well as the printing staff walk out. Nevertheless, of the 1,870 newspapers in Britain at that time only 40 were published in small, limited editions.
Of course, the government capitalised on “this alleged infringement of freedom of the press”, particularly in its attempt to mobilise middle-class opinion. Kingsley Martin, in his book The British Public and the General Strike (1926) wrote: “The freedom of the press today means the autocratic right of Lord Beaverbrook, Lord Rothermere and a few other private persons to select news and impose suggestions they desire upon as large a part of the population as they can persuade to buy their brand of news and accept their type of suggestion… Under these circumstances, Labour adherents feel that it is rather absurd to talk of the ‘freedom of the press’.”27 Just what this meant was shown by the last shots fired by the press before they were closed down by the workers’ action. The Daily Telegraph had one word on its placards: “War”, declaring that a general strike was, essentially, “civil war”, since it divided the nation into those who were “loyal” and those who were “disloyal”. Moreover, they said that by ratifying the General Strike the TUC showed the “true flavour of their alien origin”.28 The crippling and virtual closing down of the press, however, led to the decision of the government, under the editorship of Churchill, to set up its own organ for disinformation and lies. It turned to a number of newspaper proprietors to try and use their presses but was turned down by them all, apart from the ultra-right Duke of Northumberland who owned the Morning Post. Lord Beaverbrook, later on a friend of left-wing Labour figures such as Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot, sent over a key printing superintendent who helped to get the British Gazette out. Its headline read: “First Day of Great Strike, Not So Complete as Hoped by its Promoters”.29 This was not true but Churchill never allowed the truth to get in the way of a good story. Even Lloyd George in the House of Commons denounced the British Gazette as a “first-class indiscretion, clothed in the tawdry garb of third-rate journalism”.30 Churchill’s reply to any suggestion that the government should resort to ‘neutral’ reporting was that he could not “undertake to be impartial as between the fire brigade and the fire”.31
In its first issue, Churchill wrote: “This strike is intended as a direct hold-up of the nation to ransom. It is for the nation to stand firm in its determination not to flinch.” It then quoted Baldwin, “This moment has been chosen to challenge the existing Constitution of the country and substitute the reign of force for that which now exists… I do not believe there has been anything like a thorough-going consultation with the rank and file before this despotic power was put into the hands of a small executive in London… I do not think that all the leaders who assented to order a general strike fully realised that they were threatening the basis of ordered government and coming nearer to proclaiming civil war than we have been for centuries past.” Churchill, the Gazette reported, had commented in the House of Commons: “Either the nation must be mistress in its own house or suffer the existing Constitution to be fatally injured and endure… a Soviet of Trade Unions with the real effective control on our economic and political life.” At the same time, this government mouthpiece reported on the arrest of Communist Party MP Saklatvala: “Communist leader arrested”.32
Mussolini admired
In its second edition, it invoked the spectre of fascism in the following headline: “Foreign views of the strike. Liberty and the State. The way of fascism.” There was even a veiled warning from its correspondent in Rome: “The events in connection with the British strike are accepted in Rome as a proof that the old parliamentary regime has passed in the march of modern historical conditions… To effect the consolidation of the old and the new factors is Italy’s task today under the fascist regime.” It continued: “The [Italian] Cabinet, having yesterday completed a scheme for the creation of a new Ministry of Trade Corporations, is now hammering out administrative details whereby masters, unions and workers of the unions, province-wide, can be amalgamated in the framework of the State so that production can proceed with the highest efficiency consistent with the best conditions for the men and a reasonable return for the capitalists.”33 In other words, Italy’s fascist ‘corporate state’ was invoked by Churchill – who we must remember praised Mussolini in the 1930s – in the midst of this conflict.
Baldwin was also unrelenting. In the second issue he declared: “Constitutional government is being attacked… Stand behind the government… The laws of England are the people’s birthright… You have made Parliament their guardian. The General Strike is a challenge to Parliament and is the road to anarchy and ruin.”34 In the same issue, a short article on the Swiss press baldly states: “Capitalism at stake”.35 An unsigned editorial, probably penned by Churchill, starts: “Everyone must realise that, so far as the General Strike is concerned, there can be no question of compromise of any kind. Either the country will break the General Strike, or the General Strike will break the country.”36 At the same time, lying through his teeth, Churchill’s journal reports: “The South Wales Evening Express, in an edition published on Tuesday, contained the following: ‘It is all hopeless; we have realised that,’ said Mr A.J. Cook.”37
The Gazette consistently peddled misinformation about the “success” of government strikebreaking forces. Also in issue four, a poem by Rudyard Kipling was printed alongside a special notice which reads: “All ranks of the Armed Forces of the Crown are hereby notified that any action which they may find it necessary to take in an honest endeavour to aid the Civil Power will receive, both now and afterwards, the full support of His Majesty’s Government.”38 The government was providing legal cover for any military suppression that may have become necessary. It was also calculated to further terrify the moderate trade union leadership. Churchill was not averse in playing on the fears and prevarication of the trade union leaders: “The responsibility of these trade union leaders is grievous. It is also a personal responsibility. They made no attempt to consult by ballot those who they claim to represent.” At the same time the olive branch was proffered as he still appealed to these leaders to end the strike and “negotiate”.39
A constant theme of the Gazette is how effective the strikebreaking measures of the government were. On 8 May, it reports “substantial improvement in train services” and in Liverpool “men returning to work”. Yet the strike was maintaining momentum with increasing numbers joining it. This was indicated by Baldwin’s statement: “I wish to make it as clear as I can that the government is not fighting to lower the standard of living of the miners or any other section of the workers. That suggestion is being spread abroad. It is not true. I do not believe that any honest person can doubt that my whole desire, is to maintain the standard of living of every worker, and that I am ready to press the employers to make sacrifices to this end consistent with keeping the industry itself in working order.”40
So, the fact that Britain had been brought to the brink of “civil war” (Baldwin’s previous statement) arose from a “misunderstanding”? Every worker in Britain understood that first it was the miners and then the rest of the working class who were facing savage cuts in their living standards. Moreover, the great majority of them, through the bitter experience of the whole period since 1918, had instinctively understood that the capitalist system itself was incapable of guaranteeing their present living standards never mind lasting improvements. The fact that Baldwin made this statement, more conciliatory than his previous ones, is an indication that the capitalists themselves were taking fright at the momentum that had been unleashed once the masses were on the move.
However, in the spirit of carrot and stick, in the same issue of the Gazette, Lord Balfour conjured up the spectre of an “anti-civilisation, barbaric revolutionary explosion”. In an article headlined “Attempted Revolution – Its Purpose and Results”, he declared that the capitalists were defending “the civilisation of which we are trustees”. He stated: “Two hundred and thirty-eight years have passed since a revolution occurred in this country, whose object was to secure the supremacy of parliamentary government, and the traditional liberties of our people…” He was referring to the 1688 ‘Glorious Revolution’, the ‘safe’ revolution as far as capitalism was concerned, and not the English Revolution of the seventeenth century! He went on: “We are now threatened, it seems, with a revolution of a very different kind… Its methods are being practised before our eyes. They are to deprive the people of food, transport, employment, and a free press… No revolution is going to compel the mine-owner indefinitely to carry on his industry at a loss. Revolutionary methods would be completely powerless except for evil… [This] is what I have called it – an attempted revolution.”41
But the effectiveness of the strike sometimes crept accidentally into the pages of this biased government journal: “It became known today that workmen have been withdrawn from the House of Commons. The Speaker at the end of the sitting announced: ‘I regret to say that it is the fact that men engaged in several of the principal services of the House have been withdrawn. I can assure the House that I shall not allow the House to be disabled from proceeding with its work by the actions of any persons whatsoever. If it is necessary, I will conduct the business of the House without any printing or without any electric light’”!42 There were attempts to supplement the propaganda barrage that emanated from the British Gazette with the printing of limited editions of the London dailies and some of the regional press. But the other major wing of the government’s propaganda barrage was the BBC, which had been effectively commandeered by the government as soon as the strike began. Churchill stated that it was “monstrous” not to use such an instrument as the BBC to the advantage of the government.43 On the other hand, Ellen Wilkinson, then a left-wing Labour M P, declared after the strike: “Everywhere the complaints were bitter that a national service subscribed to by every class should have only been given one side during the dispute. Personally, I feel like asking the Postmaster-General for my licence fee back.”44
Although the criticism of the BBC was well merited, this displayed a naivety in the extreme. Compared to the gross bias, for instance, of the Murdoch media – with Fox News being a virtual propaganda wing of the Bush administration – the BBC can often appear to be more balanced. But in periods of extreme social conflict, like in 1926 or the miners’ strike of 1984-85, it becomes a propaganda tool of the ruling class. The fact that the government did not take over the BBC lock, stock and barrel was because, in effect, the BBC carried through a policy of self-censorship with a gross bias towards the government. Even the General Council, through the pages of the Daily Herald, warned on 3 May, that trade unionists should ignore all broadcasts and statements. Although the BBC was permitted to quote from the speeches of trade union leaders and from the British Worker – to show its fairness – it nevertheless echoed the government in the “large number of totally inaccurate reports of returns to work which were broadcast”.45
Gulf between TUC and workers
Even when the Archbishop of Canterbury tried to mediate between the strikers and the government, produced a peace manifesto and requested that it should be broadcast on the BBC, he was flatly turned down. The Archbishop had approached Baldwin, who told him he would “prefer that the manifesto would not be broadcast”. To reinforce the point, his aide visited Sir John Reith, Director-General of the BBC, insisting that the manifesto could not be reported and, in effect, threatening that if it was it would trigger a complete government takeover of the BBC. The puzzled Archbishop wrote to Reith: “Are we to understand that if the Churches decide to put something forth” then it would be ‘censored’? It did not enter this shepherd’s mind that his ‘flock’, which presumably included some striking workers, was similarly denied. When, however, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster broadcast a denunciation of the General Strike – “There is no moral justification” – this was covered extensively by the British Gazette and the BBC. Ramsay MacDonald, representing the Labour Party, in complete breach of the TUC’s boycott of the BBC, requested that he should be allowed to broadcast. He even offered to make “any necessary alterations” to his speech if this was requested. Once more the government stepped in, through Churchill, and vetoed MacDonald, although Thomas was allowed to broadcast… after the General Strike had finished.46
Compare the capitalists’ approach to the General Strike with the insipid approach of the General Council of the TUC. Its official strike newspaper, the British Worker, was only launched in answer to the foundation of the British Gazette. The latter fired the verbal and literary bullets, keeping in reserve real weapons, while the trade union leaders acted like a giant fire hose, more eager to stamp out the revolutionary fires burning below than to carry through the strike to a victorious conclusion. Trotsky drew a comparison between the British Worker during the strike and Pravda (Truth), the organ of the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. Both were small, just four pages, but there the comparison ended. On Pravda he stated, “What four pages!” The mood of the masses was reflected at every stage as well as the direction the revolution needed to take.
There was no comparison between this journal and the sterile, lifeless British Worker. The latter was rigidly controlled from above, instructing local committees to keep to the statements issued by the TUC and “do nothing in the way of comment or interpretation”. Typical was the following in an early issue of the British Worker. In a list of “Dos” for “difficult days”, the advice to strikers was: “Do all you can to keep everybody smiling: the way to do that is to smile yourself. Do your best to discountenance any ideas of violent and disorderly conduct. Do the thing that’s nearest: this will occupy you and will steady your nerves, if they get shaky. Do any odd jobs that want doing about the house. Do a little to interest and amuse the kiddies now you have the chance. Do what you can to improve your health: a good walk every day will keep you fit. Do something. Hanging about and swapping rumours is bad in every way.”47 To the charge of Baldwin that the General Strike was a challenge to parliament and the constitution, the British Worker declared: “No attack on the constitution”. Referring to Baldwin’s government: “They talk and write wildly about an attempt to upset the constitution, to usurp the authority of ministers, to set up a rival to the House of Commons… That is untrue.” As to being “political”, the British Worker declared indignantly: “No political issue has ever been mentioned or thought of in connection with it. It began over wages and conditions of working; it has never been concerned with anything else.”48
This revealed the gulf that existed between Eccleston Square, the TUC’s headquarters, and the mass of the strikers and the working class as a whole. On 10 May, the British Worker declared: “All’s Well!” It went on to state that in the second week of the General Strike, “Nothing could be more wonderful than the magnificent response of millions to the call of their leaders.” It particularly praised the alleged “strict obedience to the instructions to avoid all conflict”. This while ferocious battles were unfolding in different parts of the country between on one side strikers, pickets, despatch riders for local councils of action and the forces of the state on the other. The conclusion on 10 May was: “The General Council’s message at the opening of the second week is ‘Stand firm. Be loyal to instructions and trust your leaders.’”49 The next day, the British Worker once more declared: “No slackening.”50 This was true of the working class but not of the General Council, who were to sell out the strike in a matter of days. The following day, the day before the calling off of the strike, even the British Gazette had to admit that “there is as yet little sign of a general collapse of the strike”.51
That day, 12 May, was the day with the highest number of strikers, with a new wave of enthusiasm amongst workers rolling from one end of the country to the other. It is a basic tenet of all strikes, not just general strikes, that the working class, dragged out of its normal routine, learns more in one day about the realities of class society than in years of peaceful development. This applies even more to a one-day general strike, which if properly prepared can fuse the working class together, give them the consciousness and sense of their own power. Obviously a general strike is on a higher plane, one step removed from an actual taking of power by the working class. The General Strike of 1926, although “partial” in character, gave the working class this sense, of being pitted against the power of capitalism as a whole. Each day of the strike reinforced this feeling and began to breed the confidence that the working class could win.
Yet it is absolutely incredible that when the full panoply of the capitalist state had been mobilised to ensure victory for their class, the trade union leaders were mouthing outworn phrases to the effect that the strike was not political. What is politics if not “generalised economics”, the class struggle taken from one factory or industry and onto a national plane, confronting not just a national group of employers but the government itself? The Baldwin government was quite conscious that this was a political confrontation with its constant intonation about the threat of “civil war”, while the “Generals” of the TUC lamented such sentiments. Indeed, the government was actually planning to arrest the trade union leaders – Thomas, Bevin, the lot, Right and Left – if they had continued the strike any longer. “Swales believed that warrants had been issued for himself and Bevin” halfway through the general strike.52
