But the answer to the intonations of the General Council that the strike was not “political”, that at bottom it did not represent a striving on the part of the working class to replace a government and a system that kept them in the mud, is given by the reaction at rank-and-file level of the working class. Everywhere, there was an enthusiastic response. In some areas, however, notably in the North-East, in parts of London, Liverpool and elsewhere, the formation of local councils of action, with the trades’ councils at their heart, created elements at least of dual power. This term is used by Marxists to describe a situation where two rival organisations vie for power. The working class and its organisations begin to acquire powers which it does not possess in a ‘normal’ period, such as controlling transport, food and, in effect, vetoing the actions of the bosses and the government. The government loses power but not enough to allow it to be changed or overthrown. This situation is a period of ‘double sovereignty’, which does not usually last for a long time and is resolved by the victory of one power over the other. This kind of situation had not been seen in Britain possibly since the time of the English Scottish Worker, strike bulletin Revolution in the seventeenth century. During that revolution, which laid the basis for the rise of English capitalism, it took a territorial form, with the King and royalists concentrated in Oxford, and Parliament, representing the rising capitalists, based in London. In 1926, the ‘dual power’ was of a class character, existing throughout Britain, although more developed in some areas than others.
Councils of action
There were various reports given of the number of councils of action in Britain during the immortal nine days. There were approximately 400 trades’ councils in operation and between 100 and 147 councils of action. Baldwin’s aide Davidson wrote later: “The workers’ reaction to the strike call had been much more complete than we had expected. The railwaymen were out almost to a man and London Transport came to a complete standstill. The Organisation of the Maintenance of Supplies which the Home Secretary had set up was quite unable to cope.”1 This was particularly true about the solid working-class areas. A.J. Cook also wrote in The Nine Days: “It was a wonderful achievement, a wonderful accomplishment that proved conclusively that the labour movement has the men and women that are capable in an emergency of providing the means of carrying on the country. Who can forget the effect of motor conveyances with posters saying: ‘By permission of the TUC’? The government with its OMS was absolutely demoralised. Confidence, calm and order prevailed everywhere despite the irritation caused by the volunteers, blacklegs and special constables. The workers acted as one. Splendid discipline! Splendid loyalty!”2 Nowhere was this more true than in the North-East of England. As one historian expressed it: “The General Strike in the North-East is especially interesting for at least two reasons. Firstly, it was in this area that an attempt was made by the strikers to organise themselves on a similar basis to that of the Government’s Emergency Organisation… The strikers ambitiously attempted directly to counter the government organisation, establishing their own central strike committee for the area in Newcastle.”3
R. Page Arnot, a leading member of the Communist Party, played a crucial role in the North-East and, later, also gave an indication of just how, with clear leadership, at least on an organisational level, the councils of action could have become a reality throughout Britain. He had been imprisoned for six months with other Communist Party leaders but on his release addressed a May Day meeting in the village of Chopwell in north-west Durham. He then “jotted down headings for a plan of campaign in the Durham-Northumberland area”.4 He clearly understood that because of its general character the strike should not be restricted to a section of the working class but should draw in all workers and organisations. Arnot suggested that local authorities with Labour majorities could effectively disrupt the government’s plans by refusing to carry out government proposals. At a meeting in Chopwell it was decided to divide into 13 sections the apparatus needed and the tasks that had to be accomplished if the primary aim of the campaign, the defeat of the Civil Commissioner and his organisation, was to be achieved. The plan set out, in effect, the machinery for organising working class control of the region. Arnot insisted that it should be “simple, easy to throw up” and crucially “all inclusive”.5
All the activities in each locality were to be centralised in a single body called the Council of Action, Strike Committee, Trades Council or some other name. Control of food supplies was considered to be crucial: “Who feeds the people wins the strike”.6 Stopping transport was also vital: “The effect on the mind of the workers out on strike of any transport was found to be bad; the mere rumble of wheels was something that weakened the morale of our men and correspondingly cheered the other side.”7 In an incredible feat of organisation, the committee, organised without any real serious preparation, began to guide the policy of a series of strike committees thrown up by the General Strike in the North-East of England. Anthony Mason, in his description of the strike in the North-East, gives examples of the degree of organisation and how it drew on the wellspring of working-class support. He comments on how the Strike Committee communicated throughout the region and cites the example of “Herbert Bell [who] was a motorcycle despatch rider for the Newcastle Strike Committee and he was able to recall journeys which he had made into Northumberland to local miners’ lodges.”8
Herbie Bell recounted his “escapades”, as he put it, during the General Strike to me when I stayed with him in the 1960s. He was a heroic and legendary figure of the working class movement, a Marxist, a supporter of Militant, whose experiences included the First World War, the General Strike, the Independent Labour Party in the 1930s, the Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist Party during and after the Second World War and remained a Trotskyist till the day he died. He delivered strike bulletins to several places throughout the North-East. Herbie Bell and others confirmed that the communications from Newcastle were delivered throughout the region by despatch riders, who communicated the orders of the joint strike committee twice daily and were strictly obeyed. All who participated commented on how the strike committee “step by step… perfected its machinery.”9 The official TUC paper the British Worker, played very little role but the workers showed the power of initiative and improvisation, as well as humour, in the production of Northern Light, based in Chopwell and the Newcastle Trades Council’s news-sheet the Workers’ Chronicle.
As the strike developed, so did the militant mood throughout the area. This was influenced undoubtedly by the Communist Party, small in number but very energetic. The most impressive thing about the strike in the North-East was the complete failure of the government’s blackleg machinery to work in the teeth of the colossal workers’ power. Here were elements of a developed dual power. The Civil Commissioner, Sir Kingsley Wood, had to acknowledge this when he was forced to approach the Northumberland and Durham general council. R. Page Arnot wrote: “After 40 hours of the general stoppage [Sir Kingsley] came by night to negotiate personally with the strike committee. Sixty hours after the strike began, Sir Kingsley Wood, accompanied by General Sir Kerr Montgomery, were once more at Burt Hall [the strike committee headquarters], making a plea for ‘dual control’ of transport and food. This proposal was immediately rejected by the Joint Strike Committee (‘we cannot agree to our men working under any from of dual control’), which at the same time decided ‘that we now use the discretionary powers vested in us by the Trades Union Congress and withdraw all permits today’.”10
The North-East was not the only area in which the working class showed its power. Tony Mulhearn described events on Merseyside during the General Strike in an article in Militant in 1976 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the strike: “On Sunday, 2 May, the day before the strike was to begin, the Provisional Council of Action met and constituted the Merseyside Council of Action (MCA). As well as representatives from all the major trade unions it included a local sub-Council of Action from each area of Liverpool. Grouped around the MCA were the respective strike sub-committees for the transport, building and distributive trades which maintained contact with the Council of Action through liaison officers. This sophisticated structure of administration and organisation was to remain in continual session from the beginning of the General Strike until the end.”
The strike was very successful: “The dockers were the backbone of the General Strike on Merseyside. By day three there were 100,000 workers on strike. These included 20,000 dockers, 20,000 railwaymen and 20,000 warehousemen. Council of Action bulletin Number 4 of 8 May reported that the ‘strike is extending hourly. Men leaving work in sympathy with and without orders. Meat slaughtering centres all stopped’.”
The bosses and their agents attempted to counter the strike’s effects: “The Merseyside workers had to contend with a scab version of the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo. This was a two-page tabloid produced by scab labour. The print trade unionists were out to a man. Day after day this rag screamed out against the strike using all devices to try to demoralise the strikers and to whip up the rage of the middle class.” There were also attempts at strike breaking. There were “reports of students scabbing on the docks. This was blown up by the Echo and described as ‘near normal working’ at the docks. The MCA bulletin refuted this declaring that only a handful of students were scabbing and, incidentally, only doing one quarter of the work per head normally done by the dockers. The MCA bulletin of 6 May reported ‘…non-unionists are assisting in picketing [the docks] and is frequently repeated’.”11 The General Strike remained solid on Merseyside until it was called off.
The South Wales coalfields displayed even more the potential for the revolutionary takeover of power by the working class. In The Fed, the history of the South Wales miners, the authors write: “The nine days of the General Strike and more especially the seven-month lock-out revealed an alternative cultural pattern which had no comparable equivalent in the other British coalfields. The totality of commitment to the miners’ cause was a form of class consciousness which translated itself into a community consciousness, so overwhelming were the miners in numbers and influence. It was a collectivist conception which burnt into the collective memory of the whole region and was most succinctly described by the poet, Idris Davies, in what he called ‘The Angry Summer’: ‘We shall remember 1926, until our blood is dry.’”12
They further comment: “The industrial crisis of 1926 precipitated a polarising of class and community forces… It was as if the authorities deliberately stood to one side and seemed temporarily to allow the mining communities to carry on much as they wished. So overwhelming was the support that to contemplate not joining the strike would have been tantamount to committing social suicide. Not one miner is said to have been arrested, although there was much illegal action. It was not so much a question of ‘dual power’ as almost one of transference of power in some valleys. In such valleys as Bedlinog and Mardy, the miners through their strike committees and councils of action virtually ran their communities unchallenged.”13
There was overwhelming support from the working class and the majority of the middle class in the north-east for the miners and workers’ cause. The achievements of R. Page Arnot and the small membership of the Communist Party were particularly notable, given the fact that the party was weaker in this region before the General Strike than in many other areas of the country. However, because of its initiative and energy it grew rapidly as a result of the General Strike. It had one member in Chopwell in May 1926 and three weeks later there was no hall in the village which could hold the party membership. Page Arnot himself remarked that “I had to address nearly 200 Communists at Chopwell in a shallow amphitheatre of a hill amid the sunshine and the breeze of an August afternoon.” Naturally attracting the attention of the police, he was forced during the strike to sleep in different houses every two or three nights and he also changed his name to “Mr Black”.14
Chopwell
As a result of this intervention, Chopwell became a stronghold for the Communist Party with the Morning Post calling it “The Reddest Village in England”.15 Of course, this right-wing newspaper explained its “redness” by the alleged fact that “Chopwell has lived on the dole for a year”. Newcastle was also described as, “The landing place of the Russian invasion”. The Morning Post was trying to prove that the General Strike had been a “communist” inspired plot all along.
This rabid anti-socialist, anti-communist mood was reflected in the comments of the judiciary when they passed sentence on strikers. For instance, one of those charged with circulating the Northern Light was told by the magistrate: “If you think that the Council of Action can hold up the inhabitants in a state of tyranny you are very much mistaken. Why you and those associated with you don’t go to Russia, I don’t know. I am sure the government, and I personally, would subscribe willingly to get rid of the whole lot of you and let you go and live in that country where everything is so blissful and happy. We don’t want you. Nobody wants you. You are just a source of danger to the community, and the sooner you make up your minds to either reform or get away, the better for all concerned.”16
This hysteria contrasted with the sober confidence of the workers, with one correspondent commenting: “The Dawdon men have constituted a kind of Soviet and have intimated to the police that they are going to take possession of the roads to help the police and to ensure the safety of the public. No cars will be allowed to pass unless they have a permit from them. The police told me that this threat has not yet been carried into effect, but the men state they are proposing to begin tomorrow, and permits are certainly being issued by them to those people who have been to ask for them. This is, of course, a quiet way of assuming control.”17 An historian of the strike in the North-East, Mason’s comments on this are pertinent: “Given another week, such organisation might well have increased in confidence and efficiency.”18
On another occasion, a newsagent at Houghton-le-Spring had been allegedly visited by a “Bolshevist County Councillor” and his friends who informed him that “as the newspapers are now being set up by non-unionists, he would not be allowed to sell any. The newsagent has since exhibited a notice in his window announcing that no newspapers will be sold during the strike.”19 This hyperbole about “Bolshevist” councillors – the C P, as far as is known, had no councillors here – disguises the fact that the working class in this area was bound to exert pressure on and receive support from intermediary layers like shopkeepers. Their customers were miners and other workers in the main. The 1984-85 miners’ strike also showed that they could be drawn behind the working class in struggle. These elements of workers’ control were loathed by the government’s supporters.
The workers combined a seriousness of organisation with humour, especially when it came to the forces of the state: “The lowest aim in life is to be a policeman. When a policeman dies he goes so low he has to climb up a ladder to get into hell, and even then he is not a welcome guest.”20 This mood from below was in stark contrast to the summits of the TUC whose attitude had changed decisively since the events of 1919-20. Then, as mentioned earlier, the TUC and the Labour Party organised a Council of Action, a soviet in outline, to prevent Churchill’s intervention in Poland. Now they were bending over in all their efforts to prevent such developments in Britain and were living in terror that the strike might be converted into a political or even a revolutionary strike.
They would have been encouraged by the attitude of some strikers – a minority – under the influence of TUC officials, to proceed very cautiously. One French observer was incredulous when he learned that a football match between strikers and police had taken place in Plymouth: “The British are not a nation, they are a circus.”21 The Mayor of Lewes put up a prize in a public billiards match between strikers and the police. At Banbury, joint concerts were arranged and both sides competed in a tug-of-war. However, a much more ferocious and sometimes violent trial of strength was taking place in the majority of areas affected by the strike. There were clashes with the police in the East End of London and at the Elephant and Castle. In the Manchester Guardian Bulletin, its London correspondent reported: “Things seem more serious today with the streets much emptier through the taxicab drivers joining the strike. There are more buses now, each with one or two policemen beside the driver. A new strikers’ plan borrowed from the French syndicalists has been tried this morning in Camberwell; some women laid their babies on the road in front of commercial vehicles and when the cars stopped, a man jumped on the footboards and turned out the drivers and smashed the machinery of the cars.”22
Workers intervene
This supposedly “well-ordered” strike, pacific and marching to the “moderate” drumbeat of the General Council, nevertheless resulted in more than ten thousand workers being arrested and imprisoned during the course of the strike. This was comparable to the numbers arrested during the great miners’ strike of 1984-85. However, this was not at all what the bureaucratic machine wanted. This led the leaders in some areas, like Cardiff mentioned earlier, to “Keep smiling”. But this was not at all the mood or the actions which flowed from this in most parts of the country. On 4 May, most of the trades’ councils had set up bodies, which included their own executives, delegates from the strike committees of the various unions, and representatives of local working-class organisations such as Labour Parties, ILP branches, the Communist Party and Cooperative Guilds. These were not soviets – workers’ councils – in the strict sense in which they developed in the Russian and other revolutions. The councils of action which developed in the 1926 General Strike were in the main composed of labour movement organisations, trade union leaders and some rank-and-file participation. In the north-east of England and elsewhere they were broader and had some of the features of a soviet.
One of the reasons why workers’ councils did not develop on the scale witnessed in the Russian Revolution was the bureaucratic dead hand and fear of the General Council of the TUC. However, if the strike had gone on, the trade union officialdom could have been pushed aside, and the councils of action and ‘strike committees’ would have broadened out to include delegates from workplaces. The Communist Party, as we have seen, was agitating widely along with the Minority Movement, for the setting up of councils of action. Moreover, in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Barrow, Doncaster, Sheffield, Liverpool and Birmingham, an outline of councils of action had been functioning, with the influence of the C P, for almost a year. The Liverpool ‘Provisional Council of Action’ had existed since March 1926. Therefore, when over 50 towns had improvised through the trades councils bodies of this character, they came into collision with the TUC. Moreover, many of the local union officials echoed the fear of the TUC. For instance, in Dunfermline the council of action had to rename itself the “strike committee” and the editors of the Cambridge strike bulletin were forbidden to mention “government provocation and the words ‘council of action’”.23
One historian has commented: “In other areas, the determination to avoid any kind of revolutionary connotation took more dramatic forms.”24 In Widnes, for instance, the NUR branch ended its meetings with ‘God Save the King’ and the Dover strike committee requested strikers to sing ‘Rule Britannia’ instead of the Red Flag when marching through the streets! But this was not at all typical as a perusal of the improvised strike bulletins demonstrates. In Sheffield, the “engineers welcomed the General Strike with special warmth because they saw a successful strike would break the hold of all employers, of miners, engineers, railwaymen, the lot.”25 In the Sheffield area there were some 20,000 miners and a considerable body of railwaymen “who had formed a council of action over a week before the General Strike started”.26
In Oxford, the Council of Action strike bulletin stated: “There is no constitutional crisis! Stand firm workers!” Employers in Oxford had urged young people to “throw in their [union] membership cards”. Moreover, the employers announced that they would “decline to put pressure on any individual who may wish to continue [working] or resume his employment as a non-union member”.27 The strike committee was moderate in Oxford, having disaffiliated from the National Minority Movement the previous February. But nevertheless, it attracted figures who subsequently became quite important. A.J.P. Taylor, the famous historian for instance, was an undergraduate at Oriel College at the time and a member of the Communist Party. He mentions in his autobiography that new recruits had joined him, including Tom Driberg, a future Labour M P. Hugh Gaitskell, then a university student, also offered his services to the Oxford Strike Committee. He subsequently became the right-wing leader of the Labour Party but the fact that types like this could be drawn in behind the strike in an area that was relatively weak is an indication of the effect that the strike had on sections, at least, of the middle class. Even in Shrewsbury, it was reported: “Huge meetings, everyone amazed at the way in which the call has been answered. Prominent members of local Conservative Party among the strikers… Everyone said, ‘Nothing like this could have been imagined in Shrewsbury’.”28 Non-unionists joined the strike. From the most unlikely places the call was answered.
But the heart of the strike was in the solidly industrial areas. In Bolton, for instance, where the council of action was “the sole authoritative body all through” nine separate committees were set up to handle office staff, organisation, transport, publicity, finance, public representatives, picketing, vital services and messengers. By the second day of the strike, 2,280 pickets had volunteered for duty. Each was provided with a white silk ribbon and worked in shifts for four hours a day, and 29 cyclists and 57 motorcyclists maintained daily contact with practically every town in Lancashire. At Merthyr, the Central Strike Committee formed six committees and four district committees, each with four sub-committees of its own. In Scotland, the Methil Council of Action also formed six committees and a courier service with three cars – few workers possessed these at this stage. An information committee was established throughout the whole of Fife and a panel of 30 speakers was drawn up, and meetings in support of the strike were always addressed by a miner, a railwayman and a docker.29
From below
In Stepney, the Town Hall was placed at the disposal of the council of action and meetings and concerts were held every night of the strike. Even in sleepy Canterbury, the strike committee reported: “The organisation here was perfect. No weakening whatever. Our difficulty was to keep the men not involved in work.” In Coventry, workers struck without waiting for an official ruling on whether they were included in the ‘first line’ transport workers or the ‘second line’ engineers. In areas where it was not expected that the strike would be widely supported there was “often a spontaneous and powerful upsurge of working-class solidarity”.30 One such area was Johnstone, just outside Glasgow: “Never before has such solidarity been shown in an industrial dispute in this locality; even our political opponents, Orangemen, being active pickets and taking part generally in the struggle.”31
It took a long struggle in Scotland, in which the great John McLean participated, to cut across sectarian religious divisions between Protestants and Catholics and unite the workers on class lines. Scotland, particularly Glasgow, remained politically at the head of the British working class, especially during the First World War and its aftermath. It was in this area that the effects of the Russian Revolution were most keenly felt by the working class. The National Minority Movement “made rapid headway in North Lanarkshire”.32 The polarisation on religious lines had begun to soften as the Orange Protestant workers moved towards Labour as a consequence of their trade union involvement. In 1921, a Labour MP was elected for Coatbridge but the most dramatic swing to the left in North Lanarkshire was the election of Walter Newbold, a member of the Communist Party, as MP for Motherwell in 1922. Robert Smillie, the Scottish miners’ president, was a Belfast Protestant but was supported by Catholics in North Lanarkshire.
This was one area in which the Minority Movement outlined a plan for militant action in 1925 involving the setting up of councils of action. On the eve of battle, in April 1926, at a meeting of the Minority Movement in Hamilton, the conclusion was that time was running out, not just for the miners but for the working class: “Our only hope lies along the lines of solid, efficiently organised, militant action.” The ruling class had come to fear the potential power of the miners and the working class in Scotland. During the 1921 lock-out, Lloyd George claimed: “The population of the Scottish mining villages are savage folk.”33 Official control of the strike rested in the General Council of the Scottish Trades Union Congress in Glasgow. But a series of local councils of action were organised throughout the industrial areas of Scotland, in which Communist Party members, although thin on the ground, played a key role. In Cambuslang, for instance, where there were 60 members of the C P, a local trades’ council was formed and miners, steelworkers, transport and railway workers affiliated. However, once the council of action was set up on Sunday 2 May, other political groups and non-affiliated unions were allowed representation. The chairman and secretary were in the Communist Party. The widespread support for the strike was indicated in Cambuslang where there was “a wonderful feeling of solidarity not only among the strikers but also their families: the women played an exceptionally important part in the area”.34 When there was an attempt by the local Labour MP, Wright, at a meeting in Eastfield public park to suggest that the strike was a mistake, he was “lucky to escape physical injury”.35
“Tranquillity and peace”
Yet at the same time as this was happening, a national ‘leader’ of the strike, Thomas, was quoted prominently in Churchill’s Gazette stating: “I have never disguised and I do not disguise now that I have never been in favour of the principle of a general strike.”36 There could not be a greater contrast between the mood on the ground and the treachery of the leaders at the top. The working class was becoming more and more radicalised as the strike progressed. Of course, there were different tempos, depending upon previous experience, size and power of the working class in an area and, crucially, on the political development and presence of capable leaders on the ground. In Scotland, “As the nine days progressed and the control of the councils [of action] increased they resembled embryo soviets. Their existence alongside the ‘legal’ authority created a dual power situation”.37 Moreover: “All of those interviewed confirmed this growing feeling of ‘excitement’, and ‘power’ even among those previously considered ‘moderates’. Some saw the situation as ‘pregnant with possibility’.”38 As we have seen, the councils of action in many areas were mainly ‘embryos’ of real generalised workers’ councils, but there is no doubt that if the strike had progressed then the improvised councils would have been forced to extend their power, draw in representatives from the factories and the workplaces, organise more effective picketing and even a defence force to protect the picket lines and workers on strike.
Naturally, the “respectable” members of the General Council eschewed the idea of a workers’ defence corps, which had been raised prominently by the National Minority Movement and the Communist Party during the strike. Yet up and down the country men were being arrested. On 11 May, for instance, the number of arrests had risen by 374; in Glasgow alone, the total since the strike began was over 200.39 Strikers were arrested on the flimsiest excuses. In Accrington, for instance, a small boy was arrested for throwing orange peel at a “charabanc” (coach).40 At Bolton, ten lads received up to three months in jail for drawing the draw-pin of a coal cart; and at Farnworth a man was sent to jail for a month for tearing down a government poster.
The government tried to create the impression – supported by the TUC – that all was tranquillity and peace but the reality on the ground was that as the strike progressed the inevitable collisions developed between strikers and pickets on the one side who were trying to prevent the employers from breaking the transport embargo, and the police on the other. In Newcastle, for instance, the employers would resort to the most underhand methods to break this embargo. They used permits to move non-essential goods and the TUC received many reports of lorries labelled ‘essential food’ containing anything from bedding for blacklegs to toy rocking horses! The Westminster Worker stated: “People are often found masquerading as loaves of bread.”41
Workers’ press
Humour and satire peppered the rank-and-file strike bulletins and newspapers as opposed to the official organ of the TUC, the British Worker, which was staid, dull and lagging behind what was taking place on the ground. For instance, the St Pancras Bulletin reported on 12 May that notices and posters on the walls of Highgate Cemetery called for volunteers and suggested that “it should be ‘picketed by underground men’”! The Kensington Strike Bulletin announced on 7 May: “The strike is over. Only 400,000 NUR men are now on strike, plus one million miners and two million others. But three trains are running in Manchester and there is a five minute service every two hours on the tubes. A bag of coal has been brought from Newcastle today.” The Bristol Bulletin read: “Early in the morning, per broadcast from London, see the little puff-puffs all in a row, D’Arcy on the engine, pulled a little lever, expansion of the boiler – UP WE GO!” The Eastern Valleys Joint Industrial Council in Monmouthshire published an imaginary conversation between a striker and his young son: “‘What is a BLACKLEG Daddy?’ asked the innocent lad. ‘A BLACKLEG is a TRAITOR, my boy. He is a man who knows not honour or shame!’ ‘Were there many BLACKLEGS in the valley, Daddy?’ ‘No my boy! Only the station-master at Abersychan and the two clerks at Crane Street Station.’”42
Where the workers were strong mass pickets developed which stopped attempts to break the trade union embargo. This was the case in parts of Scotland, the north of England, as we have seen, and in London’s East End. In Falkirk in East Scotland, blackleg drivers were formally “placed under arrest” by pickets before they could turn back and “much of the traffic in and out of Edinburgh was controlled by the local strike committee”.43 Abe Moffat, Communist Party member and future president of the mineworkers, described the situation in Cowdenbeath in Fife: “All motor vehicles had to get permission from the trades council before travelling up the Great North Road. We had pickets on in various parts of the road to ensure that no-one passed without the permission of the trades council. To ensure that no-one would pass, miners had a rope across the road. If a motor vehicle had a pass it got through, if it had no pass it had to turn back.”44
Police and strikers
Of course, these were areas in the vanguard of the workers’ movement; not all areas were as effective in preventing blacklegs from working and the employers from seeking to break the strike. In these areas the TUC did nothing effectively to extend the examples of the more militant areas to less militant ones. On the contrary, most of their efforts were bent towards constraining and restraining the more militant sections of the working class in areas which were in danger of getting out of hand. They were particularly terrified that the movement would extend to the establishment of viable workers’ defence corps. Yet because of the experience of the working class, with attempts to break the strike and collisions with the police, such bodies of workers’ police , or workers’ defence corps, at least in outline, are “specifically mentioned in reports of Aldershot, Chatham, Colchester, Croydon, Denny and Dunipace, Methil, St Pancras, Selby, Sowerby Bridge, and Willesden”.45 They were spontaneously formed and in clear breach of the wishes of the TUC.
This force, sometimes, as in the case of Chatham and Colchester, took the form of special pickets for meetings. But in places like Croydon, Methil and Willesden fairly large forces were developed. At Methil in East Scotland, a corps which had been organised under the command of an ex-Sergeant Major with 150 men was raised to a strength of 700 as a reply to police charges on pickets and was used on regular patrol work. It was organised under ex-Non Commissioned Officers and they patrolled the area in columns of four, armed with pick-shafts. The result was, “There was no further interference by police with the pickets.”46 In Lincoln, “The police asked us to supply the whole of the special constables – which we did”.47 In Swindon, “When our autocratic Mayor sent two tramcars on the streets, the police allowed our strike leaders to take charge of the situation.”48
The difficulty of mobilising special constables out of the general population who could be in turn affected by strikers often coming from the same community was recognised by the government in: “It was thought that a special constable, recruited from a given village, might feel some compunction about summarily arresting his best friend for seditious talk on the village green. Mobile fleets of special constables were therefore recruited far away from the possible danger zones, and they dashed through those zones as strangers.”49 Much the same methods were used by the Thatcher government in the 1984-85 miners’ strike. In Yorkshire, for instance, the Metropolitan Police from London achieved notoriety as the ‘bully boys’ of Thatcher in the violent methods against the miners both in the coal fields and in the attempts to prevent pickets from travelling in support of the miners.
Strike breakers ineffective
The government could not rely in 1926 on the loyalty of the largely civilian forces that were drawn from areas inhabited by strikers. The leaders of the strike in the North-East were warning Eccleston Square that the clashes between the police and strikers were escalating. The tension was so high that several thousand workers in Newcastle were baton charged by police on Saturday night, 8 May. Strike leaders warned that the situation could “get out of hand” and the military could be resorted to. The use of the police in the North-East arose from the frustration felt by the authorities at the grip increasingly exercised by the workers and their organisations, the councils of action. The government had, in effect, lost control in the region and “this would certainly account for a new determination to smash the strike by force”.50
But the police force, particularly the special constables, could not fail but to be affected by stubborn resistance from the working class, which was evident in many areas. At Lincoln, the Chief Constable was “a consistent friend of labour and absolutely refused the assistance of either military or mounted police”. At Ilkeston, the strike committee found the local police were “very good and sooner assisted than interfered with us”. The Leyton Strike Committee – an area with a huge concentration of railway workers – had a “very pleasant relationship with the police”. The Selby Strike Committee observed: “Police assistance could not be improved upon; our strike police and local police worked in company and harmony”. Even in Yeovil, “There was a good feeling exhibited by the town police throughout.” In Bath, the Council of Action was “complimented and thanked by the Mayor and Chief Constable for maintaining perfect order; advised Mayor first day of strike to disband local specials as superfluosities”.51
But mass picketing in the main roads of London’s East End resulted in fierce street battles, in which 30 civilians were taken to Poplar Hospital and one man, it was alleged, died of his injuries. Further baton charges took place and violent clashes resulted around the Blackwall Tunnel, where cars were smashed and set alight. Attacks on trams and buses also led to clashes in Leeds, Nottingham, Manchester, Stoke, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh. There were also clashes in the East End and at the Elephant and Castle mounted police attacked the crowd after a bus, which was trying to dodge strike pickets, had crashed onto the pavement killing a man.
There were a number of candidates for the role of “strong man” in forcibly suppressing the strike. One of those was Churchill and another was ‘Mussolini minor’, Joynson-Hicks (Jix), the Home Secretary. He had declared on a previous occasion, “We did not conquer India for the benefit of the Indians. I know it is said at missionary meetings that we conquered it to raise the level of the Indians. That is cant. We conquered India as the outlet for the goods of Great Britain. We conquered India by the sword and by the sword we should hold it.”52 Of course, the “sword” was inadequate once the national revolt of the Indian people gathered momentum during and after the Second World War. But the very fact that people like this were in the government, as well as Churchill, who posed the possibility of a serious confrontation including the use of troops, could have ignited the explosive situation which existed. Any number of incidents could have triggered this off.
The British Gazette had garnered to itself the lion’s share of newsprint available but when pickets tried to prevent this from reaching its offices, the combustible Churchill demanded the despatch of foot guards with ammunition to confront the strikers. The government, however, held to its line that “troops should be used only as a last resort”. But it was becoming quite clear that the 98,000 special constables enrolled throughout the country – with 11,000 in London alone – were incapable of holding back the growing movement of the working class. It was because of the inadequacies of these forces that Churchill provocatively carried his statement in the British Gazette, mentioned earlier, that the armed forces would be mobilised if necessary.
The General Council of the TUC, because of the embargo on transport, were accused of an organised attempt to starve the people and wreck the state. A decision was then taken to break the standstill which the strikers had implemented in the London Docks. In London itself, there was only 48 hours supply of flour left when the government decided to act. It broke the pickets around the docks with 105 scab lorries at 4.30 in the morning with Grenadier Guardsmen in the lorries and twenty armoured cars, crewed by men of the Royal Tank Corps, escorting them. The New York World reported that there was “enough artillery to kill every living thing in every street in the neighbourhood”. To the British Gazette, the convoy looked like “the commissariat of a victorious army”.53
Workers’ defence force
After this incident a clear call for the organisation of defensive formations of the working class, a defence corps, would have received widespread support. So also would the idea of appealing clearly to troops – most of whom came from the working class – not to fire on members of their own class. The refusal to do this was to disarm the working class and strike in the face of rising threats and violence. A.J. Cook had raised this issue, Communist Party members had been arrested for suggesting this. A display of military force in London not only served to anger the working class there but in other areas also. Clashes occurred at Southsea, Swansea and Nottingham, where water hoses were turned on strikers. At Houghton-le-Dale near Preston, police baton charged strikers trying to stop buses and shots were fired at a train passing below a bridge at Crewe. In Preston itself, a crowd of 5,000 tried to storm the police station to rescue a striker arrested after earlier attacks on buses. In Hull, which had seen early clashes, further “disturbances” occurred. At Middlesbrough, renewed fighting broke out around the railway station. In Glasgow, The Times reported: “The struggle was of the wildest description; pots and pans, iron bars, pickheads and hammers were used as missiles” against the police. Rioting took place over four consecutive nights and 269 strikers were arrested.54
At Nine Elms Railway Depot in London, a particularly significant incident took place in the second week of the strike when a special constable was stabbed following an incident provoked by the police themselves. The police took revenge with baton charges in an attack on the union headquarters. ‘Specials’, drawn from middle-class youth, set about strikers with their batons “without any discretion”. The secretary of the NUR branch described how “a covered lorry drove up from which alighted two sergeants and about 50 constables. Without the slightest provocation, they drew their batons and on the word to charge being given, they unmercifully belaboured men, women and children, injuring many. It was a mercy that I moved my head in time or I should have been killed.” Most significantly, he states: “I am very much afraid after what has happened the men will arm themselves and as there are about 20,000 on strike in this neighbourhood, should the police again attempt such a thing it would be them taken to the mortuary and not the hospital.”55
In Poplar, where local Labour leaders were addressing a meeting of 500 dockers outside the Town Hall, a police tender swerved into the crowd injuring many. Then, 30 policemen swarmed out to baton charge the crowd, injuring many including a local clergyman who had approached the police with an upheld crucifix. The police then stormed the NUR headquarters in Poplar High Street, “batoning anyone unfortunate enough to be within striking distance”.56 The Mayor of Poplar, who was in the building playing billiards at the time, was admitted to hospital with serious head injuries.
Widespread prosecutions also occurred; one Lambeth worker was fined £5 for shouting “We want the revolution!” A Manchester businessman found in possession of copies of the Workers’ Daily received two months imprisonment. When Communist MP Saklatvala addressed a May Day meeting in Hyde Park, he was arrested. This was for calling on the “army boys” to “revolt now and refuse to fight, and they will be the real saviours of the homes and the workers”. He received a two months jail sentence. A young Communist school teacher in Pontefract was jailed for a similar speech but gave her address as “Moscow, Soviet Russia”. In Liverpool, a Communist Party member had told an open air meeting that troops stationed at Chelsea Barracks and Aldershot had refused to entrain for mining areas, and that all transport in the East End of London had been stopped by the workers in spite of repeated baton charges by mounted police. He was also jailed for three months. The Communist Party came in for special treatment, with raids on its national headquarters and provincial offices, with an estimated 1,200 members brought before the courts.57 A 17-year old girl was imprisoned for tripping up a strike-breaker!
War clarifies, strips away, the inessential and shows in brutal relief the real character of the combatants. It tests out the strategy and tactics as well as organisation of the opposing armies. Class war possesses the same essential features. It requires a clear revolutionary leadership, at the head of a mass party, acting as a lever to allow the working class to draw all the necessary conclusions from the actions of the capitalist class as well as its own. At bottom, the General Strike of 1926 shattered the perceptions of all stripes of reformism that the capitalist state was in some sense neutral, could be seized hold of and utilised to carry through fundamental changes in the lives and conditions of the working class, the majority. Marx explained that the government is the “executive committee” of the ruling class. That was evident in the case of the Baldwin government, which acted quite clearly and consciously to inflict a serious defeat on the British labour movement. In order to do this, it pursued a relentless ideological struggle, took hold of the main levers for the dissemination of information, the British Gazette and the BBC, in order to win the population, in particular the middle class, to its side.
The capitalist state
But the government was also prepared to use its state, if necessary, to forcibly crush the working class. Friedrich Engels pointed out that the state can ultimately be reduced to armed bodies of men and their material appendages, courts, prisons, army and police. In 1926, the police were used on a widespread scale in order to try and smash the picket lines. As the strike progressed, however, these were shown to be ineffective and the ‘special constables’ mobilised were incapable of smashing the workers’ movement. In areas like Liverpool, where the fascists had been recruited as ‘specials’, they were not in fact used in the course of the strike. But behind the police was the army, navy and the air force, who were “on standby” for use if necessary.
These conclusions arising from events, however, were far from the minds of the General Council of the TUC. Ultimately, they were prepared to bow down before this state as events were soon to show. The state in the 1926 General Strike was not “above classes” as MacDonald and Co. believed. They peddled this myth, linking it to the idea that the strike was “economic”, a purely “industrial” struggle. In reality, the strikers came up not just against the individual employer but the government armed from head to toe with the necessary repressive instruments to crush the working class. The BBC was unequivocally on the side of the government and the boss class as a whole. When The Times, for instance, found its newsprint commandeered by Churchill and the government, it protested. Churchill’s reply was: “I do not at all agree with your idea that the TUC have as much right as the government to publish their side of the case and to exhort their followers to continued action.”58 His justification for this ‘biased’, not to say dictatorial, measure was that there was a large number of people who were detached from the conflict and awaiting to see whether the government or the trade unions “is the stronger”.
