From day one, the General Council was trying to find a way of ending the strike. After the first week and as soon as they witnessed the ever-growing success of the strike, frantic efforts were made to derail it via negotiating channels with the government. From Saturday 8 May onwards, behind the scenes “soundings” to end the strike were undertaken. This was leaked to the international capitalist press, which was freer to report on such developments. The New York World carried a dispatch on 8 May from its London correspondent “revealing that Ramsay MacDonald had given a private interview to reporters in the House of Commons in which the Labour Party leader had stated that he was keeping in constant touch with Mr Baldwin and was ‘hourly in conference, regarding settlement of the strike”. The editors of the British Worker, once they discovered this report, were forbidden to publicise it for obvious reasons.1
The conduit to the government was none other than Sir Herbert Samuel, the chairman of the so far failed Coal Commission. All of this was done behind the
Labour Leaders backs of the mineworkers’ union. It is incredible that during the General Strike when the miners were supposed to be the cause celebre, they did not even have representation on the General Council. From 9-11 May there were days of numerous meetings. Only once, however, in all these discussions, were the miners called in, on 10 May. Smith and Cook flatly rejected the suggestion that the strike should be called off so as to allow negotiations to continue on the basis of wage reductions. Cook, in The Nine Days, wrote: “These discussions and pow-wows had reached the stage when the Negotiating Committee and the leaders of the Labour Party felt that something tangible had been secured to justify a move towards calling off the General Strike.”2 The miners were pressed relentlessly to accept cuts in wages, the very issue on which the General Strike had been called. First fiddle in this wage-cutting chorus fell to Thomas, of course, but with the majority of trade union leaders, supporting him. The miners were pressed to agree to negotiations, so much so that Cook wrote: “It did seem terrible that we had to fight not only the government and the coal-owners but certain labour leaders as well.”3
At the same time, international interest and support for the General Strike was huge. There was an enthusiastic response of the Russian trade unions. This reflected the fact that the heads of the workers there had been raised in the expectation and the hope that the English workers were going to make a breakthrough and link up with the workers’ state in Russia. Through factory collections amongst a very poor working class, two million roubles (£200,000) were donated. But the TUC rejected this donation, shamefully recording in the British Worker on 8 May: “The report in the foreign press yesterday that an offer had been made by the Russian Trade Unions was confirmed this morning by a definite contribution being offered to the General Council. The Council has informed the Russian Trade Unions, in a courteous communication, that they are unable to accept the offer and the cheque has been returned.”4
But this kind of support was necessary and correct from a working-class point of view. The capitalists of Europe were themselves watching with keen interest events in England, were commenting in a most hysterical manner, and fervently wishing for the General Strike’s defeat. Le Temps in France, for instance, was of the “considered opinion that the English strike is directly due to Zinoviev”.5 This was an attempt to link the strike to the forged Zinoviev letter which brought down the Labour government of 1924, as we have seen. It was one indication that if the strike had succeeded it would have shaken the whole of capitalist Europe, including the dictatorship of Mussolini in Italy. On the same day that the TUC turned down financial aid from the Russian workers, the British Gazette, basing itself on reports from Italy, claimed that the strike in England was not “causing unrest” among Italian workmen! But contradicting this, it quoted Italian authorities warning against “industrial suicide”. It called on “masters and men to collaborate” and contrasted this to the strike in England which was clearly threatening the class collaborationist corporatism of the Mussolini regime. It also said that a joint meeting of workmen sent the “following message… to Signor Mussolini – ‘While in England there is a strike, we have after a ten-hours sitting concluded a series of agreements for the provinces of Leghorn in the spirit of collaboration with the firmness of imperial Italy and the invincible Duce.’”6
This was a sign that the British bosses, and particularly Churchill were yearning for a state like Signor Mussolini’s, which would dispense with strikes of all kinds and particularly a general strike. On 12 May, the British Gazette also discovered a “vast Soviet scheme”. It reported: “Arnold Rechberg, a German businessman, writing in The Nation this morning, states that he has evidence that the English strike is only one side of a vast Soviet scheme… [The trade union leaders] thought they were merely defending the economic interests of the working class.”7 The British Gazette, not content with the retreat of the TUC on the issue of Russian donations, stated in the same issue: “FOR WHOSE BENEFIT? A question for trade unionists. The Council of the TUC make a great virtue of returning the Soviet’s cheque for thousands. So money to subsidise the strike in this country was offered from this source! Why? Was it to serve a British interest?”8 Instead of replying to these accusations, as Militant vigorously did in the 1980s when challenged about being bankrolled by “foreign capital”, the General Council capitulated to this pressure. The TUC and the miners had the right and duty to request international support, including financial donations, from the working class throughout the world. The British miners in the 1984-85 strike sent countless delegations throughout the world – which Militant and the Committee for a Workers’ International helped in some cases to organise – for collections for the miners to sustain their year-long struggle.
It was the right of the miners and the working class, and the duty of any leadership worthy of the name, to act in this fashion, to collect cash, to call for action, from workers worldwide in defence of British workers. The TUC should have thrown back into the faces of the capitalists the accusations of the press. It was rank hypocrisy. It has now been revealed that the modern Tory party of Cameron received donations and ‘loans’ from foreign capitalists to fight a British general election! The capitalists arrogate to themselves the right to borrow from foreign capital, from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, etc., but attempt to deny a similar right for the working class to receive support from their compatriots throughout the world. The Times on 6 May 1926 had already provided what one historian called “a more rational account” of what had happened in relation to the offer of Russian trade unions’ money. It stated: “Soviet support for strikers. Red trade unions throughout the USSR are organising contributions to support the British strikers. The money if accepted, could not have served the British Communist Party. The national leaders were arrested before the strike began, and throughout the strike raids were made on Communist rooms to get rid of local leaders.”9
“Honourable settlement”
Notwithstanding the shameful rejection of the Russian offer, the working class internationally rallied to their British brothers and sisters: “Reactions to the strike on the part of the trade union movement elsewhere in Europe were enthusiastic. The International Transport Federation became the organising centre of a trade union boycott on all transport to Britain. The International Miners’ Federation placed an embargo on the transport of coal. There were many contributions, including some of $5,000 from the International Federation of Trade Unions.”10 There was also a donation of $10,000 from collections made at mass meetings in Germany. The Indian trade union movement decided to take action against British ships, as did the Mexican Federation of Labour. In the United States the Amalgamated Clothing Workers sent a contribution of $10,000, although the American Federation of Labour (AFL) merely declared its sympathy for the miners.
Symons comments in relation to the attitude of the TUC: “It was rather an embarrassment for them to learn that there had been widespread demonstrations in support of the strike in the Soviet Union, that collections were being taken in all industrial centres, that many Russian workers had voted to contribute part of their wages towards a strike donation, and that all British ships in Russian ports had been held up.”11 The General Council sought to mollify bourgeois public opinion on the one side while restraining and constraining the strike on the other. A general strike is an ‘either/or’ situation. Either it goes forward, which means a deepening and widening of the strike and its organs, such as workers’ councils, posing at least implicitly the question of power being taken by the working class, or it slackens, weakens and eventually disintegrates.
There are, of course, periods, as we have seen from our historical sketch earlier, where the ruling class, taking fright at the scale and success of a general strike, draws back and is forced to concede. Such was the situation in the historical upswing of capitalism prior to the First World War and even in the Kapp Putsch of 1920, which completely paralysed the organisation of the capitalist state – including strikes by the civil servants – which defeated the coup plotters around the banker Kapp. But the British General Strike was not one of those situations. It posed the question of power, which is the last thing that the General Council – Right and Left – was prepared to contemplate.
The success of the strike, combined with the more open display of capitalist state power, frightened the General Council. Troops were used, as we see in the case of the London Docks, to move food and attempt to break the strike. The police, in the second week of the strike, began to harass, arrest and baton charge workers. Many workers were sent to jail, particularly Communist Party members. The government even considered prohibiting banks from paying out money to any person acting in opposition to the “national interest”. This was directly aimed at the union funds, with the government warning in the House of Commons that these were “liable to seizure”. This even alarmed the King, who advised Baldwin that “anything done to touch the pockets of those who are now only existing on strike pay might cause exasperation and serious reprisals on the part of the sufferers.”12
And, of course, some of the union leaders were taking fright at the possibilities of their own arrest. Purcell, an erstwhile left winger, asserted: “Definitely the government had issued warrants for his and Bevin’s arrest, as Chairman and Secretary of the Strike Organisation Committee.”13 At the same time Thomas, in public speeches, was doing his best to demoralise workers, stating in Hammersmith that he had never favoured a general strike but at the same time brazenly spelling out the need for “compromise”, i.e. betrayal of the strike: “The responsibility is indeed a heavy one. But there will be a graver responsibility on whichever side fails to recognise the moment when an honourable settlement can be arrived at. The moment must be accepted and everyone must work to that end.”14 Havelock Wilson, strike-breaker extraordinaire, and leader of the Seamen’s Union, tried to do his bit for the bosses by successfully applying to the High Court for an injunction restraining his own union officials from calling on members to support the strike. (Some seamen had come out in favour of the miners.) The judge who heard the case claimed that the “so-called General Strike” called by the TUC committee is illegal and “contrary to law” and “those persons inciting or taking part in it are not protected by the Trades Disputes Act of 1906.”15
Liberal M.P. Sir John Simon followed this up in the House of Commons by saying that the strike was of “a wholly unconstitutional and unlawful character… Every trade union leader who has advised and prompted breaches of contract by strikers is liable in damages to the uttermost farthing of his personal possessions…”16 Even the Solicitors’ Journal, a “legal weekly of established repute”, entirely disagreed with Simons’s conclusions. Of course, under Thatcher’s vicious anti-union laws today, upheld by Blair and his New Labour government, the threat of sequestration, and action against the assets of unions and their officials, are used to prevent workers from taking solidarity action, as was the case in the 2005 ‘Gate Gourmet’ dispute. This was also a threat made against the unions in 1926. Against the background, however, of millions of workers out on strike in 1926, such a threat had as little impact as a drop of water on a hot stove. Nevertheless, the government never let slip any opportunity to warn the trade union leaders of further anti-union legislation unless they came to heel. And the government proceeded to introduce anti-union legislation after they had defeated the strike.
Thomas’s speech about an “honourable settlement” was seized on by the government and its organisations as an example of what it actually wanted, an “offer to capitulate”.17 The BBC used Thomas’s statement every night on its nine o’clock bulletin and the British Gazette displayed it every day. Yet precisely when the right-wing negotiating Strike Organising Committee was prepared to crawl on its belly before the government, the strike was growing in numbers and cohesion, as was the confidence of the workers. “The feeling of the workers is that the General Council and the Labour Party must stand firmly for no reduction in the miners’ wages. They declare they are out to win.”18 From Birmingham, the Welsh M P, Morgan Jones, said that the spirit of the strikers was a revelation and that he had attended a demonstration of 20,000 people on Sunday, 9 May. Kingsley Martin, with others in the report on the ‘state of public opinion’ in the Midlands, painted a very favourable picture, with even the Rotary Club passing resolutions for “peace” and the railwaymen “still one hundred per cent out… There were no disturbances… In Coventry they found the NUR and RCA almost one hundred per cent out, all tram and bus men out except inspectors, and no transport running except for a few independent buses.” Even Oswald Mosley, then a Labour Party member, reported that in Birmingham the city was “astonishingly solid”.19 The same picture emerged everywhere, with workers who had not been called out on strike straining at the bit to do so. In London, Susan Lawrence, an ardent feminist MP for East Ham, addressed dozens of meetings in the East End on the Saturday and Sunday before the strike was called off and reported: “A glorious spirit, never again will the workers be trodden under foot as they are now – we are living in momentous times – a revolutionary reaction – a terrible time – perhaps – many of us in prison.”20
“We are busted”
But this heady mood did not infect the leaders at the top. When Samuel returned from his sojourn in Italy on 6 May, he contacted Thomas a few days later and received a warm embrace, not just from Thomas but from others now willing to throw in the towel. Bevin was ready to negotiate away support for the miners. John Bromley, the ASLEF leader who was considered a ‘left winger’ and built up by the Communist Party before and during the strike as such, was ready to capitulate. He said to Cook on the evening of 10 May: “We are busted.” A Labour M P, Rhys Davies, also stated later that many “‘left-wing’ leaders, such as Mr Bromley turned more ‘right’ during the strike than the original ‘right-wing’ leaders such as J.H. Thomas”.21 The sooner these Lefts had to move from phrases to action, the more they moved to the Right. This was not just evident in 1926 but subsequently as the experience of the labour movement in Britain at various stages since has shown.
In the critical periods of the 1970s, left-wing leaders such as Hugh Scanlon, of the engineers’ union and Jack Jones of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, particularly during the period of the Labour government of that decade, “looked over the abyss” and drew back. Scanlon had claimed at one stage to be a ‘Marxist’ yet he refused to contemplate a serious challenge to capitalism. Despite any good intentions that he and Jack Jones had initially, they reined in the working class from a full confrontation with the government and employers. Tom Sawyer, as we mentioned earlier, originally stood on the Left of the Labour Party but as it swung leftwards he swung right, ending up sitting on the red benches and decked out in ermine in the House of Lords. The crucial difference in the 1980s was that the Marxists, gathered around Militant, did criticise, in a positive way and warned of the inevitable role of left reformism and even centrism – which can be revolutionary in words and reformist in deeds – in a situation of heightened class conflict.
Although the miners had not been told of the negotiations with Samuel, by the end of the first week of the strike they were convinced that a furtive plot was afoot. In fact, the limited editions of the capitalist press had leaked that Baldwin and Thomas were in some kind of formal conversation. MacDonald also stated he was keeping in touch with the government. In fact, without any authority, the Labour leader had secretly visited Downing Street, with a leading engineering employer to press for a settlement based on temporary wage cuts of ten per cent pending final arbitration. Baldwin was looking over his shoulder at the ultras in his own cabinet led by Churchill. Baldwin’s right-hand man, Jones, confessed later: “My policy was to split Eccleston Square [the TUC General Council] in two, with the aid of a gesture from the Prime Minister which would help the moderates.” Churchill objected, fulminating in what Jones called “boiling eloquence” and railed at him: “We were at war… We were a long way from our position… We must go through with it. You must have the nerve.”22
The government’s uncompromising attitude was summed up in a letter dispatched to Samuel: “We have repeatedly stated that we cannot negotiate until the General Strike has been withdrawn. For if we did so… the true situation sincerely faced would be that we had procured the end of the General Strike by a process of bargaining. It is therefore plain that [the government] cannot enter any negotiations unless the strike is so unreservedly concluded that there is not even an implication of such a bargain.”23 In other words, the government were looking for complete surrender and the right-wing leaders of the General Council were going along with this. They were also trying to cover their tracks in order to shield themselves from the anger of the working class once the real implications of what had transpired were revealed.
The General Council was in an incredibly contradictory position, attempting behind the scenes to negotiate a way out and, at the same time, extending the number of workers called out. Thomas and Bromley both tried to argue that unless an agreement was arrived at with the government there would be a mass drift back to work on the railways. Bromley threatened: “Unless the strike is called off now there will be thousands of trains running. The result will be that there will be a debacle. It is no good; we cannot go on any longer.”24 He then threatened the miners that if the strike was not called off immediately he would order ASLEF members to resume work on Tuesday 11 May. This was the constant refrain of Bromley and Thomas but it was a complete myth. Official figures show that out of a total of 39,421 locomotive engineers employed on the four main railway companies, only 742 had reported for duty on Tuesday 11 May. The proportion of firemen and signalmen returning to work was similarly low, although there were substantial defections, it seems, from members of the Railway Clerks Association. Thomas argued later: “The criticism is – why do we not go on? We could not have gone on.”25
Betrayal
The British Worker answered Thomas on 11 May, the day before the strike was called off when in block type it proclaimed: “The number of strikers has not diminished; it is increasing. There are more workers out today than there have been at any moment since the strike began.”26 Such “details” were unimportant to the right-wing General Council who were now in an unseemly scramble to terminate the strike and betray the miners. The General Council now insisted that no settlement was possible unless the miners accepted wage cuts. But Smith declared: “Our men in the coalfields have given us our instructions and we cannot depart from them.”27 Despite this, Thomas approached government plenipotentiaries and said that if the government would indicate, through a non-governmental representative, that the Samuel Report would be effected without delay, it was “possible” that the TUC might call off the General Strike and quite falsely indicated the miners would accept this. But when Baldwin received this proposal he rejected it and insisted that it remain for the TUC to call off the strike. However, hoping they could break the General Council, they delayed the introduction of further repressive measures such as the ‘Illegal Strikes Bill’.
In a further meeting of the General Council, the miners were told that the government would accept the Samuel proposals on the basis that the strike would end and the lock-out notices were withdrawn. This would then allow the miners to return to work on the basis of the status quo, but with of course a reduction in wages to come after the resumption of work. A.J. Cook and Herbert Smith questioned as to what guarantee they would have that the government would accept the Samuel proposals. Thomas, as recalled in The Nine Days, said: “You may not trust my word, but you will not accept the word of the British gentleman who has been governor of Palestine?”!28 Cook wrote of this meeting that “an abyss [was] opening before himself and his colleagues”.29 Nevertheless, neither he nor Herbert Smith was prepared to go over the heads of the trade union leaders and call openly for the resistance of those on strike, make appeals for workers to come out and give a bold direction for the councils of action to be extended and developed on a nationwide scale.
Even while these discussions were taking place it was subsequently revealed that the Negotiating Committee of the TUC had arranged to see the Prime Minister that very night. Every effort, however, was made to pressurise the miners’ leadership into accepting the Samuel terms of surrender but to little avail. When MacDonald, unbelievably, requested the right to speak to the miners’ executive, he was told by Cook: “We do not want you to come to our meeting.”30 What a difference in attitude between the toadying right-wing general secretaries of most unions today, who are quite happy to invite New Labour ministers to their union conferences and even to the TUC, there to receive annual lectures on the need for them and their members to accept neo-liberal policies without qualms. When Herbert Smith asked whether the memorandum of Samuel could be discussed and amended, Pugh snapped: “No, you must take it or leave it.” Smith declared bitterly: “Do you people realise the serious position you are putting yourselves in? Are you going back without any consideration for the men who are going to be victimised in this movement? Are you not going to consider them at all?”31 But with the ground opening beneath their feet, it was preferable for the TUC leaders to betray the miners and refuse to take action than to prosecute the strike to a conclusion and challenge the very basis of capitalism.
The General Council decided to call off the General Strike on 12 May. Workers were putting out bulletins on this very day, one of which declared: “Cast your mind back only to 1914 onwards, and remember the pie-crust promises such as ‘A Land Fit for Heroes’, etc., ad nauseum. This is a trap set to catch any weak-kneed people there may be about. By the response there are so few as to be negligible. So much for their trick. It is conclusive proof of their inability to carry on. But we can carry on. Our organisations are our strength.”32 Nevertheless, the General Council trooped off to meet the government, no doubt expecting thanks from Baldwin. But they were met with a very cold reception at Downing Street. They met Baldwin’s representative, Sir Horace Wilson, who asked them why they had come, “Had they come to negotiate, or to declare the strike off?” They tamely said the latter and then were taken to Baldwin, who with several other ministers, was waiting for them. Pugh, speaking much about the need for “negotiations”, finished by saying: “We are here today, sir, to say that this General Strike is to be terminated forthwith.” Baldwin declared brusquely: “That is, the General Strike is to be called off forthwith?” Pugh, Thomas and Bevin complied with the latter raising the issue of continuing negotiations with the miners. Baldwin was vague but “Bevin pressed a little, just a little and was gently rebuked”. Not a word was said about the lock-out notices or about wages and hours, nor was the Samuel memorandum mentioned. Birkenhead, Neville Chamberlain and the rest smirked in triumph.33
Ben Turner, the textile workers’ union leader, who had remained silent, noted in his diary: “General Council flabbergasted at nothing being settled about miners’ lock-out notices. Retired and felt dismayed… left at 1.10 [p.m.] disappointed and disgusted. Papers soon out about TUC. Surrender.”34 Even when Bevin had pressed Baldwin for negotiations, the latter was peremptory in his reply: “I cannot say that, Mr Bevin. I think it may be that whatever decision I come to, the House of Commons may be the best place in which to say it.” Farman comments: “Even Birkenhead felt something akin to compassion for the TUC leaders as they trooped dejectedly out of the Cabinet Room. Their surrender, he wrote later to Halifax, was ‘so humiliating that some instinctive breeding made one unwilling even to look them in the face’.”35
The conscious way in which Baldwin and his assistants, such as Jones, weighed up carefully the personalities on the General Council, their strengths and weaknesses, was shown in the following comments: “Bevin was the most powerful member of the TUC… the PM said… ‘Ramsay [MacDonald] is a Kerensky and Kerenskys have lost control. [Kerensky was a member of the Social Revolutionary party (S.Rs.) in Russia, allegedly a radical, and in 1917 led the government, which defended landlordism and capitalism until it was overthrown by the Bolsheviks.]
Bevin may well picture himself as the Napoleon of the trade union movement. We must wait for the strike to wear itself out’.”36 In these remarks is the conscious weighing up by the representatives of the ruling class of figures in the labour movement. His hob-nobbing with the rich – much like Blair today – fitted out MacDonald to be a bulwark, a British Kerensky, against any threat to the propertied classes. He could be safely relied upon to derail a revolution if such a threat should be posed. His authority, however, in 1926 was peripheral. Far more important were the leaders of the trade unions. Baldwin, it seems, was cautious about Bevin but did not have a clear knowledge of the union leader’s limitations. Ultimately, like MacDonald, he was not capable of taking a serious step outside the framework of capitalism. This was displayed very clearly in the winding up of the General Strike, in its aftermath and in the role that Bevin played in the trade union and labour movement after this.
Baldwin convened his Cabinet and then went to the House of Commons to announce his triumph as a “victory for common sense”.37 The British Worker ran three different editions on the afternoon and evening of 12 May but in not one of these did they give the real picture of the capitulation that had taken place.
