Workers all over the country were facing victimisation in the aftermath of the strike. On Saturday 15 May, the TUC newspaper attacked its critics and defended its actions: “The General Council acted with courage in ending the stoppage.”1 It was only on Monday, 17 May in the final issue of the British Worker, that the newspaper carried a front page story revealing that the miners were still locked out. The government refused to implement the Samuel Commission’s report; they had not promised anything else. The miners’ leaders – A.J. Cook and Herbert Smith – had made a mistake in hinting that they would vote on the basis of the Samuel Commission recommendations but, as Cook pointed out later at the conference of trade union executives, there was never “any shred of a hope of the miners having an opportunity of accepting the Samuel Memorandum as a basis of negotiations”.2 The General Council, led by the right wing with the former Lefts in tow, compounded the betrayal of the General Strike by refusing to come to the aid of the miners. “Now began for the miners a long travail of misery and poverty.”3
With the termination of the General Strike, the miners were forced to continue the battle alone. In consequence there was terrible suffering in the mining areas. Yet most Tories were not prepared to accept that the miners were starving, cosseted as they were in their plush London clubs. Neville Chamberlain wrote in his diary on 20 June: “They [the miners] are not within sight of starvation, hardly of under-nutrition, so well are they looked after by the [Boards of] Guardians… They are not living too uncomfortably at the expense of the ratepayer, while the nation is gradually overcome by creeping paralysis.”4 The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children concurred with Chamberlain, as did the Fabian, Beatrice Webb, when she revealed that there was “no distress and some light-hearted enjoyment of the strike”.5 But George Lansbury more correctly described the plight of the miners: “One cold, brutal, inexorable fact stands out clear and distinct. Over one million mineworkers, together with their womenfolk and children are starving – yes, comrades, starving in the midst of plenty, starving in a land at the centre of which, here in this great Metropolis, wealth produced by the toilers of Britain is being poured out like water in an unparalleled orgy of wanton extravagance and luxurious pleasure.”6
Moreover, the future right-wing Labour MP and member of the 1945 Labour government, Hugh Dalton, did not agree with Webb and Chamberlain. When he arrived in 1928 to seek the parliamentary nomination for the Labour Party in Seaham in County Durham, he noted: “Human values had depreciated almost to nothing. White-faced women who starved themselves to feed their children; children certified by doctors as ‘suffering from malnutrition’ – that meant having been half-starved long enough for it to become obvious – being fed at school; men sitting silent in Workmen’s Clubs, too poor either to buy a drink or a smoke; every second shop in Newgate Street, the main street in Bishop Auckland, shuttered up and the shopkeeper ruined, because the people had no money to spend; old clothes and old boots being collected and distributed by charitable persons; others organising the departure of boys and girls, as soon as they left school, to be bell-hops in London hotels or kitchen maids in rich private houses.”7 This was after the strike had been terminated and if one compares this period to 1914 then average miners’ wages were only 13 per cent over that level while the cost of living index had risen by 67 per cent!
The railwaymen also suffered a wage cut, notwithstanding Thomas’s promises to protect them, and the misery of workers in general was intense. Every effort was made by the government in league with the coal owners to break the continuing miners’ strike. Pickets and active strike supporters were arrested and jailed; there were baton charges of pit meetings and the beating up of miners. Steps were also taken to prevent funds raised at home and abroad from reaching the starving miners and their families. Shamefully, the local authorities were warned by government agencies to withhold relief and suspend services like free milk for babies and free meals for schoolchildren. The Ministry of Health was given powers to suspend any board of guardians disobeying Whitehall’s instructions to stop relief. Baldwin tried to prevent the miners from garnering international solidarity and financial support. On the eve of the departure of a miners’ delegation to the United States, he sent a letter to the American authorities stating there was no dire need in the British coalfields. Nevertheless there were magnificent donations from the Soviet trade unions of at least £1 million and the European trade unions, particularly the Belgians, donated important sums to the miners’ relief as well.8
Cook rescues General Council
The General Council of the TUC announced that it was calling a conference of union executives in June 1926 to discuss the outcome of the General Strike. They only did this reluctantly under the pressure of the rank and file and the widespread discontent at the role of the General Council. There was great pressure also, led by the Communist Party and the Minority Movement, for the TUC to issue a levy on all working trade unionists and an embargo on the import of foreign coal. Later, the levy was transformed into a ‘voluntary’ one. This raised limited sums and the embargo on foreign imports of coal was never effectively carried out. The conference of trade union executives was cancelled, to a wave of disappointment, and this was with the agreement of the miners’ leadership, ostensibly so that nothing would undermine the struggle of the miners against the lock-out.
Unfortunately, Arthur Cook also agreed to suspend publication of his best-selling booklet The Nine Days. The miners’ leader felt compelled to do this probably because of the pressure exerted by the General Council and the need to gain the maximum broad practical support of trade unionists, which they mistakenly believed was possible only by this compliance with the right wing. This ‘June Pact’ effectively gave breathing space to the right wing before they had to face the wrath of ordinary trade unionists and workers six months later. But while the miners were expected to keep their mouths shut about the role of the General Council, this dictum did not apply to the right wing who did not hesitate to attack the miners’ “attitude” and their “unwillingness” to be “reasonable”. In the statement which was to have been presented to the June conference, there is the following: “The strike was terminated for one sufficient reason only, namely, that in view of the attitude of the Miners’ Federation its continuance would have rendered its purpose futile.”9
This gave a completely false view of the miners’ opinions and as we have seen, those of the vast mass of the four million trade unionists who came out on strike. The Communist Party was compelled to raise criticisms of the Left, though not at this stage of Arthur Cook himself. But because of their refusal to make the same criticisms before and during the General Strike, these were now largely ineffective. The CP also called for further action but this did not meet with a ready response because it had come too late. George Hardy, of the Minority Movement, admitted after the General Strike: “Although we knew of what treachery the right-wing leaders were capable, we did not clearly understand the part played by the so-called ‘Left’ in the union leadership. In the main they turned out to be windbags… We were taught a major lesson… the main point in preparing for action must always be to develop a class-conscious leadership among the rank and file.”10
Anglo-Russian Committee
This was right but came too late; only now did the CP issue criticisms of the Left which sometimes assumed a sharp character. In the 18 June 1926 issue of Workers’ Weekly, the headline read: “Small thanks to you, Hicks and Purcell… Apologists for Thomas.” The article below it criticised these leaders: “Purcell knows very well that only last year the General Council had had the experience of preparing for a general strike, yet right up to the last day on this occasion (April 30) not a finger had been lifted by himself or any other alleged ‘left-winger’ to get preparations made for conducting the struggle. The General Council, right and left wingers together had deliberately avoided all preparations for fear of ‘provoking trouble’!”11
Unfortunately, the Communist Party itself was guilty of the sin of ‘not provoking trouble’ by not criticising these left wingers in advance. Criticisms ex post facto were no substitute for preparing the working class in advance for the role of the General Council, in which the Left had been complicit. The Communist Party’s press, both Workers’ Weekly and its theoretical journal, Communist Review, together with the publications of the Comintern, were full of denunciations of Purcell, Hicks, and Co. in the aftermath of the strike. These invariably made correct criticisms of the Left, but very few of these were contained in their publications before the General Strike. Communist Review wrote: “Left-wing leaders who are afraid to associate themselves openly with those who fight for socialism (the Minority Movement and the Left Wing) will be afraid of insisting on a left-wing point of view even in a fight for wages. Every campaign of the Communist Party for a powerfully organised Minority Movement winning the leadership of the unions, for a powerful organised left wing winning the leadership of the Labour Party, has been amply justified.”12
In July, it made criticisms of the Left in relation to the postponement of the June conference of executives: “Why is it that the ‘left wingers’ in the General Council were particularly in favour of postponing the conference? Because they were terrified of the alternatives which the conference opened up before them: either of exhibiting themselves to the workers at last as unashamed supporters of Thomas, or of coming out as a minority in the General Council on the side of the miners and fighting Thomas – which they have not the courage or the belief in the workers to do.”13
There are many other statements in the Communist Review which are correct about the role of the Left. We will quote just one or two to illustrate how Trotsky’s criticism, and that of the Left Opposition, if it had been followed would have prepared, through the Communist Party, the mass of the working class for the role of these Lefts. In the International Theses of the Communist Party, we read after the strike: “Left wingers (‘centrists’) who, thanks to their ambiguous attitude, political cowardice and policy of capitulation inevitably arising therefrom, inevitably go over to the side of the enemy at critical moments. The so-called ‘leaders of the working class’ manoeuvre against the growth of revolutionary activity of the masses, both in their tactics and their ideology.”14 Again we read: “The ‘left wingers’ were in continual fear and trembling, had absolutely no independent position and were thereby doomed to be dragged along in the leading strings of the right wingers.”15
Is this not a direct echo of Trotsky’s comments before the strike on the role of the Lefts? Once more: “The ‘Left’ leaders of the General Council, who have the majority on it, not only offered absolutely no resistance whatsoever to the conscious betrayal of the Thomas element but all the time marched under the orders of the right wing… At turning points in the strike they sometimes acted no less shamefully than Thomas (for instance Hicks and the ‘damned Russian money’).” And again: “Only the tremendous pressure of the mass movement forced them to line up at its tail. Thus, the ‘left wingers’ in effect played a still more criminal role, for they had the majority and bore the direct responsibility for leadership of the strike.”16
Yet in the very same document only a few pages earlier, we also read in relation to the Lefts and their participation in the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee, the following: “The withdrawal of the Soviet trade unions from the Anglo-Russian Trades Council should be considered absolutely undesirable. The workers of the USSR sent their representative to the Anglo-Russian Advisory Council, not by any means because they hoped to substitute negotiations with the higher opportunist leaders for the task of revolutionary transformation of capitalist countries… They entered the Anglo-Russian Council in order to strengthen the fraternal connection between the working class of Great Britain and the working class of the USSR… The task of the Leninists is not withdrawal from the Anglo-Russian Advisory Council but a struggle to change its composition, as well as a struggle to change the composition of all the leading organs from the General Council to the local trade union bodies.”17
This was an answer to Trotsky and the International Left Opposition who had warned about the consequences of the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee before the strike had taken place. Now, in its aftermath, they demanded a complete break with the capitulators, both the Right and the Left, with the General Council as a whole. The Stalinist faction, the majority in the Russian Communist Party, refused to do this, thereby conferring the authority of the Comintern and with this the heritage of the Russian Revolution on those who were continuing to justify their strike breaking role. Moreover, they were doing nothing to assist the miners. Trotsky, on the eve of the General Strike, in a letter to the Russian Politburo, expressed the fear that the British Communist Party, like its Bulgarian counterpart in a critical moment of mass activity, might adopt a too passive or temporising attitude.
Moreover, before the General Strike, some of the Communist Party leaders had actually questioned Trotsky’s analysis on the gravity of the economic and social crisis in Britain! “British comrades warned against overestimating the critical state of British capitalism. By this they revealed they underestimate the depth of the crisis and the imminence of social clashes.”18 He went on to state: “An incomparably less significant fact, namely the publication of my book with a preface by Brailsford [a leading ILP Left], was for me a further symptom of a willingness to compromise by an important section of the British Communists. They have not yet had experience of leadership by mass action. Taken together, all this aroused quite reasonable fears of excessive caution, lack of decision, and even passivity on the part of the powerful bureaucratic opposition in all the old administrative organisations of the working class.”19
Trotsky’s Criticism
Trotsky also quoted a report from British Communist Bob Stewart: “Unfortunately, in some of our regional organisations, it could be noted that there still remained in the party sectarian survivals; these organisations have not taken root sufficiently deeply in the trade unions; by which is also explained the fact that, during the strike, they lagged behind the masses.”20 Trotsky and the Left Opposition went further in July 1926, calling for a complete break by the Russian trade unions with the General Council of the British TUC and the break-up of the Anglo-Russian Committee. The TUC was temporising and postponing calling another conference of this committee. The Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had followed a profoundly incorrect policy on the question of the Anglo-Russian committee over a lengthy period but Trotsky argued: “The point at which the working masses of Britain exerted the greatest opposing force to the General Council was when the General Strike was being broken. What was necessary was to keep in step with the most active forces of the British proletariat and to break at that moment with the General Council as the betrayer of the General Strike.” He also pointed out that it would be “an impermissible error, bordering on the criminal, if we allowed the General Council in the future to move this question back, step by step, and to gradually and imperceptibly reduce the Anglo-Russian committee to nothing but to break with it themselves over some second-rate question, as over the statutes of the committee or the like.”21
This is, in fact, how events turned out in relation to this “tactic” of Stalin and co. Trotsky and the Left Opposition did not in general oppose the tactic of the united front, even in relation to the General Council of the TUC. The question, however, was the relevance of this – in fact the dangers – in relation to the developing situation in Britain and on the issue of world peace and the defence of the Soviet Union. In fact, events were to show that this committee was not perceived by Stalin and his allies as a tactic to further the international class struggle. It was conceived as a “diplomatic” manoeuvre to put pressure on the British capitalists and imperialism in general via the trade union and labour movement to prevent an attack on the Soviet Union. This was spelt out by Bukharin, Stalin’s ally, who in the aftermath of the defeat of the General Strike argued for the maintenance of the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee from the point of view of a “diplomatic” counter-action to the offensive of imperialism against the USSR. The interests of the working class of Britain and the world were secondary to the state interests of the USSR.
But Trotsky and the International Left Opposition argued that war and, we might add, the prospect of war, are continuations of politics by other means. Opportunism always sees war as an “exceptional” phenomenon that requires the annulment of revolutionary politics and its basic principles. It was false to argue that it was necessary to maintain an alliance with the betrayers of the General Strike for a year after the Strike had finished, and while the miners were locked out, in order to “put pressure” on the British capitalists via the medium of the General Council. This merely allowed the General Council to continue to shelter in the aftermath of the strike under the umbrella of Russia and of the Comintern, and to choose the right moment to break on terms favourable to themselves.
There were three conferences of the Anglo-Russian Committee: in Paris in July 1926, in Berlin in August the same year and again in Berlin in April 1927. At each of these conferences the criticisms of the General Council from the Comintern and the British CP became more cautious, and the Left and their role were not even touched on. After the first conference in July 1926, the Workers’ Weekly fully backed the Comintern’s decision to maintain the Committee: “Has Anglo-Russian unity so far been justified?” Its answer was: “The conference of the Anglo-Russian Committee which has been agreed to by the General Council can still further justify itself in the work for international unity. It can take immediate steps to secure the embargo and to rally Continental workers to the aid of the British miners.” However, the strike breakers of the General Council did not want to discuss “contentious” issues like this as indicated by the Daily Herald, which said that the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee must not “discuss the miners’ dispute”.22
Break with General Council
What was the answer of Workers’ Weekly to this? “If this means discussing the fundamental questions of this dispute, we do not suppose that the British representatives [the right-wing General Council] would agree to this, or that if they did it would be possible to get agreement between them and the Russian trade union leaders. The Anglo-Russian Committee is, however, an international body [and at least] the next meeting of the Anglo-Russian Committee [should take] measures to assist the miners, and not measures to further divide and weaken the working class.”23 This shows just how desperate the Comintern was to maintain this unholy alliance, to the detriment of the Communist Party pursuing, in effect, a militant criticism of the General Council of the TUC and particularly on the Left.
The meeting was adjourned until the end of August. Workers’ Weekly, commenting on the postponement of the meeting, said: “The Anglo-Russian Committee ended without results, and had to be ‘adjourned’ until the end of August.” The French Communist Party daily L’Humanité was not so polite: “They [the General Council] hope the miners will be broken!” Workers’ Weekly went on further: “Not the least dirty part in this sordid story was played by the so-called ‘left wing’ of the General Council, two members of which – Purcell and Hicks – attended the meeting. They have never made a public statement… Thereby Hicks and Purcell have fully justified the criticisms of them passed by the Russian unions: they have become screens and hand-rags for J.H. Thomas!”24
If this was the case, why did the British Communist Party, along with the Comintern as a whole, maintain its bloc with these strike breakers? Trotsky and the Left Opposition were referred to in the Communist Party’s journals at this stage as “ultra-left” for wanting to break this unholy alliance at the top. Yet Trotsky and the Left Opposition also suggested: “At the same time, to intensify every effort to strengthen the united front, from below, relying above all on the ties that have been established with the mineworkers’ union.”25 This approach had nothing in common with the ultra-left attitude adopted by the German Communist Party at the time of the rise of Hitler. Trotsky then demanded a united front between the German Communist Party and the Social Democrats.
Trotsky had proposed a united front both “above and below”. The Comintern was for a “united front from below”, ignoring the leaders of the social democracy who they characterised in an ultra-left manner as “social fascists”. The united front tactic was at a different stage in 1926 than in Germany on the eve of Hitler coming to power. Trotsky explained his approach towards the situation in Britain: “The tactic of the united front still retains all its power as the most important method in the struggle of the masses. A basic principle of this tactic is: ‘With the masses – always; with the vacillating leaders – sometimes, but only so long as they stand at the head of the masses.’ It is necessary to make use of vacillating leaders while the masses are pushing them ahead, without for a moment abandoning criticism of these leaders. And it is necessary to break with them at the right time when they turn from vacillation to hostile action and betrayal. It is necessary to use the occasion of the break to expose the traitorous leaders and to contrast their position to that of the masses.”26
But the Comintern and the British CP were maintaining this ‘united front’ while the leaders were ‘not vacillating’ but openly betraying the working class. The headline in Workers’ Weekly read “General Council wrecking unity”.27 The British delegates had refused to discuss aid for the miners at the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee. Yet the Workers’ Weekly in September 1926 still maintained the necessity for the alliance with the General Council. It even complains that there was a “British threat of a rupture” when in reality this rupture should have come from the side of the Russian trade unions themselves.28 In the press of the British Communist Party there were criticisms made of the Left, but of a retrospective character. For instance, in the editorial of Communist Review we read: “Whom did the workers look to as their leaders, whom would they have followed in the event of a sharp clash between Right and Left? The men who had led the General Council on Red Friday last year – the left wing. By capitulating, by remaining silent, by taking the side of Thomas, the left wing left the workers temporarily leaderless and voiceless – save for our Party and the Minority Movement. And this treachery, unexpected [to whom – the CP? – PT] and fatal was greater than the certain and expected treason of Thomas. Yet if we cast our minds back to the part played by the ‘left’ wing at Scarborough – when they left all the fighting to the small Communist and Minority fraction – and last December, during the formation of the left wing – when they tried to disrupt the left wing because Communists were in it – we shall see that their treachery was not a sudden growth.”29
Yet the bloc with these Lefts was still maintained through the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee. After the strike, we can even read sharp criticisms of Herbert Smith and A.J. Cook, the most prominent left-wing trade union leader. Communist Review in September 1926 states: “Cook and Smith had no business to weaken.” The article criticised Smith and Cook “suddenly developing a respect for trade union etiquette”. Cook had made a speech of 26 August on the possibility of longer hours for the miners. “Unless Cook and Smith are to be lost to the workers – and that would indeed be tragic, after the splendid fight they put up at first – the workers themselves must call them to order, and tell them to use their efforts in the sole direction whence victory can be brought: namely, the mobilisation of the whole British working class in active struggle on the side of the miners.”30
Workers’ Weekly made similar comments. Its banner headline in the 17 September edition read: “TUC leaders’ united front against workers.” It then goes on to state: “Cook helped them to get away with it.”31 This was a reference to the Bournemouth conference of the TUC that month in which the actions of the General Council were subjected to scrutiny but unfortunately were protected by the miners’ leaders themselves. When Jack Tanner, a left-wing AEU leader, tried to move a reference back of the report of the General Council in order to get the General Strike discussed on the floor of the Congress (an NUR delegate seconded this) it was heavily defeated due to the intervention of Cook. He asked the Congress to respect the ‘June pact’, in effect a non-aggression pact between the miners and the sell-out General Council.
Cook’s prestige was immense at this stage. Had he come out against the right-wing of the General Council, the floodgates of criticism would have been opened, which would have only reflected the mood which existed amongst the working class, particularly in the mining areas. Bob Smillie MP, an ex-miner and a member of the General Council, brought delegates to tears in describing the conditions in the mining areas and appealed for finance for the miners. In a monumental blunder, Bromley, collaborator of arch-traitor Thomas, seconded the motion but as soon as his name was announced uproar broke out with miners kicking over chairs and squaring up for a fight. The miners’ delegates marched out of the Congress hall singing the Red Flag. It is incredible, however, that this Congress was allowed to pass without a serious discussion on the General Strike and the consequences for the whole of the working class which flowed from this. Only in January 1927 at a two-day special conference of trade union executives did the long awaited ‘post mortem’ on the General Strike take place. This was, however, after the termination of the miners’ strike in November. The Right hoped that by this time they had ventilated the built-up anger and criticism of their role. This time Cook had no alternative but to criticise the General Council but the effect of this was blunted by the intervention of Citrine, who in a “brilliant” but anodyne contribution, appeared as the voice of sweet reason and “unity”.
