Workers taste power by Peter Taaffe

1926 General Strike –

Workers taste power by Peter Taaffe


Workers taste power, by Peter Taaffe. Cover pic
To
commemorate the 80th anniversary of the 1926 General Strike in Britain
and, more importantly, to draw out the lessons from this movement, Peter
Taaffe has written a book outlining the course of the nine days that
shook British capitalism to its foundations.

The book will particularly deal with the revolutionary possibilities
of the General Strike and the question of whether the fledgling
Communist Party of Great Britain had the right strategy, programme and
tactics to take full advantage of the strike and the period.

This book is a must for all socialists. Cost £7.50. Place
your advance order online here now – just £5 including p&p.

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Or order by post: Cheques payable to Socialist Books PO Box 24697,
London E11 1YD. Contact: Ken Douglas 020 8988 8771 [email protected]
See other titles on www.socialistbooks.org.uk/books
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This letter was sent to the Guardian in answer to the claim that a
general strike (as in 1926) is impossible today:

The recent strike of over one million local authority workers over
the pensions issue shows that Anne Perkins is wrong to claim
"strikes don’t happen anymore" [the Guardian, 22 April 2006].
She is also mistaken in arguing that a "general strike (as in 1926)
is impossible" today.

The French workers were on the verge of a one-day general strike this
month – following two demonstrations in a week of three million people –
with the clear threat of a repetition of the 1968 General Strike.
This was only averted by the capitulation of the Chirac government from
its neo-liberal offensive against the French working class. The Blair
government also retreated before the 2005 general election when five
million workers in the public sector threatened a one-day general
strike.

The 1926 General Strike did not drop from the sky. It was a product
of the economic decline of British capitalism, which the Baldwin
government and the capitalists of the day wished the working class to
pay for, as they do today through the government’s panoply of
neo-liberal assaults on the past gains of working-class people.

And as in 1926, organised labour will respond by pressurising their
leaders to take strike action on industry-wide and national levels. The
anti-trade union legislation of Thatcher, slavishly supported and
implemented by Blair, will have as little effect as a dewdrop on a hot
stove once working-class people move into action. When they do so, they
will look back to the example of the 1926 General Strike, the single
greatest event since Chartism in the annals of British labour history.

Because the working class in 1926 "tasted power" (the title
of my book on the General Strike), it terrified the representatives of
capital then as it does today. The lesson of 1926 is not "to pull
the duvet over your head" but to understand what happened in order
for the labour movement to score a victory next time.

Yours, Peter Taaffe