Abstract
The General Strike of 1926, which was described by contemporaries as “the greatest tragedy in the public, social and economic life of this country for the past century,” commenced on 4 May, after negotiations to resolve a dispute between coal owners and coal miners over wages and hours broke down. Britons awoke on Tuesday, 4 May to an eerie and unprecedented silence. “A breathless feeling of intense quietness” prevailed, observed one Londoner, “such as comes before a thunderstorm.” For, much to the surprise of the government and even of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), workers responded to the strike call with nearperfect solidarity. Public transport in London and other cities ceased almost completely: of the London Underground’s 315 trains, 15 of them ran, and those only for short trips; all 4000 buses run by the London General Omnibus Company remained in their yards. The railroads halted and the docks sat idle. Starting around 8:00 A.M. commuters began their treks to work; on bicycles, on foot, in pony carts and traps, and in the backseats of tens of thousands of private automobiles, Britons made their way to their places of employment. “The first thing in the morning we stand at the window & watch the traffic in Southampton Row,” Virginia Woolf recounted in her diary. “This is incessant. Everyone is bicycling; motor cars are huddled up with extra people.
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Notes
Hannon, House of Commons (3 May 1926), col. 147; Churchill called it a “shocking disaster in our national life” Churchill, House of Commons (3 May 1926), col. 116; quoted in Julian Symons, The General Strike: A Historical Portrait (London, 1957), p. 57; Anne Olivier Bell, ed., The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol. III, 1925–1930 (New York, 1980), 5 May 1926, p. 77; Symons, The General Strike, p. 57; Woolf, Diary, p. 77.
Barbara Storm Farr, The Development and Impact of Right-Wing Politics in Britain, 1903–1932 (1987), pp. 38, 39.
Farr, Right-Wing Politics, p. 39; Aldington, Death of a Hero, p. 206; Thomas Jones, Whitehall Diary Volume I: 1916–1925 (London, 1969), 4 April 1921, pp. 134, 135, 136.
Quoted in Keith Middlemas and John Barnes, Baldwin, A Biography (London, 1969), p. 123.
Quoted in Anne Perkins, A VeryBritish Strike: 3May-12May 1926 (London, 2006), p. 35; quoted in Flory, William Joynson-Hicks, p. 90; The Times (3 May 1924), p. 7; quoted in Lewis Chester, Stephan Fay, Hugo Young, TheZinoviev Letter (Philadelphia, 1968), p. 126.
Letter from Joynson-Hicks to Baldwin (1 September 1925), quoted in Richard Charles Maguire, “ ‘The Fascists… are… to be depended upon.’ The British Government, Fascists and Strike-breaking during 1925 and 1926,” in Nigel Copsey and David Renton, eds, British Fascism, the Labour Movement and the State (Basingstoke, 2005), p. 8; minute by A. Dixon (27 July 1925), quoted in Maguire, “‘The Fascists,’” p. 19; Cabinet meeting minutes (7 October 1925), quoted in Maguire, “‘The Fascists,’” p. 20.
See Samuel Hynes, A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture (New York, 1991), ch. 20; “Speech before House, May 6, 1926,” in Sir John Simon, Three Speeches on the General Strike (London, 1926), p. 2; Speech before House (11 May 1926), pp. 24–25, 29.
Perkin, Very British Strike, p. 217; “SUPPLY,” House of Commons, Debates (10 May 1926), cols. 718, 718–719.
House of Commons, Debates (3 May 1926), col. 74; “Trustees for Nation,” Daily Herald (19 April 1926), p. 2; “Will Mr. Baldwin Do His Duty?” Daily Herald (20 April 1926), p. 4; “‘A Crime Against Society,”’ Daily Herald (3 May 1926), p. 4; “The Issue,” Daily Herald (4 May 1926), p. 4; House of Commons, Debates (7 May 1926), col. 674; “Wonderful Response to the Call,” British Worker (5 May 1926).
“Strikers Wear War Medals,” British Worker (7 May 1926); “The Miners are Not ‘Bluffing,’ ” Daily Herald (28 May 1926), p. 4; Daily Herald (19 May 1926), p. 4; House of Commons, Debates (10 May 1926), cols. 739–740, 742, 780.
The Daily Herald (19 May 1926), p. 4; Woolf, Diaries (13 May 1926), p. 85; Patrick Renshaw, The General Strike (London, 1975), p. 252.
Charles Loch Mowat, Britain Between the Wars, 1918–1940 (Chicago, 1955), p. 337; quoted in Public Opinion (21 May 1926), p. 451.
C.F.G. Masterson, “The General Strike and After,” The Contemporary Review, CXXIX (June 1926), 683, 687; Keith Laybourn, The General Strike of 1926 (Manchester, 1993), p. 111; Renshaw, General Strike, pp. 242, 248.
Stanley Baldwin, Our Inheritance: Speeches and Addresses by the Right Honourable Stanley Baldwin, M.P (London, 1928), pp. 224, 220, 221–222; Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Communist Plotting: Lessons from the General Strike (National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations, 1926), p. 3.
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© 2009 Susan Kingsley Kent
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Kent, S.K. (2009). The General Strike of 1926. In: Aftershocks. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230582002_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230582002_6
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