The role strikes have on class contiousness , lessons from 1926 ?

When the working class or part of the working class go out on strike it is not done lightly. Many reactionaries think workers love going out on strike and do it at the drop of the hat. This is not true. Many take it very seriously indeed.

The act of withdrawing your labour is a very powerful and symbolic one indeed where it hands the power back to the worker that work cannot be done if they do withdraw their labour.

It focus's the mind and concentrates their class contiousness.

At our socialist party branch meeting last night we discussed the 1926 general strike in Britain where the question of power and who holds it was posed and this frightened the establishment and the ruling class, including the trade union bureaucracy

last thing the TUC leaders wanted was a successful general strike. When it started they did everything to end it.
calling a general strike.
1926 general strike
TWO DAYS after the strike was called off, 100,000 more workers were on strike than at the beginning.

"There were no trains, no buses, no trams, no papers, no building, no power. In a strike, 100% is an unobtainable figure generally, but even this real 100% was frequently achieved". (The Common People, Postgate and Cole.)

Winston Churchill summed up the attitude of the ruling class: "It is a conflict which, if it is fought to a conclusion, can only end in the overthrow of parliamentary government or in its decisive victory, there is no middle course open".

British capitalism was weakened after the First World War. Simultaneously the British working class had been radicalised by the Russian revolution and the European-wide revolutionary movement which followed the war.

The British capitalists were forced to concede their dominance in world markets to American imperialism, the real victors of the war.

By 1925, exports from British industry had fallen to 76% of pre-war levels and imports had grown to 111%. The ruling class went on the offensive to attack working-class wages and conditions to boost profits.

The miners had elected a new union leader, Arthur Cook. He was a giant in comparison to other union leaders at the time.

He considered himself a follower of Lenin but he did not fully understand Lenin's methods, in particular the need for a revolutionary party.

In March 1925 the coal bosses cut the miners' wages and demanded they work an extra hour a day without pay. In a refrain familiar to Corus or Vauxhall workers, the capitalist press raged that this was the only way the coal industry could be saved.

Also, Baldwin, then Tory prime minister, made it clear that this was a prelude to a general offensive on all workers' wages and conditions: "All the workers of this country have to take reductions".

In response, Cook coined the slogan: "Not a penny off the pay not a second on the day".

The miners appealed to the TUC, who threatened a general strike.

The government, faced with a militant working class, was unprepared for a showdown. To give themselves some breathing space they proposed a commission under Sir Herbert Samuel to examine the coal industry.

Meanwhile, they gave the coal bosses a nine-month subsidy to forestall any moves by them against the miners. They then used these nine months to prepare for a fight to the finish with the working class.

In 1981, Thatcher also retreated in the face of miners' strikes against pit closures. She then spent the next three years building up coal stocks and preparing an inevitable struggle with the miners.

Churchill, a member of Baldwin's cabinet, organised a scab army to break the strike. Lord Londonderry, the chief spokesman for the coal bosses, summed up the attitude of the ruling class: "Whatever it may cost in blood and treasure we shall find that the trade unions will be smashed from top to bottom".

The ruling class's ruthless determination stood in stark contrast to the faint heartedness of the TUC leadership, both Right and Left. Jimmy Thomas, the rail union leader, boasted that he had "groveled" before Baldwin in an attempt to avert the strike.

Left-winger Purcell condemned as "damned Russian gold" the £1.5 million collected by the Russian workers in support of the British workers.

The strike begins
IN MAY 1926, with the subsidy ended, the mine owners launched their attack on the miners' wages and conditions. One million miners came out on strike and demanded that the TUC call a general strike.

But the TUC only called the first meeting of the general council strike committee six days before the deadline.

Jimmy Thomas spoke on 19 April 1926 about: "loose passions being let loose" and "every sane miners' leader wants, as every employer wants - peace". But the only peace the bosses wanted was a complete victory over the miners and the working class.

The ruling class mistook the cowardice of the union leaders for the workers' mood. Millions answered the strike call and hundreds of thousands of others demanded to be called out. The TUC tried to control the strike but the movement developed its own momentum.

Non-trade unionists struck. 100 trades councils became 'Councils of Action'. The employers were forced to ask them for permission to move essential goods.

The Councils of Action had the means of overthrowing the capitalist order and instituting a workers' government, just as had happened in Russia in 1917.

But this would only have been possible if a revolutionary party had come to the head of the movement. Such a party would have called for the Councils of Action to be linked up nationally.

The Councils of Action would have made a class appeal to the rank and file of the army to assist the working class. A workers' government, based on the Councils of Action, could have gone on to take state power and carry through a socialist transformation of the economy.

Stalinism
THE YOUNG Communist Party, formed a few years before, was found wanting. This wasn't just through inexperience, it was under the influence of the increasingly Stalinised Communist International.

Trotsky, who at the time was isolated in Russia by Stalin, was a lone voice in the Communist International, warning that the British ruling class was preparing for a showdown.

Under Stalin's influence the Russian leadership, instead of warning the British workers against their own leaders, created illusions particularly in the left of the TUC leadership by forming an Anglo-Soviet committee.

From the beginning of the strike, the general council conspired with Samuel. He recommended big cuts in the miners' wages and all except Cook on the general council went along with this as they called off the strike.

Workers were stunned when they heard the news, the strike had won nothing for the miners, who continued their strike for another six months before being forced back to work.

The TUC did not even get a 'no victimisation' agreement, so even more rail workers, dockers and others came out again when they heard the terms of the surrender.

Power or defeat
THIS WAS more than a strike over wages and hours, which was recognised by all but the union leaders.

Trotsky had warned that inevitably an all-out general strike poses the question of who rules. Either it leads to power or becomes a severe defeat for the working class.

Marxists do not lightly raise the demand for a general strike. In periods of heightened class struggle we have called for a one-day general strike, such as during the miners' strikes in the 1980s and the pit closure crisis in 1992.

The demand for a 24-hour general strike is a means of demonstrating its own power to the working class. It sends a shot across the bow of the ruling class, that unless they back off more serious action is likely.

The 1926 general strike affected all classes and demonstrated the potential power of the working class to run society. But its failure showed the crucial need for revolutionary leadership.

Without such leadership, even the working class's most heroic efforts to rid itself of capitalism are unlikely to succeed. Without a revolutionary party, firmly rooted in the working class and its mass organisations, the reformist trade union and labour leaders will betray the movement.

We must ensure that this does not happen again by building a mass socialist revolutionary party that can play this vital role in the future.


With extracts taken from Bill Mullins, Socialist Party Industrial Organiser excellent pamphlett on the general strike.

my trip to the houses of parliament

Hello and welcome to another edition of my blog, i hope by now people are enjoying this somewhat, it would suggest by my 1 follower this is not the case i hope i'm not boring you all. if i am please tell me and i'll blog about something else. This is my blog to take wherever i like really, i have focused in on my recent political life but it can litterally go anywhere.

This entry is not a political one as such, but does involved a political visit of sorts to the houses of parliament in London today. Westminster.

Today the 23rd of July was my first visit and hopefully not my last to the grandest building i feel that this country has to offer.

The houses of parliament for the United Kingdom in london Westminster. I have been looking forward to this t trip for a very long time. Finally it came today.

I went up with my friend Will and met my other friend Stephen Anderson up there already.
Will and myself had travalled up earlier in the day and had visited the old cabinet war rooms just behind downing street where Winston Churchill made all his key world war 2 decisions.

This in itself was very very interesting and i enjoyed this just as much i would say. gave me a real feel as to how the war would ahve felt for high up ranking officials at that time. scarey just like the rest of us would have felt i'm sure of it.

SO today i got to look down downing street and ask the police and securitya few questions there, sadly we werent allowed down there, maybe they knew i have it in for the coalition so i wouldnt be welcome down there i do not know lol.

But as for the tour of the houses of parliament we had a scotish tour guide guiding a tour party of about 20 people.

I had previously booked this trip with my local MP , Mr Mark Prisk MP for Hertford and Stortford. Mark's secterary was very helpful in this visit and arranging this that i will have to email her to say thank you i am sure.

As for the tour i enjoyed it. we got to visit the Lords and the commons and various other rooms of amazing importance. Just the grand scale of the building, despite my sight loss i really go ta great feeling for the place. The houses of parliament are steeped in history and everywhere you turned you got a real sense of waht it must have been like to work ther and carry out your daily duties in and out of offices there.

Sadly we never got to meet any MP's no labour ones either sadly but we asked some great questions on the toura nd i leartn a awful lot i must admit. My favourite part of the tour would be standing at the dispatch box in the commons and standing what would be facing the speaker and standing on both the opposition seats and the government seats, somewhere i hope my very own Labour party can return to one day.

All in all i really enjoyed this tripa nd is oen i will not forget in a long time. London as ever was busy and bustling, i always love going up there, even the undergound for me now is fascinating and not a fear at all anymore. I used to shit myself at the thought of the tube but now i relish it and find it all one big adventure.

I am glad i went and i hope i get to return one day to the commons.

Thank you for reading and i hope to blog more about this trip later over the weekend in further detail if i can. If i dont and am too busy i do apoligise in advance. I try to blog as much as i can but time this week has been at a premium

next week should be a little less busy

thanks for reading if yuo do.

Please dont forget to link this blog to other blogs you feel would link well to this if you do read this. if not why not ? i will be blogging about all sorts over the next couple of months so please stay tuned.


anyway bye for now

take care

mark