UK General Strike of 1926
The UK General Strike of May 1926 was the first and only general strike in British history and the most significant industrial action of the interwar period. Its immediate cause was a crisis in the coal industry: following the return to the gold standard in 1925 (which made British coal uncompetitive internationally), mine owners demanded wage cuts of 10–25 per cent and the extension of the working day. When miners rejected the cuts with the slogan 'Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day', the Trade Union Congress voted to call a general strike in their support. At midnight on 3–4 May 1926 approximately 1.5–1.7 million workers — in transport, printing, iron and steel, chemicals, electricity supply, and building — stopped work. The strike was called with remarkable effectiveness; essential services were paralysed. The government of Stanley Baldwin had prepared extensively: the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies (OMS) recruited middle-class volunteers to drive buses and trams, unload ships, and run power stations. The British Broadcasting Company (newly formed as the BBC) became a key instrument of government communication. Prime Minister Baldwin maintained a posture of moderate firmness: he refused negotiations until the strike was called off but avoided inflammatory rhetoric. Winston Churchill, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, was more belligerent, editing the British Gazette (the government's propaganda newspaper) with visible relish. After nine days the TUC called off the strike on 12 May — without any concessions for the miners, who continued their own strike until driven back by starvation in November 1926 and accepted worse terms than the owners' original offer. The failure of the general strike discredited industrial direct action as a political strategy for the British labour movement for decades and accelerated the TUC's shift toward supporting the Labour Party as the primary instrument of working-class interests.
- Year: 1926 CE
- Category: Political
