The General Strike

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The first few months of 1980 have brought to the fore the demand for a General Strike to bring down the Tory government. Such a demand naturally gives rise to further discussion on the lessons of the 1926 General Strike, betrayed by the TUC. With this in view, we are repriting in two parts an extended article on the General Strike by John Docherty, first published in a supplement to Socialist Press in April 1976.

On the May Day of 1926, there erupted the most bitter and significant struggle in the history of the British working class. . The miners were locked out on that day by the employers who demanded the most enormous cuts in their wages and conditions.

On 3 May, millions of workers struck in support of the miners.

The forces of the capitalist state were brought into action, and after nine days the leaders of the trade unions declared unconditional surrender.

Many strikers were victimised, and after six bitter months, the miners were forced back to work, alone and These events affected class and political relations in every corner of the world at the time, and since then they have had their echo in every generation.

Culmination

The General Strike was the culmination of an entire decade of militant struggle by the British working class.

With the emergence of the wallne sup slewatus shan starrintie mnua. ment and the flooding of workers into the newly amalgamated and centralised working class organisations in the brief period of post-war boom from 1918-20, the class struggle reached a high point.

The police strikes of 19181919, the railway strike of 1919 and many other important battles were dealt with by a combination of careful strategy on the part of the Lloyd George coalition government and the lack of fighting spirit of the union leaders.

Jimmie Thomas of the NUR., for example, deliberately timed his 1919 struggle so as not to seek the support of those miners and transport workers who were combined with him in the 'Triple Alliance' and had undertaken to give full backing.

During these months, the Cahinet received regular reports from its Directorate of Intelligence about the changes in mood and activity within the working class and left wing political organisations.

With mutinies in the army, strikes in the police, and many waves of struggle from miners and others to contend with, it is not surprising that during 1920, the Cabinet discussed 'military elona far danlina with a rnceihle insurrection' ', including how, in in the event, they might take 'private Steps • to secure the aid of a certain class of citizen'.

In August 1920 a National Council of Action was formed by all the main organisations of the labour movement to oppose any possible intervention in the war against the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile local equivalents with the same title began to prepare strikes. The Directorate of Intelligence wrote to the Cabinet that these first Councils of Action:

"Were taking on more the form of Soviets and in some areas (were) forming plans for arano (uvaral farmino nlane for the seizure of private property and the means of transport"

But the job of heading off this enthusiasm was left to the trade union leaders, who instructed the councils that they snould:

"not in any way usurp the functions of trade union executives, especially so far as the withdrawal of labour is concerned, but to act as centres of information".

When the mines were handed back to the owners in the following July, and the miners were threatened with wage cuts, the Prime Minister Lloyd George knew he could rely on the leaders of the other partners in the Triple Alliance to leave them in the lurch.

"Thomas" , said the Premier, "Is all for peace...I have complete confidence in Thomas' selfishness".

When Hodges for the miners publicly expressed a willingness to compromise, this provided exactly the division that the government wanted, and it was exploited to the full.

On 15 March 1921, the miners were left to fight on alone. This was 'Black Friday'. As the Prime Minister and his Secretary observed in an exchange of notes at the time:

BAAV It is not enough to have a good cause. You must have good leaders.

The period between 1921 and 1925 saw an ebb in the class struggle. The ruling_class was mns armer with an Fmeroenev Powers Act and with a range of strike-breaking machinery that was carefully preserved through the period of Labour government in 1924.

The need for such powers grew more acute as the post-war problems of British capitalism intensified, and the markets for British goods, especially coal, contacted.

The return to the gold standard at the old rate in 1925 further increased the prices of British exports and forced the reduction of living standards of those who produced for this market.

In this period Tory Prime Minister Baldwin told the miners that:

"All the workers in this country have got to face a reduction of wages to help put. industry on its feet" •It became more and more clear to the Tories, however, that they would have to enforce • exemplary show-down, preferably with the miners, in order to bring this about.

In July 1925, on Red Friday', when • the Triple Alliance together with the engineers threatened to come in together to protect the miners from wage cutting, Baldwin was compelled to retreat for a time by granting a temporary subsidy to the mining industry.

From July 1925 to May 1926, the government carefully prepared. The country was divided into military districts, and officials were put in charge of food distribution and other tasks within each one.

The semi-official Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies recruited retired army officers, members of various extreme right wing organisations and other disaffected sections of the middle class into a strikebreaking force.

г.. monthe the During inese trade union leaders did nothing to prepare for the forthcoming struggle. In their heart of hearts even the most left wing of them always believed that a settlement was just around the corner.

Thus Arthur Cook, Secretary of the Miners Federation of Great Britain and in many ways a genuine militant, while publicly repeating the slogan 'Not a penny off the pay, not a second on the day, in private was prepared to suggest compromises of all kinds.

On 21 April 1926 Cook spoke of a "national minimum not only with pluses above it, but also with minuses below it".

On May 2 he even admitted to the Prime Minister' Secretary that "the word revision would ease matters if it was understood instead of reduction"

MFGB President Herbert Smith, before the General Strike was even over mentioned wage cuts for miners between 10 and 15%.

The fact is that however much even the most militant union leaders were prepared to compromise, this was not good enough for the ruling class.

Though Baldwin and his government negotiated right up In tha lost mamant in the hana that the union leaders would make major concessions, once this became impossible they.

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Churchill, notified individual received at intervals, cancelling "any action which they may different unions ... is governfind it necessary to take in an ment concocting conflicting honest endeavour to aid the telegrams to mislead Strike Civil Power will receive both Committee?" support of His Majesty's govern- be allowed to continue, and ment" although in some important There are many other centres such as Leeds rival strike aspects of the events of those committees continued in operanine days which it would need tion throughout the struggle, For example, there were the unionists pooled their resources, interminable and self-deceptive ignored their leaders, and set up efforts of Thomas and the other joint bodies often under the union leaders to achieve a title "council of action' taken simply seized on the pretext of workers at the Daily Mail refusing to print a lying, strikebreaking editorial to leave the TUC negotiators standing alone in the dark outside Downing Street faced with the task of leading an all-out struggle against the government.

At this point the government's strike-breaking machinery came into operation.

Telegrams were sent to all the regional civil commissioners set up under the government's preparations containing the single word 'Action' Those who received them knew what to do. Immediately all naval and military leave was cancelled. Troop reinforcements were moved into London and the main industrial centres and two batallions of infantry marched through Liverpool with steel helmets, rifles and full equipment.

The battleships Ramillies and Barham were recalled from the Atlantic fleet and anchored in the Mersey. Warships were also anchored in the Tyne, the Clyde and the Humber, and a at Bristol, Cardiff, Swansea, Barrow, Middlesbrough and Harwich.

The military were used for various purposes. They were sent out in plain clothes to infiltrate the strikers and report any evidence... of sedition and subversion'.

. They were also used in enormous numbers to break the very effective picketing of the London docks. scabs Frid moved into aye docks from the river and the following morning 105 lorries moved out, containing food and armed soldiers and accompanied by armoured cars.

The reporter from the New York World thought that this activity was supported by 'enough artillery to kill every living thing in the neighbourhood' Over the week-end of 8-9 May, there were baton charges by police against crowds of strikers in many parts of London, in Plymouth, Swansea, Southsea, Nottingham, Middlesborough, Newcastle and in Hull, where there were 25 arrests and 41 hospital admissions.

In York the crowd tried unsuccessfully to tescue an arrested. striker from jail, and there were violent scenes over four or five nights in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Early the following week many hundreds of strikers were arrested, often for nothing more mal pussessig copics vi cum- naccaccina onnies of rammunist Party literature.

The government's British Gazette, edited by Winston members of the forces on 7 Mạy that:

now and afterwards the full an entire book to describe. 'settlement' and there was the pathetic sight of the leaders of the most powerful action in the history of the British wo:king class trooping to Downing Street on 12 May to announce their unconditional surrender. But the great mass of workers showed a great deal more courage and inventiveness than this.

On 13 May, there were more of them on strike than on the day before, as they fought tenaciously against the efforts of their employers to victimise individuals or to deprive them of trade union conditions. In this they were largely successful, despite being abandoned by their leaders.

The failure of the union leaders to prepare for the General Strike was closely linked to the methods they used to limit it once it got going. Bevin of the TGWU was the strongest voice in the TUC's Organising Committee and he was determined that all effective decisions should be made by the unions themselves, even on a local level.

Jimmy Thomas said what he "dreaded about the struggle more than anything else" (including presumably defeat) was that power "should have got out of the hands of those who were able to exercise some control"

The activities of the union leaders during the strike simply sabotaged its . effective operation.

At Wellingborough the Secretary of the Building Trades Federation went to a meeting where he found that:

"each affiliated secretary was on the platform with me, each with differently worded instructions"

The Swansea strike committee sent a message to the TUC on 8 May which said:

"Telegrams are being one another signed by leaders of Such a situation could not generally speaking local trade over from earlier struggles.

Many of them then issued permits for the movement of goods. Most issued strike bulletins, against the wishes of Some set up defence squads or organised mass picketing, and as a result had little trouble from the strike-breaking authorities in their areas.

It remained a major fear of the union leaders, , as Charles Dukes of the GMWU later explained to the TUC, that:

"Every day the strike proceeded the control and the authority of that dispute was responsible Executies and nor the hands of men of no authority, „no control, no responsibilCouncils of action The councils of action and local strike committees certainly won increasing power and authority within the working class movement during the General Strike, and they took on a range of tasks which the leaders of the movement simply tried to ignore.

There has often been a myth put forward about the councils of action, particularly by Stalinist authors that during the strike they 'exercised complete control over their areas' or even 'began to develop an embryo alternative centre of government' It is true that such possiblities were implicit in the situation. They might even be said to be grasped for by the striker in South London who shouted 'we are your masters now' after a blackleg bus.

But the possibilities did not become the reality because quite simply there was nobody at all there to point the way to develop beyond such possibilities. The struggle to build an alternative state power can in no way be carried through in a spontaneous way, without conscious leadershp. In order to explain this point it is necessary to go on to consider in some detail the activities of revolutionaries before and during the General Strike and the views of their activities that have been put forward since that time.

Continued TUC leader Len Murray's frank confession that he and his right wing colleagues "would not know what to do with the power" if a General Strike brought down the Tories has drawn out an equal confession of bankruptcy from the Communist Party.

In an editorial politely entitled "A word in your car, Len" (March 20) the CP daily Morning Star offered Murray a few suggestions of what could be done-every one of which speaks volumes on the CP's nationalism and outright opposition to revolutionary socialism.

According to the Star, there *no shortage of ideas among working people as to what they should do to counter the offensive against their rights and living standards currently in full swing at Mrs Thatcher's behest".

For many workers the anarchy and destruction of the capitalist crisis-ot which the Thatcher government's policies are only a reflection-are leading for the first time to a recognition of the need for a socialist planned economy.

Nationalist Not so the Stalinists of the Communist Party. Far from socialist policies their first suggestion for the exercise of state power by the TUC is to erect nationalist Import "The steelworkers... would no doubt be able to come up with some alternatives (even if expressed in colourful language) to the proposal by state-controlled BP to buy £7 million worth of the message is clear: in the CP's view the first act of a workers' government in Britain should be to stick the boot into steelworkers in Japan!

A similar nationalist note is struck by the Star's suggestion that "the British people" should get out of the "Brussels rich man's club"-the Common Market.

Socialists make no such concessions to nationalism: they advocate a withdrawal from the EEC and from NATO as part of an internationalist policy designed to mobilise workers throughout Europe in the struggle to destroy these capitalist alliances and establish a socialist united states of Europe.

Yet the mass Communist Parties in France and Italy fully support the Common Market!.

Moreover socialists unlike the Stalinists recognise that the crisis of British capitalism cannot be resolved by a few tinkering reforms administered by a parliamentary Labour government-whether right wing or 'left' The Morning Star, committed to the reactionary perspec tive of Joseph Stalin's British Road to Socialism, argues precisely for parliamentary reforms as the road to prosperity. It argues for an end to unemployment not through nationalisation but through:

"boosting pay and benefits to create purchasing power for goods".

Why didn't either the Labour or Tory leaders think of that? If such solutions are available through capitalism itself why has not a single capitalist government implemented such a The answer is of course that it is a utopian schema that avoids the reality of the capitalist system-that the crisis revolves around the falling rate of profit, which can only be stemmed through the most ruthless rationalisation of capital and brutal attacks on the working class.

Undaunted by such facts, however, the Star blunders on, calling for import controls and, in a show of radicalism for:

"steps to control the power of the giant multinational companies which have been causing havoc to the economic and social fabric of the country.. "

(emphasis added)

Whatever happened to the old Marxist call (dating back to the Communist Manifesto) for the "expropriation of the expropriators"-the nationalisation of major industry, banks and trusts without compensation under workers' management?

Whatever happened, to the call for a planned, socialist economy? Even in its occasional dreams of what it would do it given the power, the Communist Party has turned its back on such revolutionary demands: it is completely dedicated to a policy of piecemeal reforms.

To make this quite clear the article goes on to call for:

"expanding and adequately financing the public sector of industry". (emphasis added).

The private sector, we can therefore assume, will be lett to cash in profitably on the "increased purchasing power for goods" created by the CP's programme of pay increases and of increased social security payCA. MPAIGN SANDAN 4:20 A ments for the unemployed.

Even these minimal demands are obviously unachievable under the Tories, the CP admits. But they are policies which the Star feels could be implemented not by a Communist government but by "a new kind of Labour government".

This Labour government is itselt to be the product of the CP's "Parliamentary Road to Socialism" • Workers must be mehtat did tory attacks and ensure that:

"a new Labour government fights on a left programme, wins an election and is then pressed to implement real change"

It is hard to believe that such rhetoric-considerably less rousing and militant than many speeches from the Tribune Group-comes from a party that waves the stolen banner of Communism.

In offering such sympathetic words in the ear of Len Murray, the CP run no risk of frightening him and thus upsetting their cosy working relationship with the trade union bureaucracy.

But they increasingly run the risk of alienating the already dwindling numbers of militant workers and youth who misguidedly look to the Morning Star and the CP as a revolutionary answer to their problems in the fight against the Tories.

Conspicuously the Star itself -like Murray-also refuses to make any call for an all-out General Strike to bring down the Tories: the political fight for such a perspective and for a socialist programme and a workers government falls now to Trotskyist revolutionaries in the labour movement.

The wavesmer!

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DESTRE'L NEWIS safety strike age MANIANE TUC leaders on March on March 9 rally

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