1926 General Strike | GCSE Power and the People (13)

In this video, we will be looking at trade unionism in the 20th century. Looking at the first and only general strike in British history, the general strike of 1926. As always, we need to start with a bit of background knowledge. First of all, you need to understand who the TU are. The TU stood for the Trades Union Congress and they were set up in 1868 to coordinate the work of all the separate trade unions and acted as their organizing body. As you may know, a union can call a strike, where workers refuse to work to protest against unfair pay or poor conditions. But a general strike is where workers from all the different industries, miners, transport workers, dockers, etc., where they all stop work at the same time. As you can imagine, if a general strike was ever called by the TU, this would bring Britain to a standstill and put massive pressure on the government. We are going to be looking at the coal miners and the industry saw some major changes at the start of the 20th century. Coal powered almost everything, trains, factories, steamships and so this industry was incredibly important. Traditionally, the miners had a reputation for being militant which means they were more likely to take strong action like striking which brought them into confrontation with the government. But during World War I, things changed. The government needed to keep coal production high for the war effort. So they worked more closely with the unions. There was also a reduction in militant action as it was regarded almost as treasonous to strike when there were men dying on the front lines. And so during the war, mine's pay and working conditions started to improve. But after the war ended in 1918, conditions began to worsen again. Millions of men were demobilized looking for work, pushing wages down. Britain also faced foreign competition as other countries like Germany and America were producing coal more cheaply and British coal owners wanted to cut their costs. This is where we see economic causes playing a major role as we see wages go down and employers wanting their miners to increase their working hours. Between 1920 and 1926, miners wages dropped from £6 a week to around £3.90. But by 1925, the mine owners again wanted to cut wages. And this time, the TU promised to back the miners if they went on strike. The government was unprepared for a general strike and provided a 9-month subsidy to the coal industry to keep wages up temporarily. They also set up the Samuel Commission to investigate how to fix the coal industry. In March 1926, the commission supported a 13% wage reduction for the miners. The miners union said no, using the famous slogan, not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day. The stage was set for confrontation and talks between the government, the mine owners, and the unions broke down in April 1926. On the 3rd of May 1926, the TU called a general strike. All the major unions called for their workers to go on strike and 2 million workers joined in to support the miners. When you woke up on the 4th of May, there had been no trains or buses running. The docks and factories were shut and power stations stopped working. The country was at a standstill, but there was a push back. The government organized a huge volunteer effort. Thousands of people from middle and upper class backgrounds offered to step forward to maintain essential services like driving buses, delivering foods, and a volunteer police force to maintain order on the streets. The army was also used to help transport foods and keep order. The government ran its own newspaper, the British Gazette, edited by the then Chancellor Winston Churchill. It emphasized the violent and revolutionary aspects to the strike with the strikers wanting to start a revolution to overthrow the government in Britain. The Labour Party, which was meant to represent the interests of the working class, were worried that the strike could damage the party's image and distance themselves. They pushed for an end to the crisis and for negotiations. Despite the government's claims, there was actually very little violence and many communities showed great solidarity, helping each other with food and child care. But the economic pressure on families increased as union funds could not support two million striking families. After nine days, the TU entered secret negotiations with the government. Without consulting the miners, the TU called off the general strike on the 12th of May 1926, and that was that. The 1926 general strike was ultimately a failure. The miners had carried on striking for six more months, but by November 1926, most had gone back to work, forced to accept lower wages and longer hours. So what then was the significance of the 1926 general strike? Firstly, in the short term, this was a victory for the government and the mine owners. The government won the standoff and the employers got what they wanted in reducing the miners wages and increasing their hours worked. Trade unions lost over a million members by 1930, partly as a result of the defeats in 1926, and employers and the government had more power than ever. But on the flip side, the 1926 general strike did show the power of collective action as all the different unions came out in support of the miners. Although the general strike only lasted 9 days, if you add that and the minor strike that lasted until November together, 162 million working days were lost in 1926, by far the biggest number in British history. In the long term, the 1927 Trades and Disputes Act made sympathy strikes illegal, which means that workers from one industry cannot strike to support workers from another industry. This is still in law today and is the reason why Britain has never had another general strike since 1926. That's all for this video. And in the second video on the 20th century trade unions, we're going to be looking again at the miners in an event still remembered by millions today, the minor strike of 1984 to 1985. See you then.