THE first General Strike in the history of the British Labour Movement has come and gone. There has been nothing like it in this, the oldest of capitalist countries. It has astounded the most optimistic and flattened out the pessimists by the grandeur of the mass response to the call for action. There was not a murmur of opposition from the workers anywhere. With one accord the army of trade unionists responded to the word of command and left their work. There was no hesitation. At midnight, of May 3rd, 1926, the trains ceased to run, transport came to a standstill, the factories began to be empty and only those industries carried on which as yet were considered “the second line of defence.” The only complaint that could be heard, and this complaint increased in volume as the days went by, came from those at work who wanted the call to cease work to apply to them.
The display of solidarity was magnificent, the spirited determination of the masses beyond praise, when suddenly, without the slightest warning to the workers, they were ordered back to work. The whole movement was bewildered. What did it mean? Had the Government caved in? Surely In the provinces and districts trade unionists began to organise “Victory celebrations,” when lo the Government and mineowners’ organs trumpeted the “Triumph of commonsense” and the “Unconditional surrender of the General Council of the Trades Union Congress!” The celebrations were turned into faltering explanations and the note of victory in the ranks of the workers was turned into bitter chagrin. Truly the events of these nine days require an explanation, not simply a “close up” explanation giving the “inner history of the General Council,” but an explanation which places the event in its correct historical perspective.
To separate the General Strike from the events leading up to it would be a great mistake. Although this is the first General Strike, it must not be forgotten that a General Strike has been threatened on more than one occasion in recent years. The years 1920, 1921, and 1925 have stamped upon their pages indelible marks which are inseparable from the events of May, 1926.
In May, 1920, a General Strike was threatened in the event of the Government declaring war on Russia in aid of Poland. This was the nearest approach to so great a struggle. For the first time Councils of Action were formed and British Labour, steeped in Parliamentary Liberalism, found itself face to face with a first class anti-parliamentary situation.
In 1921 the trade unions were in the front line of attack and the famous Triple Alliance of Miners, Transport Workers, and Railwaymen crumpled up before the issues of the General Strike on that infamous day, “Black Friday.” On that occasion the miners were the storm-centre. The miners were locked out and the trade union leadership of their allies collapsed at the sight of the political implications of working class solidarity which would express itself in the sympathetic strike on a mass scale. On that occasion the masses were not called into action and a variety of explanations were offered for the great failure, not the least common being the explanation that the “masses were not ready.” For four years “Black Friday” echoed and reechoed through the trade unions, and one and all were saying, “There must be no more ‘Black Fridays!’” Leaders ceased to attempt to justify the events of that day, and it appeared in the days of July, 1925, when once again the miners’ problems became the paramount problems of the Labour Movement, that the blackness of ’21 was to be wiped out in the manifest “will” of the Unions to stand by the miners.
Again the General Strike appeared on the horizon it was declared that “Black Friday” was wiped out by “Red Friday.” True, there was no General Strike called on this occasion, but all the decisions pointed clearly and definitely, to such a strike as the logical sequel of what had already been established. The Government retreated before the threat and the Trade Union leadership of the day, especially the General Council of the Trades Union Congress, secured a prestige which had long been absent from the movement.
On three occasions, therefore, within five years prior to the fateful days of May, 1926, had the Labour Movement been on the threshold of the General Strike, but on no occasion had the Government of the day tested the strength of the threat. Once the leadership crashed, when it thought that it was going to be put to the test, but it recovered, and life swept it forward again until the gauntlet was taken up, the challenge accepted. The result we know. To some this is the finish of the story, the end of the General Strike policy, and so on. Mr. Cramp cries “Never again.” Mr. MacDonald and his colleagues proceed to capitalise the strike into parliamentary votes. The capitalist leader-writers and Tory and Liberal leaders boast of the triumph of “commonsense” and the durability of the Parliamentary institutions. But each and everyone of them are ignoring certain very important features of the situation which no serious person can afford to ignore. Not the least of these is the fact that on each of the occasions cited, both with regard to the threat of the General Strike and the actual General Strike, the decisions were taken by congresses and conferences and by leaders politically opposed to the policy of the General Strike and its implications.
The leadership on each occasion has been practically the same. The “Left Wing” leaders in the national executives of the unions and on the General Council could be counted on the fingers of one hand. To suggest that these “Left Wingers” swung the conferences and congresses into their decisions is a palpable absurdity. Why then these remarkable decisions and movements, in flat contradiction to the theories held by those who make them?
It may be argued that the conditions governing the decisions on each occasion were exceptional. This was argued especially with regard to the challenge of 1920 and the formation of the Councils of Action. On this occasion the whole of the Labour Party and the Trade Unions lined up for direct mass action against the Parliamentary Government. Although the result was immense, no less than the prevention of war on Soviet Russia, the Labour Movement became apologetic when the implications of its own actions in relation to its enemies at home began to dawn upon it. It was said that the movement was feeling the impulse of the revolutionary wave that had swept Europe, and that when it had died down it would be thoroughly appreciated as an exceptional event without any relation whatever to “domestic politics.”
That the British working class was profoundly influenced by the revolutionary wave from Europe only a fool would deny. That it was deeply stirred by the war and the “after the war problems” no one will question. It had been promised much and expected the fulfilment of the promises, a fulfilment that was not forthcoming. All this can be admitted at once. But once this is admitted, what is the value of the argument about “exceptional circumstances,” when within nine months of this nation-shaking event, a similar situation looms directly ahead, this time arising irresistibly from the economic difficulties of British capitalism itself?
But still the critics and the leaders refused to examine the forces that were driving them into actions contrary to their desires. Four years only, crowded with the “triumph of gradualness” in the Labour movement and positive assurances that the way of all progress lay through parliamentarism, and again the Labour movement is forced by circumstances to take decisions in flat contradiction to its proclaimed political line of advance. June, 1925, is the answer.
Nor in the interval of nine months since then has there been any marked change of opinion in the ranks of the leaders of Labour. The Liverpool Conference of the Labour Party, which included almost every leader involved in these actions, emphatically repudiated the forces in the working class who warned them of coming events and told them to prepare and how to prepare. Then of what value is the argument concerning “exceptional circumstances” when these circumstances, which force men into situations contrary to their wishes, occur four times within the short period of six years? Was there ever such an “exception” which appeared in history with such irritating frequency? To seek an explanation of these events in terms of “exceptional circumstances” or the “Red Hand” in the General Council is as futile and worthless as an explanation of rotten English weather in terms of a Bolshevik conspiracy. We must dig deeper than that if we would learn the meaning of these events and wise men will hesitate before making dogmatic assertions to the effect that such a situation will not arise again.
Of course, on each of the occasions mentioned some new factor appeared in the situation, but to suggest that this new factor was the exceptional circumstance responsible for the crisis or that the crisis itself is due to something outside the main track of history, a non-repeating factor, is to lose all sense of history and turn it into a topsy-turvydom beyond human understanding. Contrary to such fantastic notions, we regard the remarkable fact that the most conservative trade unions, led by the most conservative of trade union leaders,, on this side of the Atlantic, have been led into General Strike situations four times within six years as very decisive evidence of a fundamental change in the main lines of British history. It is this profound “exceptional circumstance” that lies underneath the treat mass movements, the failures of the leadership and the rise of new forces within the ranks of the working-class movement.
Few people in Britain will yet acknowledge that there is this fundamental change. They prefer to pursue the ostrich policy and persuade themselves that to-morrow will be better than to-day, and “we will pull through somehow.” An immense faith in “the good old way” dominates the mind of the average Englishman and with this immense conservatism he refuses to think out either the meaning of his yesterdays or the problems which lie ahead. British Labour leadership, whether in the trade unions or the Labour Party, is no exception to this rule. Its lack of theoretical training is notorious. The first political programme adopted by the Labour Party was borrowed from the war-time leader of American capitalism, President Wilson. It was announced as British Labour’s War Aims, and proclaimed as the path to Socialism. When the war ended Labour echoed the “Reconstruction” cry of the capitalist class, called for “industrial peace” and in all its political acts followed in the wake of the Governing class, priding itself upon having better notions of how to restore capitalism than the capitalists themselves. Its foreign policy was in acknowledged “continuity” with capitalist governments, and its domestic policy bore the hallmark of “gradualness.” At no time has it had an independent policy based upon the interests of the class upon which it depends for support and which gave it birth. It has always been the victim of pressure from either the masses of the Labour movement or the class governing society.
It is this complete lack of decisiveness, based on a lack of understanding of the evolution of social forces, that lies at the bottom of its contradictory actions and its failures. So long as British capitalism was on the up grade and able to adapt itself to the claims of the workers, there was little possibility of the Labour leaders being found out. Comfortable in their social life, excellent as collective bargainers and as administrators of trade union rules, they felt neither the necessity nor the desire to “worry about theory.” Nor did the war interfere to any great extent, if at all, in this smug, comfortable way of life. They tied their union offices to the Government apparatus, and, with a few exceptions, left the workers to fight their battles on their own. It is a matter of little surprise, therefore, that they recognised neither the significance of the “After the war problems” nor the necessity for new lines of development. To them Socialism was still some “far-off divine event.” They faced a severely wounded, quivering European capitalism and the millions of suffering restless workers, with the mentality of the comfortable nineteenth century Liberal and Tory trade union bureaucrats. They neither understood the class war nor wished to understand it. All they wanted was to be left alone, to return to the “normal.”
When all the “inner histories” of the collapse of the General Council have been written and told, and the stories and of cowardice and panic have exhausted themselves, these deeper defects will be found to underlie not only the incidents of failure but the continuous refusal of the leaders to take the measure of history and face up to the new tasks life itself was calling upon them to fulfil.
But it is one thing for Labour leaders to dodge the problems for a time and to fail in the hour of crisis, and another thing for the masses and for the ruling class which feels the reins slipping from its grasp. The war struck the masses of workers direct. So also did the post-war economic calamities. Disillusionment followed rapidly in the path of suffering and want, while the Russian Revolution and the toppling of thrones in Europe blasted upon their ears the mutability of capitalism. So vast was the consequent movement among the workers that every capitalist government beat a retreat. Even the British Government beat a retreat and British Labour leaders were caught in the stream of revolution. They chanted the songs of revolution and repeated its slogans and talked of the “Decay of Civilisation.” Even the Independent Labour Party knocked at the door of the Communist International and timidly enquired if there was not an easier road than the path of revolutionary struggle. Right well we know that this, is as far as it got, but that it should get so far is an indication of the greatness of the movement behind it. It peeped within the frontiers of the workers’ revolution and sensed at once the hardness of the fight, retreated hurriedly and proceeded to confine its agitation to Liberal interpretations of the formula of “self-determination.” It was with this mentality and outlook that the Labour leaders harnessed the great revolt of 1920 and prevented war on Russia.
But this was not the sum total of all that was happening within the ranks of the working class movement of Britain. The war conditions gave rise to a great movement among the workers which found its organised expression in the Shop Stewards’ and Workers’ Committee Movements. It passed with the passing of the war conditions, but left its marks deep upon the trade unions without changing the leadership. Out of this new force and the small Socialist parties arose the Communist Party of Great Britain, a section of the Communist International.
For the first time in the history of the working class of Britain men and women banded themselves together in a political party based upon the interests of the working class, with a political policy determined. by those interests. It differed from all previous workers’ and socialist parties in that it was but a section of an International Party, and committed to a daily political activity, a focussing of the actual daily requirements of the workers in their struggles as a class at war with capitalism. It made mistakes, but it went ahead with its job. It was abused. It was denounced and repudiated. In conference after conference of the Labour Party it was subjected to scoffing comments of “Orders from Moscow” and the like. Even the “Left Wing” Labour leaders, such as Lansbury, echoed these tirades with additional objections to “Orders from King Street.” But the tirades and opposition only helped to strengthen the new force and helped it to take more careful measurement of the opposition to be overcome. It had much to learn, but was willing to learn and face the realities of life.
The rise of this new body to many seemed of no importance and to many still seems of no importance. But it is beyond dispute to-day that its political record through the period traversed by the crises we have mentioned is in direct contrast with the record of the accepted Labour leadership, which was driven into positions and responsibilities it neither wished for nor understood. It not only foreshadowed the crises, but with increasing sureness indicated the ways and means of meeting them, and to the utmost measure of its strength applied its policy. Instead of shrinking from the revolutions of Europe it studied them. Instead of abusing the leaders of the workers’ revolution and seeking to pass them over “to work out their own destiny” it learned from them and accepted their help and guidance.
It was thus that this new leadership in the ranks of the working class of Britain learned to see through the “after the war problems” and to regard them not merely as “problems of re-construction,” but as evidence of the fact that we had entered a new epoch to which only the working class hold the keys of social progress. It was thus that of all the parties forced to come to grips with the crises it was the one party within the workers’ movement which was not taken by surprise and compelled to take decisions contrary to the main lines of its policy. It was thus that it placed itself at the head of every social discontent of the workers, directed it in terms of their class, and brought it within the scope of the Labour Movement, so that the conservative leaders felt the pressure from below. It helped the unemployed workers to organise as never before, and developed their power until the whole Labour movement was compelled to reckon with their demands, and the day arrived when the unions had to admit the unemployed to an open alliance. It saw the workers leaving the trade unions and raised the cry, “Back to the Unions” until the trade union leadership was compelled to launch a “Back to the Unions” campaign. It saw the significance of the collapse of the Trade Union International and participated in the formation of the Red International of Labour Unions. It took up the cudgels on behalf of international working class solidarity, led it through its various phases until the whole trade union movement of Great Britain became the storm-centre for international trade union unity. It led the way in organising the discontent within the unions and helped in the creation and development of the Minority Movement. It saw the potentialities of the existing Trades Councils and directed the awakening forces within them until the Trades Union Congress was compelled to follow the course already taken in regard to the Unemployed Workers’ Organisation. It saw the weaknesses of the trade unions and their lack of central leadership and raised the demand for power to be invested in the General Council of the Trades Union Congress, until this became a vital issue and was agreed upon on the threshold of the crisis of 1926, after repeated repudiations.
It was thus that the young Communist Party became increasingly the centre to which the discontented workers gravitate and force their claims upon the leadership that does not want to struggle. It cannot be gainsaid that the victories and achievements of the Labour movement in all these crises have corresponded to the degree to which it has approximated to the measures indicated by the Communist Party, and its failures correspond to their refusal to make the preparations that our Party has outlined as necessary preparations. This does not mean that there has arisen within the working class of Britain a new leadership with heaven-sent powers of political penetration and foresight, but that the evolution of the working class has been carried a stage further and out of its own ranks and through its own experiences, it is producing an organised leadership true to its interests and its tasks.
So important has this new leadership become that the capitalist class lay at its door the blame for every trade dispute and the responsibility for the breakdown of their own economic system. These accusations, of course, are as silly as the arguments about the “exceptional circumstance” which pokes its nose into history to destroy the dreams of peaceful gentlemen of the Labour movement. At the same time we will not be so foolish as to underestimate its influence and its power. The fear which gives rise to the accusations against the Communist Party arise more from a consciousness of its potentialities than its actual fighting strength to-day. It is the gravitation of increasing numbers of the workers towards the Communist Party (a process which indicates the growth of class consciousness in the working class finding its clearest and most definite expression in the Communist Party) which alarms the capitalist forces and compels them to strike at this new body ere it becomes too strong for them. But this new force did not create the breakdown of capitalist economics, nor did trade unionism, nor the Labour Party. The latter bodies were neither responsible for the war nor did they lay any obstacles in the way of British capitalism during its prosecution; indeed they were its open allies. It is not until all the promises of the capitalist class, its statesmen and its governments have proven false, and the capitalist class proves itself incapable of solving its own problems, that this process of developing the class consciousness of the workers sets in at an increasing pace. Without underestimating the positive work of the class conscious workers against capitalism as a factor in the increasing difficulties of capitalism in Britain, it is unquestionable that the constant driving of new inroads into the standard of life of the masses (combined with the continued failure of the capitalist class to give the slightest positive proof of the temporary character of these inroads) has done far more than all the propaganda and agitation of the revolutionary workers to extend and deepen the class consciousness of the masses.
To lay at the doors of the Communist Party and the forces gathered around it the responsibility for the threats of the General Strike, or for the actual coming of the General Strike on May 3rd, when the Communist Party has not yet achieved a sufficient organic change in the leadership of the unions and the Labour Party to provide an alternative leadership when the General Council collapsed, is childish on the one hand and on the other is clear evidence that the process of Communist development follows in the wake of the failure of the capitalist class to meet the natural demands of the masses for a decent standard of life within the framework of the system which they own and claim to control. It is this failure which led to the growth of such mass resistance that the General Strike was possible so far as the workers were concerned
But there are two sides to a fight as well as to a bargain, and whilst busying ourselves in explaining and finding the causes of the tremendous developments which marshalled the forces of the workers, we must not overlook the fact that three times the ruling class avoided a frontal attack upon the General Strike before it actually provoked it in order to smash it. A retrospective glance over the years in which these events occurred will reveal a similar process to that which we have shown going on in the ranks of the working class, except that it has gone faster, and is consciously led and developed by the dominant party of the ruling class. The challenge of 1920 was not faced boldly because the ruling class felt none too safe in the saddle. The army was being demobilised and discontented, and the whole population were becoming restive for the fulfilment of the beautiful promises made during the war. Everything was exceedingly unstable and it was a risky job for any Government to fling down challenges or take them up. The treat of 1921 was disposed of by the Labour leaders themselves and the measure of the determination of the Government of the day was never really taken. Then a wholesale offensive of the capitalist class was conducted against the wages of the workers, and was continued for two years without any indication of the emergence of British capitalism from its difficulties.
Torn by difficulties in its foreign politics, without any appreciable, recovery of markets that would set its industry running again at full strength, enraged by the conquests of the Russian Revolution, annoyed by heavy taxation and foreign debts, fearful of the new competitors that had emerged from the war with greater strength, worried by the growing gap between imports and exports to its disadvantage, alarmed at the new aspirations of the subject peoples of the Empire, the ruling class of Britain felt that it was up against the greatest fight of its existence. It learned from the European struggles and revolutions and applied these lessons with a thoroughness that is commendable. It destroyed the Coalition Government and set about securing a unified political party that could exercise an authority and a power unhampered by divisions in its own ranks. It secured a powerful Conservative Government and the Labour Party formed the opposition. Still unable to emerge from the “trade depression” and finding that Labour made rapid strides and the political alignment of forces assumed more and more a class war sharpness, it set about the task of reducing opposition to a minimum. Confident that the Labour Party had not developed far enough to secure a parliamentary majority, it threw away its majority and paved the way for a Minority Government of Labour, committed to “continuity.” In nine months it had got the Labour Party committed to its own fundamental lines. It destroyed the Labour Government, swept the Liberal Party out of the way, and returned with a record majority written upon the forgers’ card which it had not hesitated to use. With Labour’s opposition reduced to exceeding faintness it proceeded to consolidate its political forces and rule as an open dictatorship, fighting on all fronts. But still in spite of all its optimism and assurances of good times ahead, the national budget looked worse than ever and the trade returns became increasingly alarming. The basic industries, coal, metal and shipbuilding and engineering refused to “turn the corner.”
Alarm mixed with anger against the workers became more. and more apparent. The trade unions had become the only strong force challenging capitalist authority and preventing an attempt to recuperate at the expense of the workers’ wages and hours of labour, but the growth of solidarity at home and abroad amongst the workers (coupled with the fact that the Government was not anxious to face an industrial stoppage and was not quite sure that it could cope with a General Strike) led to the retreat of July, 1925. If ever there was a strategical retreat the 1925 Subsidy Settlement was such. From that moment the Government redoubled its energies to secure the utmost strengthening of its forces for an attack. It planned as no government in Britain had ever planned for a smashing class war effort.
Having reduced the Labour Party opposition in Parliament to a state of helpless bewilderment, it determined to knock the bottom out of the trade union opposition outside Parliament. It set about, through its party apparatus, the organisation of the O.M.S. (Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies in time of General Strike).
It strengthened the police forces everywhere and merged the Fascisti either in the police forces or the O.M.S. It struck at the Communist Party and the Minority Movement, which were the only bodies to take its preparations seriously and to warn the workers of their significance and of how to prepare on their side. It set the Labour Party leadership busy on the job of battling against the growing class consciousness within the ranks of Labour, and saving the Labour Party from Communism in the interests of “the Nation.” It led the trade union leaders of the General Council “up the garden” and struck back at the General Strike with as great a decisiveness as it had struck at the Labour Government. It handled the General Strike, into which the General Council and the Trade Union Executives had plunged the workers with a minimum of preparation, as a full dress rehearsal for civil war. It marshalled the middle classes behind the Government and left the trade union leaders of the Labour Party murmuring that they were not fighting but only having a trade dispute. The end we know.
The ruling classes, led by the Tory Party, have come out triumphant, with the leadership of the Labour movement in Parliament and out of it thoroughly beaten. But no one can say who has passed through this remarkable series of events that the workers are beaten or that the fundamental problems before the ruling class are in any way solved. At the very moment that the Press hiccoughs its joy at the “Victory of common-sense” it publishes the trade returns for the month before the Strike telling the dismal story of British capitalism’s continued decline. They are the worst figures for the month of April for four years.
In these circumstances, and with this unfolding process before us, stretching over a series of years, how can we regard the General Strike of 1926 as due to some “exceptional circumstances” or to some malignant conspiracy? And how can we say with confidence that the “General Strike is dead” and will not be heard of again? It would be unspeakable folly and stupidity.
The writer therefore proposes to outline in the following pages what led to the General Strike, to tell the story of what happened during the strike and the days immediately following, and to glance at the perspectives and tasks which lie before us.
Next: II. What Led to the General Strike