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Wednesday, May 11, 2022

Political Parties and the General Strike (1976)

From the May 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

A great deal can be learned from the experience of the working class in the General Strike. Not only does this expose the futile policies of left-wing groups, but it goes a long way towards explaining the generally submissive attitude of the trade unions during the current crisis.

Right from the beginning, the General Strike had little chance of success, due to the economic condition of capitalism at that time. The boom after the First World War turned out to be brief. By the summer of 1920 world markets were contracting with a heavy rise in unemployment: in June 1920 2 million were unemployed in Britain. The traditional industries such as coal were suffering in particular. The position became worse for the coal industry because of competition from the USA, Germany and Poland. A. J. P. Taylor in English History 1914-45 describes the economic conditions which led to the General Strike and to its ultimate failure:
Over-production of primary products dominated the inter-war years, and the impoverishment of these producers brought something near ruin to the old British industries. Exports of coal ran down to almost nothing. British prices tumbled faster than they had risen, and employment tumbled.
During the War the government had taken control of the mines, but the industry was handed back to control by the coal owners in March 1921. Economists opposed government subsidies to the coal industry since the current economic policy necessitated the fixing of the pound to the Gold Standard as a means of arresting its declining value vis-a-vis the American dollar.

In this situation the economists were arguing, as they still do, about the need to increase exports. To do this, prices had to be lowered to compete with rival coal-producing powers. At the same time, profitability must be maintained by lowering wages.

Resistance to reductions in wages had already been tried by the miners, in conjunction with the railwaymen and the transport workers, in the “Triple Alliance" of 1921. The collapse of this industrial action, which became known as “Black Friday”, portended the disaster of the General Strike. Baldwin’s 1925 policy of granting a subsidy to the coal industry, together with his establishment of the Samuel Commission, were measures by which the Government could play for time. By May 1926 the subsidy was due to run out and the mine-owners were continuing their demands for a reduction in wages and longer working hours. The secretary of the Miners’ Federation, Arthur Cook, more militant than his predecessor Frank Hodges, was determined that the miners should stand out against wage reductions. He was supported by the Federation’s President, Herbert Smith. The overwhelming majority of miners backed the strike.

United we stand
Nevertheless, by April 1926 the Government was prepared to make a stand against strike action as it had been in 1921. All the same, Stanley Baldwin and the Conservatives manifestly wished to avert a General Strike which they regarded as an intensification of the class struggle. Baldwin’s policies meant that he had to walk a tightrope between the TUC, and the mine-owners (together with the reactionary elements in the Conservative Party). Although the Conservative government introduced the temporary subsidy in 1925, Baldwin said: “‘All workers in this country have got to face a reduction of wages to help put industry on its feet.”

This was the predictable statement of an administrator of capitalism. It was part of Baldwin’s political strategy not to appear to be the ally of the mine-owners. Instead, he posed as the defender of what was termed as “the British Constitution” against what were considered to be the sectional interests, in the form of the TUC and the miners.

In the Conservative cabinet Lord Birkenhead also represented himself as a pseudo-conciliatory figure. Meanwhile, Churchill, Austen Chamberlain, Joyson-Hicks and Neville Chamberlain were all opposed intransigently to both the TUC and the miners. Steel-Maitland, the Minister of Labour, was himself a mine owner. Members of the Cabinet such as Churchill favoured parades of troops, tanks and armoured cars in the streets against the strikers. Churchill had vigorously opposed subsidies and belligerently claimed that the strikers were Communists under the influence of what he termed as "Red subversion".

The Liberal Party had shown that it was equally determined to protect the interests of Capitalism. Asquith and the Liberal Shadow Cabinet condemned the strike in a straightforward fashion while Lloyd George was trying to gain some political advantage from the affair by declaring that, although the strike was a mistake, the Conservative government was also culpable to some degree.

A similar position of opposition to the strike was adopted by the Labour Party. MacDonald, Snowden, Thomas, Clynes and Henderson in common with the Conservative, Baldwin, all believed in the sanctity of the "British Constitution”, so a rift developed between the TUC and the Parliamentary Labour Party. The "Left”, in the form of Maxton, Lansbury, Wheatley and Cook were under the familiar misconception that capitalism was on the verge of collapse and believed that the General Strike could be turned into some type of revolution.

At that time, the Russian Revolution was still fresh in many people’s memories. The "Communist” Party believed that a workers’ revolution was about to spread across the industrialized countries. However, its support amongst the working class was quite insignificant: its membership amounted to less than five thousand. Two years before the General Strike the CP was making statements such as members of the armed forces should be helping the workers to smash capitalism. The theory of Capitalism being on the verge of collapse was held by the CP and, though it was prepared to use parliamentary methods as a propaganda platform, it also advocated violence and insurrection. It had been barred from affiliation with the Labour Party and so concentrated its efforts on attempting to win support in the trade unions, believing that the formation of factory committees would lead to them being "indispensable weapons in the struggle to force the capitalists to relinquish their grip on industry”. Such an attitude towards the General Strike and towards the idea of revolution was not only adventurist but, what is more important, blatantly anti-democratic.

Tactics
When the General Strike broke out on May 3rd the striking miners were joined by the railwaymen and workers in transport, printing, heavy industry, building and the gas and electricity industries.

The government monopolized the means of propaganda. It was able to put forward its own case in the British Gazette, its own newspaper, the editor of which was the reactionary Churchill. He denounced the British workingmen as "the enemy” and in the columns of the newspaper he demanded that they surrender. The BBC, although theoretically independent and not yet a public corporation, was very much in the government’s pocket and suppressed news which might bring embarrassment upon the government. The TUC published the British Worker which was ineffective since it was forbidden to give out ordinary news or propaganda.

Many myths have been told about the General Strike. Various syndicalist groups and the CP have claimed that the General Strike produced a "revolutionary situation”. Such an interpretation of the events is completely mistaken. There was no opportunity for revolution and certainly no possibility for a Socialist revolution. The strike was one of sympathy and had no revolutionary undertones. The reverse was the case. The General Council of the TUC strove to bring a conclusion to the miners’ strike. It had no desire for a confrontation with the government or the mine-owners. However, the Miners’ Federation was determined to make a stand against the proposed wage reductions and longer hours. Arthur Cook and Herbert Smith were opposed to the Samuel Commission. The mine-owners were equally intransigent, while Baldwin’s cabinet was steering clear of negotiations until concessions had been made by the miners.

The TUC General Council’s decision to call the General Strike was, from the point of view of the “respectable” trade union leaders, a shrewd tactical manoeuvre. By calling a strike of these dimensions the General Council could apply greater pressure on the Government to participate in negotiations to resolve the miners’ dispute. When the attempts broke down, the TUC General Council called off the strike and therefore isolated the miners, who continued their strike in conditions of semi-starvation until November 1926.

The Wrong Road
The idea of revolution had no support amongst the members of the TUC General Council, who were eager to solve the dispute and reconcile the two sides of the coal industry. Large sections of the British working class were undoubtedly sympathetic towards the miners. However, they were not revolutionary and were certainly not class-conscious. The vast majority of the miners themselves were not revolutionary. In spite of all the absurd statements made by the Left and by the Right, the General Strike was not political but was purely economic. A. J. P. Taylor correctly sums up the non-revolutionary attitude of the workers: "They were loyal to their unions and to their leaders, as they had been loyal during the war to their country and to their generals”.

Another historian, David Thomson, in England in the Twentieth Century remarks about the events of 1926: "The Sorelian myth of the ‘General Strike’, of ‘direct action’ on a scale great enough to coerce governments and paralyse nations, was not one accepted by the mass of British opinion, nor even by the organized workers themselves”. “What died in 1926, though nobody noticed, was the myth of syndicalist revolution as the road to better times”.

The failure of the General Strike is underlined by the fact that when the miners were driven to return to work in November 1926, they were compelled to accept the coal-owners’ demands: wage reductions, longer working hours and district agreements. Under the subsequent Trades Disputes Act of 1927 sympathetic strikes such as the General Strike were made illegal and, of course the Government had the support of the armed forces to back this up as well as the tacit agreement or apathy of the majority of the population.

The attitude of the Socialist Party of Great Britain towards general strikes and towards strikes overall is that they can only be used as a means of limited economic struggle. As long as capitalism exists, the strike will be a useful weapon for the working class: most effectively when trade booms occur, industry is expanding and there is a greater demand for workers. Under conditions of depression such as prevailed in 1926 and exist today in 1976, the strike will lose most of its effectiveness. The results of the General Strike and of many of the strikes occurring now, prove this.

If the workers are to abolish the conditions which they experience and which make strikes both necessary and inevitable, they must turn their attention to political action for the democratic act of establishing Socialism.
V. Lutra

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