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A Great Betrayal? One Hundred Years On. The lessons of the 1926 strike revisited (Working Class Movement Library)
In May we reviewed an exhibition at the People’s History Museum in Manchester marking the centenary of the General Strike. There are a number of exhibitions on this topic (see generalstrike100.com), including one at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, which is on until December, and focuses more on the strike itself, rather than the years since. It is entitled ‘A Great Betrayal?’, which clearly indicates its main theme.
The display consists of information boards plus some original documents. It is made clear that the government had prepared for a confrontation beforehand, for instance by setting up the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies, and it referred to the strike as an attempted revolution. All army officers were required to participate in strike-breaking. The BBC of course did not present the union side of the dispute. The TUC, which apparently turned down an offer of financial support from Russia, voted for a general strike, but as a defensive action, not as a challenge to the authority of the state (though it is not at all clear what that could have involved).
The information boards are made more personal by including information about individual workers and their treatment. For instance, the miner Bill Muckle spent over two years in prison after helping to derail the Flying Scotsman train, while Jack Forshaw was arrested for distributing a supposedly seditious pamphlet. He was diabetic and died after being mistreated in jail, before being sentenced.
The documents displayed include a booklet on the impact of the strike in Bolton, and also copies of various strike bulletins and of the British Worker and the government propaganda sheet The British Gazette.
An informative exhibition, though naturally rather restricted in its coverage, and also rather optimistic about what might have been achieved.
Paul Bennett
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