1926 General Strike:
The Lessons for
Bolivia, Sudan and Denmark have brought General Strikes back into the news: but let's not forget our own 1926 General Strike. Its lessons are by no means a matter of history, as TONY RICHARDSON explains. 1926 is most identified in the minds of most workers with defeat. For the most politically educated and class conscious workers it is recognised as a sell-out by the TUC of the day, who called off the General Strike.
Both of these points are valid. But there are more lessons trom 1926 which are useful today. Unfortunately few currents in the present-day labour movement are willing to learn from this past experience. The Communist Party in some embarrassment regard it as simply a bygone historic event. The Socialist Workers Party see it as a radically different period, from which in any event they draw wrongheaded conclusions. Many on the left, indeed, hold a position on 1926 which fits in perfectly — if unwittingly - with the position of the right wing. For the right wing, the General Strike is seen (correctly) as a challenge to the power of the capitalist state in Britain. Their response, with a shudder, is "never again"! But many on the left, recognising the General Strike as a challenge to the state, argue that it should not take place without a revolutionary leadership in the trade unions: and since we are still a long way from any such situation, these same left wingers joined the right wing in opposing calls for general strike action to support the miners in 1984-85. It does not seem to have occured to these left wingers that a defeat for the miners was inevitable without generalised supporting action — or that political development can flow from such a high level of mass action in a way impossible in more "normal" times.
So there is generally a lot of opposition in the workers movement to any serious study of the developments in and around the 1926 General Strike and the miners' strike which continued after the General Strike had been called off. This is a
Today.
tragedy, because though we are now in a different period, there are many lessons to be learned both on the tactics and methods of the employers and the state, and on the mistakes of the "left" leaderships within the labour movement.
Differences
Obviously the size of the trade unions today is dramatically different from 1926. There were 4 million trade unionists then around 10-11 million in the TUC today. And industry looks very different. In 1926 there were a million miners - there are less than a quarter of that number today. Today's unions are stronger and more firmly established though often at the price of being more bureaucratised and right wing dominated. These differences are important if we are to understand the scale of the defeat of the miners in 1926 compared to 1985.
Even though this year's defeat of the NUM was a historic defeat, the employers and the Tory government have not established a strong enough Socialist Viewpoint, No. 5, April 1985. Page 27
Miners locked out at the start of the General Strike and (insert) their militant leader A.J. Cook, who failed to press home the fight against the TUC traitors.
position to enforce a setback on the whole working class on anything like the scale of 1926.
Certainly Thatcher's gang have used the miners' defeat to strengthen and enforce their anti-union legislation - as the Tories did with the
Trades Disputes Act of 1927. But in
1926 every single section of the working class was defeated. A year after the strike, 50,000 railwaymen still had not got their jobs back, for example. On the railways, and throughout most of industry, the unions signed agreements as the basis for a return to work which allowed the employers to victimise and blacklist militants. The whole class was physically defeated;
all kinds of militants were imprisoned, and many sacked. Wage cuts took place in all industries. In the aftermath of the 1926 defeat, events such as today's escalating teachers' struggle, and the threat of action by civil servants and others would have been unthinkable. The scale of the defeat is quite different.
Much of this is clearly because of the changed strength of the unions
CP into the Anglo Russian and the relative strength of today's working class: but it also flows from the determination and vigorous campaigning across the country which characterised the 1984-5 miners' strike.
The 1926 strike was shorter - from May to November -economic effect. Though mining industry and its workforce are smaller than 60 years ago, the 1984-5 strike had a huge impact economy. Although the Tories won the strike they did so at the expense of a much bigger economic crisis.
Similarities
The most obvious similarity with 1926 was that the miners then and now have been seen as an example for the whole working class. But in both cases the employers recognised and prepared for this.
The year before Strike, on "Red Friday" 1925, government had been forced to back down to the miners by the threat of a strike by the "Triple Alliance" government had tried to cut miners' pay: after retreating, they were oblig. ed to subsidise the coalowners for a 9-month period — during which they engaged in full-scale preparations to confront the miners. They established the nationwide scabbing operation known as the "Organisation Maintenance of Supplies"; and they fuelled a press witch-hunt and imprisoned leading Communist Party members for "subversion".
The Tory party was also defeated by the miners in 1972 and 1974. Tory stategists and the state machinery spent the next 10 years preparing tor the return match. From came the scheme of the Ridley Report, which looked at a sequence of confrontation with various sections
Stalin, Rykov and Kamenev: the new Moscow bureaucracy which misled the British
Committee.
to crack trade culminating with the miners, cluding revised dustrial
Relations
Labour and had little bringing today's the in scheme, the
Special
Patrol brutal picket-busting tactics during the Grunwick
Labour policies and their attempts increase militancy.
had began the General the strategy mapped out in the Ridley the
Leyland
British through anti-union laws and raising
. The unemployment to post-war levels.
preparations whatever to these attacks. They sat back hoping the battle could be avoided. Only the
NUM leadership warned clearly and consistently of the preparations being foI made by employers and government.
So when it came to a showdown, both
1926 and
1984-5 confrontations.
Lessons of Leadership
Prepared or not, out of a arose employers and the Tories take on the case the whole state machinery was used smash to resistance.
Socialist Viewpoint, No. 5, April 1985. Page 28 is the upon union strength,
Inunion-busting legislation to replace the failed In-
Act, and the development of scab lorry firms. The government in office from
1974-79 made its own contribution, divisive bonus supervised the early stages dorsing of development and first use of the
Groups with their dispute of 1977-78 also boosted praising unemployment through rationalistion
"manage"
to capitalism — and unemployment has helped to undermine solidarity and the pressure on union
The Tories, returned to office after
5 years of Labour betrayal in 1979, systematically implementing
Report, taking on the steelworkers, forcing workers, unprecedented
But as in 1926, the TUC made no combat were one-sided
1926.
Trotsky both situations decision by the the government to working class. In each workers' down action.
To such a challenge, the only adequate response is the fullest power of the working class — whether or not it equipped with a revolutionary leadership. Only a General Strike aimed at taking on the government, challenging the state machine and thus capitalism itself — can beat back attack. But in 1926 the TUC leaders — frightened by the scale of the confrontation they had embarked
- retreated from the General Strike after 10 days, handing victory on a plate to the employers while workers were still joining the fight. But in 1984-5 the present-day TUC continued that same retreat by not even calling any form of national action. In each case the TUC must carry responsibility for a major betrayal of the working class.
But just as there were "lefts" on the General Council which threw in the towel in 1926, so there are the General Council which chickened out of a fight in 1984-5. They were supported by the Communist Party, and by others to the left of the CP who opposed any call for a General Strike on the grounds that the working class was "not ready".
Unfortunately it was on this same "political" problem that the NUM's own leadership was at its weakest.
The Communist Party
In his articles on the General Strike, Trotsky analysed the betrayal by the Communist Party. He traces it back to Stalin's ledeship in Mscow pressurising the British CP into enthe policy of the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee involving the "left" wing of the TUC in an alliance with the Russian trade unions. Having spent so much time and defending the TUC "lefts", the CP was drawn into a sup. port for them during the General Strike, even though they did make some criticism of the TUC. Indeed the CP slogan during the Strike was "All power to the General Council".
Yet the General Council had no right to such power. The General Strike had been called by a conference of trade union Executives. Despite this it was the General Council which called the Strike off without returning to that conference - or consulting the miners who opposed the sell-out. Not only was the CP compromised by the treachery of the Genral Council "lefts" it had applauded in the Anglo Russian Committee, but its political line acquired mass influence through the rank and file "Minority Movement", which also contained the main miners' leaders. The CP helped the TUC betray in argued that after the General Strike had been called off by the General Council, the only way forward for the miners was to struggle for it to be re-opened. But the Communist Party fought for only for cash support to the miners and "blacking"
Trotsky showed how this played into the hands of the General
Troops escort a food convoy through London during the General Strike. Council, and further betrayed the miners.
Just as the only way forward in 1926 was to re-open the General Strike, so the only way for the miners to win in 1984-5 was to force the TUC to call a General Strike. It was obvious from early summer 1984 if not before that cash support and "blacking" action was not enough to win a confrontation with a prepared Thatcher government and the state machine.
Scargill and Cook
A.J. Cook was leader of the miners in 1926 — and a very similar leader to Scargill: He was a left winger with mass support and very militant. Both were determined leaders and should be recognised as fighters for their class. The problem with both men is political. Cook was, and Scargill is, a left wing reformist. Neither man fully understood the political requirements of the situation. While both men criticised the TUC leaders, neither would go the whole way to a break and fight against that leadership to force them into action or expose them before the most conscious sections of workers.
In 1926 the miners - backed by others campaigned for a reconvening of the Conference of Executives atter the General Strike was called off. It took them 3 months to get this agreed. Then the TUC collared the miners' leadership, and said that if the Conference took place the TUC would attack the miners' leaders. Cook and the others agreed to the conference being called off. In this way they gave up the only chance of the General Strike being reimposed. Three months after, the miners' strike collapsed.
In 1984-5, rather than confront the TUC General Council in front of the full September Congress, agreed to a meaningless "joint" resolution, so bland it was supported even by pople like Gavin Laird of the AUEW. Even after it became clear to everyone that the resolution was meaningless, Scargill did not campaign for a recall TUC to activate the only policy that could have broken the Tory stranglehold on the strike — a General Strike.
In this regard it should be added that the Communist Party of 1926 was quite different from that of 1984-5. Socialist Viewpoint, No. 5, April 1985. Page 29
Despite echoing Stalin's Moscow's line and misleading many of the best militants, the CP was campaigning on class struggle lines, advocating such militant demands as councils of action and workers' defence squads -and even demanding the continuation of the strike.
In stark contrast the CP of 1984-5 - after nearly 50 years more Stalinist political development — lacked even this class instinct, and became a major factor in holding back militancy in the NUM,, letting the TUC and union "lefts' off the hook, and fighting for every compromise, including finally the return to work. In their retrospective analysis of the strike today's CP leadership accuse Scargill of pursuing too hard a line — singling out for special criticism his principled refusal to condemn 'violence" by NUM pickets, and his support for mass picketing!
the lessons of 1926 and the lessons of 1984-5 are to be learned in schooling a new leadership for the workers' movement, a firm and principled break with the politics of Stalinism must be a basic starting point.