Notts NUM Area History Part 4
1926 Strike
Mine owners wanted to normalise profits even during times of economic instability — which often took the form of wage reductions for miners in their employ. Coupled with the prospect of longer working hours, the industry was thrown into disarray.
Mine owners therefore announced that their intention was to reduce miners’ wages, the MFGB rejected the terms: “Not a penny off the pay, not a second on the day.” and the TUC responded to this news by promising to support the miners in their dispute. The Conservative government under Stanley Baldwin decided to intervene, declaring that they would provide a nine-month subsidy to maintain the miners’ wages and that a Royal Commission under the chairmanship of Sir Herbert Samuel would look into the problems of the mining industry.
This decision became known as “Red Friday” because it was seen as a victory for working-class solidarity and Socialism. In practice, the subsidy gave the mine owners and the government time to prepare for a major labour dispute. Herbert Smith (a leader of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain) said of this event: “We have no need to glorify about victory. It is only an armistice.”
The Samuel Commission published its report on March 10th 1926: [3] it recommended that in the future, national agreements, the nationalisation of royalties and sweeping reorganisation and improvement should be considered for the mining industry. The report also recommended that the government subsidy should be withdrawn and that the miners’ wages should be reduced by 13.5% to save the industry’s profitability.[4] Two weeks later, the Prime Minister announced that the government would accept the Report provided other parties also did.[5] A previous Royal Commission, the Sankey Commission, had recommended nationalisation a few years earlier to deal with the problems of productivity and profitability in the industry, but Lloyd George, then Prime Minister, had rejected its report.
After the Samuel Commission’s report, the mine owners published new terms of employment for all miners. These included an extension of the seven-hour working day, district wage agreements, and a reduction in wages. Depending on a number of factors, the wages would be cut by between 10% and 25%. The mine owners declared that if the miners did not accept the new terms then from the first day of May they would be locked out of the pits. The Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) refused the wage reduction and regional negotiation.
Final negotiations began on 1st May, where an agreement was almost reached. However one million miners were locked out, impossible to get them back to work without firm assurances concerning their wages. A deal could not be brokered despite last minute attempts and the TUC subsequently announced that a general strike “in defence of miners’ wages and hours” was to begin on 3rd May.[6]
The leaders of the Labour Party were terrified by the revolutionary elements within the union movement and were unhappy about the proposed General Strike. During the next two days frantic efforts were made to reach an agreement with the Government and the mine owners. However, these efforts failed, due mainly to an eleventh-hour decision by printers of the Daily Mail to refuse to print an editorial condemning the General Strike entitled “For King and Country”. They objected to the following passage: “A general strike is not an industrial dispute. It is a revolutionary move which can only succeed by destroying the government and subverting the rights and liberties of the people”. When Baldwin heard of this, he called off the negotiations with the TUC by saying that this refusal was interfering with the liberty of the press.
King George V took exception to suggestions that the strikers were ‘revolutionaries’ saying, “Try living on their wages before you judge them.”[7]
The TUC feared that an all-out general strike would bring revolutionary elements to the fore. They decided to bring out workers only in the key industries, such as railwaymen, transport workers, printers, dockers and ironworkers and steelworkers.
The Government had prepared for the strike over the nine months in which it had provided a subsidy, creating organizations such as the Organization for the maintenance of supplies, and did whatever it could to keep the country moving. It rallied support by emphasizing the revolutionary nature of the strikers. The armed forces and volunteer workers helped maintain basic services. The government’s Emergency Powers Act – an act to maintain essential supplies – had been passed in 1920.
On 4 May 1926, the number of strikers was about 1.5 – 1.75 million. There were strikers “from John o’ Groats to Land’s End”. Workers’ reaction to the strike call was immediate and overwhelming, and surprised both the Government and the TUC; the latter not being in control of the strike. On this first day, there were no major initiatives and no dramatic events, except for the nation’s transport being at a standstill.
On 5 May 1926, both sides gave their views. Churchill (at that time Chancellor of the Exchequer) commented as editor of the government newspaper British Gazette: “I do not agree that the TUC have as much right as the Government to publish their side of the case and to exhort their followers to continue action. It is a very much more difficult task to feed the nation than it is to wreck it”. In the British Worker, the TUC’s newspaper: “We are not making war on the people. We are anxious that the ordinary members of the public shall not be penalized for the unpatriotic conduct of the mine owners and the government”. In the meantime, the government put in place a “militia” of special constables, called the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies (OMS). They were volunteers to maintain order in the street. A special constable said: “It was not difficult to understand the strikers’ attitude toward us. After a few days I found my sympathy with them rather than with the employers. For one thing, I had never realized the appalling poverty which existed. If I had been aware of all the facts, I should not have joined up as a special constable”[citation needed]. It was decided that Fascists would not be allowed to enlist in the OMS without first giving up their political beliefs as the government feared a right-wing backlash so the fascists formed Q Division under Rotha Lintorn-Orman to combat the strikers.
On 6 May 1926, there was a change of atmosphere. Baldwin said: “The General Strike is a challenge to the parliament and is the road to anarchy”. The government newspaper British Gazette suggested that means of transport began to improve with volunteers and blackleg workers, stating on the front page that there were ‘200 buses on the streets’. [8] These were however figures of propaganda as there were in fact only 86 buses running.[9]
On 7 May 1926, the TUC met with Sir Herbert Samuel and worked out a set of proposals designed to end the dispute. The Miners’ Federation rejected the proposals. The British Worker was increasingly difficult to operate because Churchill had requisitioned the bulk of the supply of the paper’s newsprint so reduced its size from eight pages to four. [10] In the meantime, the government took action to protect the men who decided to return to work.
On 8 May 1926, there was a dramatic moment on the London Docks. Lorries were protected by the army. They broke the picket line and transported food to Hyde Park. This episode showed that the government was in greater control of the situation. In a change of policy, the Army was chosen to move the lorries instead of the OMS. [citation needed] The volunteers who comprised the OMS were seen as reactionaries by the strikers and were often met with violence. Revisionist historians have claimed that use of the OMS in transport would have caused a revolution. [Citation needed]
On 10 May 1926, the Flying Scotsman was derailed by strikers near Newcastle.
On 11 May 1926, the British Worker, alarmed at the fears of the General Council of the TUC that there was to be a mass drift back to work, claimed: “The number of strikers has not diminished; it is increasing. There are more workers out today than there have been at any moment since the strike began.”
Also on this day, two unions took the TUC to court to prevent them being called out on strike. The unions won their case against the TUC, and Justice Astbury, the judge, concluded that the General Strike was illegal. This made the TUC and unions liable to huge fines from employers as they were now not covered by the Trade Disputes Act, which basically said that the unions were not liable to loss of work. This also meant that Government had the ability to confiscate all union funds. This became known as the Astbury Judgment, and many people believe that this was the main reason for the TUC calling the strike off.
On 12 May 1926, the TUC General Council visited 10 Downing Street to announce their decision to call off the strike, provided that the proposals worked out by the Samuel Commission were adhered to and that the Government offered a guarantee that there would be no victimization of strikers. The Government stated that it had “no power to compel employers to take back every man who had been on strike.” Thus the TUC agreed to end the dispute without such an agreement.
Aftermath of the conflict
For several months the miners continued to maintain resistance, but by October 1926 hardship forced many men back, especially those with young families. By the end of November most miners were back at work. However, many remained unemployed for many years. Those that were employed were forced to accept longer hours, lower wages, and district wage agreements. The strikers felt as though they had achieved nothing.
In 1927, the British Government passed the Trade Disputes and Trade Union Act. This act made all sympathetic strikes illegal, and ensured that trade union members had to voluntarily “contract in” to pay the political levy. It also forbade civil service unions from affiliating with the TUC, and made mass picketing illegal.
The effect on the British coal-mining industry was profound. By the late 1930s, employment in mining had fallen by more than one-third from its pre-strike peak of 1.2 million miners, but productivity had rebounded from under 200 tons produced per miner to over 300 tons by the outbreak of the Second World War.
DAY 8: Tuesday 11 May
The general atmosphere was filled with rumours of imminent peace. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) called a special meeting, but also called out on strike engineering and shipbuilding workers. It refused a request from print unions to allow some papers to be printed.
A court action was brought by the National Sailors’ Union and the Firemen’s Union, used to restrain officials from calling members of these unions out on strike. This led to a judgement by the High Court Judge, Justice Astbury, that the General Strike was illegal. The judgement also stated that the 1906 Trade Disputes Act did not protect those involved in a strike.
AJ Cook
A.J. Cook (1883-1931) worked first on a farm in Somerset and then moved to the South Wales coalfield. On his first day in the pit, the man next to him was killed and the 16 year old had to carry the body to the surface and then back to his family. He was a Baptist preacher, but transferred his skill at public speaking to the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and socialism.
Between 1906-1918, he held various elected positions in the Rhondda No 1 District Lodge of the South Wales Miners’ Federation and was active in the Unofficial reform Committee of 1910-11. He attended the Central Labour College, but was unable to complete the course due to financial difficulties. He was an active anti-war propagandist and was imprisoned for sedition. He was a member of the Communist Party 1920-21 and played a leading role in the Miners’ Minority Movement. He was General Secretary of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain from 1924 until his death.
He was a very prominent speaker in the Nottinghamshire coalfield before, during, and after the 1926 strike, many thousands would turn out to hear him speak, he sometimes spoke two or three times in different corners of a recreational field, so that as many people as possible got the chance to hear his message.
In 1921 and spending another brief period in prison in the same year for incitement and unlawful assembly. In 1924 the Miners’ Minority Movement was able to force Frank Hodges to resign his union office, and thus an election was held to determine the next leader of the movement. The South Wales Miners’ Federation nominated AJ Cook to replace him, and he beat a Yorkshire miner for the post by 217,664 votes to 202,297. Cook was then 39 years old. On learning of his election, Trade Unionist Committee general secretary Fred Bramley exploded in outrage against Cook’s election, claiming him to be a “raving Communist”. Regardless, he was General Secretary of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain from 1924 until 1931, a period that included the 1926 General Strike, about which he wrote the pamphlet “The Nine Days”. He was also elected as secretary of the International Miners’ Federation.
Although a member of the Independent Labour Party, Cook worked closely with the Communist Party after its formation in 1920 and the National Minority Movement from 1924 to 1929. Arthur Horner, a leading South Wales Communist and mining militant described Cook’s tenure as General Secretary as “a time for new ideas — an agitator, a man with a sense of adventure”.
He died of cancer in 1931, aged 47.
Notable Quotes
“Not a penny off the pay, not a second on the day”.
“I believe in strikes. They are the only weapon.”
“Say what you will about the tenets of socialism, at least it is an ethos.”
PHOTO Nottinghamshire NUM Area History-004 PHOTO