The task of the Minority Movement was declared to be “not to organise independent revolutionary trade unions or to split revolutionary elements away from existing organisations affiliated to the TUC…but to convert the revolutionary minority within each industry into a revolutionary majority.” This rank and file body had taken off in 1924 under the leadership of the young Communist Party (CP). The key to this swing left was the work of the National Minority Movement. After the crippling conditions imposed in 1921, a boom in mining in 1923, following the French occupation of the Ruhr, meant an increase in wages and a fall in unemployment.Ī new militancy saw a shift left in the unions. There followed a certain respite for the miners. This betrayal was to be repeated on a far grander scale in 1926. Amongst the miners themselves, anger with the government was matched by anger at the betrayal of Jimmy Thomas, the leader of the railway workers union. Not for the last time, the defeat of the miners had a big impact on other workers. Wages were scythed down by 10-40 % almost everywhere.
After a courageous struggle lasting three months they were defeated. Strike notices were withdrawn and April 15 is remembered as Black Friday.
This was decisively rejected by his own executive, but was seized upon by the other union leaders as an excuse to bow out. On the eve, however, The Miners’ Federation (The Fed) secretary Frank Hodges announced that a compromise was possible on the basis of local bargaining. The Triple Alliance pledged to join the miners fight on April 15. Troops were dispatched to the coalfields. The movement in 1921 was like the prologue of the events to follow just five years later. The Miners Federation rejected their attack and the miners were locked out on March 31. The coal owners immediately announced drastic wage cuts. Months later in 1921 the confrontation was to come to a head when the government announced that it was relinquishing control of the mines. In the summer of 1920 the Labour and TUC leaders for the first time threatened a general strike in the event of any renewed intervention by Britain against the young workers state in Russia. At the height of the upsurge in class struggle in 1919 only the deception of the government and the vacillation of the leaders of these unions prevented an all out confrontation. During the first world war the miners, railway workers and dockers had formed the Triple Alliance of nearly a million and a half workers. The 1926 General Strike did not fall from a clear blue sky. In such a moment, with such power, surely it ought to have been possible to have transformed society? How can such a position have ended in defeat? For 9 days, from May 3, not a wheel turned nor a light shone without the permission of the working class. In the greatest display of militant power in its history the British working class moved into action in the General Strike of 1926. ILP activist quoted in John Paton’s ‘Left Turn’ħ5 years ago an earthquake shook the very foundations of British capitalism. If the blighters o’ leaders here… dinna let us down we’ll hae the capitalists crawlin’ on their bellies in a week. Jimmy Thomas, Labour MP and Secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen “I have never disguised that in a challenge to the constitution, God help us unless the government won.” Winston Churchill, Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer “It is a conflict which, if it is fought out to a conclusion can only end in the overthrow of parliamentary government or its decisive victory.”
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