On the morning of 4 May 1926, the first day of the General Strike, the ruling class got more than they had bargained for. The working class response was tremendous, exceeding by far the expectations of the trade union leaders. The industrial heartlands were brought to a complete halt. “Trades Union Congress officials were astonished by the completeness of labour’s response to its call,” wrote the London correspondent of the New York World. “All its calculations were too pessimistic.” They were astonished at the power of the working class, which acted as one. Never before, not even in Chartist times, had such a display of working class solidarity and determination been seen in Britain.
The pitheads were silent as one million miners were locked-out. The railways and public services were at a complete standstill. A few buses operated in London, but only nine tramcars out of 2,000-odd were on the road. There were no passenger trains. Hamilton Fyfe recorded a graphic picture in his diary on the first day of the general strike:
On the railways scarcely a wheel turns… Docks everywhere are empty and silent. The roads, outside of the cities, have little traffic on them. Building has almost entirely stopped, except on housing schemes and hospital extensions. Iron and steel works are closed; so are the heavy chemical factories. There are none of the ordinary newspapers. Nothing like a strike on this scale has been seen before – anywhere.
Even the unorganised workers were drawn into the struggle. It was truly a breath-taking scene of working class power.
“Organised Labour now acts as one unit…” Hamilton Fyfe continued. “That is an immense advance. The odd thing is that this should have come to pass under a General Council which includes no ‘extremists,’ and is composed almost entirely of men and women who are steady-going, moderate, unemotional, the last people in the world whom one would think of as likely to put themselves at the head of a movement of this kind.”[2]
The only trade union that openly scabbed on the strike was the National Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union, led by Havelock Wilson. A number of branches of the union went on strike without the permission of their executive, and Wilson scandalously took them to court and managed to get a High Court injunction restraining them from supporting the strike. But this was of no consequence in the scale of things.
The motley army of scabs mobilised by the OMS, made up mostly of students and middle class professionals, was completely ineffective given the situation. They lacked the necessary skills needed to keep services going. The whole country was in a state of paralysis and the government was suspended in mid-air. The spontaneous initiative and resourcefulness of several million workers was making up for the lack of direction at the top of the trade unions.
From its first day, the working class showed tremendous qualities and improvisation. As in 1920, the Trades Councils sprang into action. Councils of Action based on Trades Councils and local Labour Parties acted as district command headquarters and organised the strike on the ground. These organisations were completely transformed by the struggle. They had suddenly come to life! They displayed energy and initiative to an extent that astonished all who had participated in them:
Councils which had never had any real existence, councils which were considered moribund, as well as normally active councils – all seemed to get a sudden inspiration, developed new forms of organisation and activity drew in numbers of new helpers and for the first time in their history… became the real expression of the local movement.[3]
Nothing could move without the workers’ permission. The Councils organised picketing, communications, permits, and even workers’ defence corps in certain areas. At Methil, in Fife, for instance, in response to police attacks, the Council of Action organised a defence corps, which swelled to 700 volunteers and was organised into companies under the command of former NCOs. The corps was armed with pick shafts, which served to keep the forces of the state at bay. The ordinary functions of the capitalist state were paralysed. These Councils of Action were, in reality, embryos of workers’ power. As the strike turned into a struggle with the government, the working class spontaneously developed its own organs of self-government.
The General Strike was showing in practice which class was the real power in society. Nothing could operate without the permission of the TUC. How things had changed! Rather than the workers taking orders from the bosses, the opposite was now the case: “Employers of labour were coming, cap in hand, begging for permission to do certain things, or, to be more correct, to allow their workers to return to perform certain customary operations…” stated an Ashton sheet-metal worker, a member of his local Permit Committee. “Most of them turned empty away after a most humiliating experience, for one and all were put through a stern questioning, just to make them realise that we and not they were the salt of the earth. I thought of the many occasions when I had been turned empty away from the door of some workshop in a weary struggle to get the means to purchase the essentials of life for self and dependants.”
The ruling class was losing control of society. It was something they never expected. Here was a glimpse of revolution, which terrified them. In certain areas, such as Northumberland and Durham, the Councils of Action were so strong that the government’s representatives were compelled to plead for permits.
“When trade unionists working under permit refused to work with blackleg labour introduced at the docks, the government Commissioner, Sir Kingsley Wood, approached the Joint Strike Committee with a view to establishing some form of dual control. After two meetings between Wood and representatives of the Joint Strike Committee, the latter refused to make any arrangement involving work alongside blacklegs, and all permits were withdrawn”,
stated the Report from the Northumberland and Durham General Council and Joint Strike Committee.
Fortunately for the ruling class, the trade union leaders were even more terrified by these developments. Things were getting out of control. The trade union leaders never considered that it was the business of the working class to run society, but this became increasingly the case. Thomas later told the House of Commons,
What I dreaded about this strike more than anything else was this: if by chance it should have got out of the hands of those who would be able to exercise some control, every sane man knows what would have happened. I thank God it never did… that fear, was always in our minds…[4]