Busman’s stomach and the embodiment of modernity

Rhodri Hayward

doi:10.1080/13619462.2016.1226806

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between the gastric illness, ‘busman’s stomach’ and the Coronation bus strike of May 1937 in which 27,000 London busworkers walked out for better working conditions and a seven-and-half-hour day. It explores the way in which new patterns of somatisation, gastroenterological techniques, psychological theories and competing understandings of time worked together to create new political institutions and new forms of political action in inter-war Britain.

Highlights

Golfer’s stomach, bus driver’s stomach! What poor things we are! James Lansdale Hodson, Home Front (London: Victor Gollancz, 1942), 181. This is an essay about gastritis and the ways that stomach pains, sickness and diarrhoea can help create new political institutions and make possible new kinds of political action
It focuses on the history of ‘busman’s stomach’—a stress-related disorder that rose to prominence during the inter-war years—and its relationship to the Coronation Bus Strike—a fourweek walkout by 27,000 London bus drivers and conductors in May 1937.1 Today, the bus strike is largely remembered for the tensions it revealed between the rank and file workers movement and the executive of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) under its general secretary, Ernest Bevin
A decade later, the TGWU shop steward, Ken Fuller would rehearse the claim that the strike was prolonged through the tacit agreement of Bevin and Lord Ashfield, the chairman of the London Passenger Transport Board in order to exhaust, isolate and undermine the Rank and CONTACT Rhodri Hayward R.Hayward@qmul.ac.uk

Summary

Introduction

This is an essay about gastritis and the ways that stomach pains, sickness and diarrhoea can help create new political institutions and make possible new kinds of political action.

Results

Conclusion