Abstract
The British general strike of May, 1926, was a strange event. Over two and a half million men left their work and for nine days closed down the British economy. It was the greatest strike ever to take place in Western Europe and it evoked much class bitterness. And yet many middle- and upper-class Englishmen who had been bitter and angry during the strike came eventually to look back on it as a gay adventure which showed how peaceful and sensible Englishmen were. They were proud that they had fought so great an industrial battle to a conclusion without a single death or even the firing of a single shot. Alfred Duff Cooper (Lord Norwich) who was a young back-bencher at the time of the strike (he later became Secretary of State for War and First Lord of the Admiralty) wrote in 1953 in his autobiography: “… it [the strike] threatened the survival of parliamentary government, and it brought the country nearer to revolution than it has ever been.” But despite this, English good sense triumphed: “Happily, no grave errors of judgment were made by either side and the remarkable result was achieved of complete victory without vindictiveness on the one side or rancour on the other. The air was cleared and from that day to this relations between capital and labour have been happier in Great Britain.”.
Published Version
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