End of an era for coal mines as workers end Britain’s biggest strike
It took 28 long weeks but the British miners’ strike came to an end – almost a century ago.
The largest industrial dispute in Britain’s history, the general strike began at one minute to midnight on May 3, 1926.
It was called by the Trade Union Congress ( TUC) after two days of a million coal workers being locked out of their mines after a dispute with owners, who wanted them to work longer hours for less money.
In solidarity, huge numbers from other industries stayed off work including bus, rail and dock workers, as well as people with printing, gas, electricity, building, iron, steel and chemical jobs.
The aim was to force the government to act to prevent mine owners reducing miners’ wages by 13% and increasing their shifts from seven to eight hours.
As a general strike, it lasted only 10 days, from May 3 to May 12. But the miners held out for six months and were finally starved into returning as winter began, albeit at lower wages and with longer hours.
On the first full day of action, on May 4, there were estimated to be between 1.5 and 1.75 million people out on strike. The transport network was crippled without its bus and train drivers, and roads became choked with cars. The printing presses ground to a virtual halt and food deliveries were held up.
However, the armed forces were quickly moved to escort and protect food lorries, while volunteers got some buses back on the roads and trains on the rails. Fights broke out between police and strikers in cities across the UK, from London to Glasgow.
Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin appealed to the nation to trust him, in the first of a series of personal radio broadcasts to the nation during the strike.
At the same time, the Conservative government was trying to exert greater control over the media, including the fledgling BBC, to get its message out. It even briefly produced its own newspaper, the British Gazette, edited by the then-Chancellor Winston Churchill. The Catholic Church also spoke out, declaring the strike “a sin”.
Meanwhile, desperate to get the country back on its feet, a growing number of Britons were becoming volunteers. Nine days after the strike began, the TUC – which had been holding secret talks with the mine owners – called off the action without a single concession made to the miners’ case.
The strikers were taken by surprise, but slowly drifted back to work.
The miners, however, struggled on alone. In fact, it was six months before most miners were back down the mines, and they were actually working longer hours for less pay than before the strike began. Others remained unemployed for many years.
The effect on British coal mines was profound. By the late-1930s, employment in mining had fallen by more than a third from its pre-strike peak of 1.2 million miners but productivity had rebounded from less than 200 tons produced per miner, to more than 300 tons by the outbreak of the Second World War.
A year later Stanley, Baldwin’s government passed the 1927 Trades Disputes Act, which banned sympathy strikes and mass picketing.
The act was repealed in 1946, but in the 1980s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher reintroduced the ban, which still applies today.