C. L. R. James
“The conclusion which I reach in my study is that Britain is
approaching, at full speed, an era of great revolutionary upheavals... Britain
is moving towards revolution because the epoch of capitalist decline has set
in. And if culprits are to be sought, then in answer to the question who and
what are propelling Britain along the road to revolution, we must say: not
Moscow, but New York.”
Leon Trotsky
“The only class I am afraid of is our own”
J.R. Clynes, Labour Party Politician
"What I dreaded about the strike, more than anything
else, was this; if by any 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 ... That danger, that fear, was always in our minds, because we
wanted, at least, even in this struggle, to direct a disciplined army."
J.H. Thomas, Trade Union Leader
It is hard not to agree with the points made by the
Socialist Equality Party in its comments on the 1926 General Strike anniversary:
“There are few more bitterly contested and less clearly understood historical
experiences than the general strike of 1926, despite it being a decisive moment
in the history of the British and international working class. What will distinguish the SEP’s meetings from
the slew of commemorative articles and books on 1926 is an examination of the
general strike primarily from the standpoint of the disastrous line pursued by
the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) under the direction of the
Communist International (Comintern), led by Joseph Stalin and his allies.”[1]
The Future in our Past: The General Strike, 1926/2026 is one
of many slews published in the last few months. Described as a fresh,
accessible history of the 1926 General Strike on its centenary – telling a
story of working-class community then and now, “it is one of the better books
on the subject. It tells the story of the 1926 General Strike on its centenary.
It is a compelling on-the-ground account of how workers brought the country to
a standstill for nine extraordinary days.
Callum Cant and Matthew Lee take us on a journey through a
Britain living on its nerves, from the London docklands to the South Wales
coalfields and the railways and warehouses of middle England. Winston Churchill,
then Chancellor, feared that labour militancy presaged a Bolshevik-style
revolution. The question of power hung in the air as rank-and-file militants
pursued a chaotic, improvised and wildly uneven confrontation with the British
ruling class. This is social history at its most immediate and relevant.
Both Cant and Lee write for the Notes from Below website. It
is a working‑class repository of workplace testimony, petitions and
grassroots labour reporting. It performs an important practical function:
documenting the lived experience of workers, exposing employer abuses, and
creating links between isolated shop‑floor struggles. For that reason
alone, such initiatives deserve defence and engagement by socialists. But a
class‑struggle
analysis requires us to go beyond sympathetic description to evaluate the
political and strategic implications of the material and the direction this
sort of project advances.[2]
The reappearance of rank‑and‑file initiatives and worker blogs
is a product of the deepening crisis of capitalism. As employers accelerate
restructuring, automation and outsourcing, and as union bureaucracies
increasingly organise class collaboration with management and the state,
workers are forced to build their own communication platforms. This social
reality accords with the need for independent rank-and-file initiatives and
organisations.
Notes From Below primarily offers empirical materials:
testimonies, minutes, and petitions. This is indispensable for breaking
information blackouts and building solidarity. But empirical documentation by
itself is not a political program. Lenin long argued that trade‑unionist
economism — which
confines politics to immediate economic demands and local grievances — will not by itself develop
the conscious leadership required to overthrow capitalist rule; political
consciousness must be consciously brought to the working class by a
revolutionary organisation. Worker‑produced media can and should
serve as a training ground for political education. Still, without explicit
political independence and a program that links struggles to the need to
overthrow capital, such projects can be outflanked by reformism and the trade‑union
apparatus.[3]
So what are the lessons of the General Strike for today's
struggles? Begun on May 3 and officially lasting nine days, it was the first
and remains the only general strike ever to have taken place in the UK.
The action was launched in response to a massive attack on
the wages of Britain’s 1.2 million coal miners, amid a period of widespread
labour unrest. Overseeing the strike, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) was
terrified by its revolutionary potential and worked to bring it to an end,
succeeding on May 12 and enforcing a crushing defeat.
But material conditions alone do not determine outcomes.
Political leadership and organisation do. As Chris Marsden explains in his
lecture, the decisive factor in the defeat was not only the state’s
preparation—organisations for strikebreaking, emergency powers and armed
forces—but also the political line imposed by the Comintern under Stalin,
Bukharin and Zinoviev. That line subordinated the Communist Party of Great
Britain to an alliance with the Trades Union Congress via the Anglo‑Russian
Committee, treating the TUC General Council and its “left” representatives as
safe conduits for “revolutionary” influence rather than exposing and combating
them. The result was a catastrophic political misorientation: the CPGB was
transformed into a left‑ginger group for the bureaucracy
at the very moment when the class struggle required independent revolutionary
leadership.[4]
The general strike of May 1926 was not merely a historical
rupture confined to its nine official days; it was a concentrated expression of
the objective crisis of British capitalism and the political maturity (and
immaturity) of the working class at that historical juncture. The reader should note that a Marxist
materialist analysis locates its significance in the interaction of social
forces—the objective erosion of British imperialist power, the consequences of
the First World War and the Russian Revolution, and the class relations that
produced both immense industrial potential and profound political weakness.
The general strike objectively posed “which class shall
rule?” The working class in 1926 had the industrial capacity to disrupt
capitalist reproduction yet lacked a party capable of transforming industrial
militancy into political power. As Marsden’s 1926 strike lecture emphasises,
the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and the Comintern-influenced Communist Party
acted to contain and demobilise revolutionary potential. The result was a
strategic defeat whose lessons include the catastrophic consequences when the
labour bureaucracy or opportunist “lefts” substitute themselves for proletarian
political independence.
A century later, objective conditions again make a general
strike a live political possibility. Global capitalism is convulsed by
stagnation, inflation, war and austerity. It is important to see the connection
between the historical weaknesses exposed in 1926 and the present-day
degeneration of unions and reformist parties. The trade union apparatus today
often functions as a corporatist arm of capital, seeking to manage and suppress
rather than lead independent working-class offensives.
The social weight of the working class, its international
integration, and the development of rank-and-file initiatives create objective
conditions far more favourable to revolutionary politics than those that existed
in 1926.
1926 is not an exhausted archive; it is a living repository
of lessons for 2026. Capital’s crisis, the bankruptcy of union bureaucracies
and the emergence of rank-and-file militancy mean the objective possibility of
a general strike—and with it, the political question of power—again stands on
the agenda. The working class must learn from the past not to repeat its
errors: organise democratically in the workplaces, coordinate internationally,
and build the independent revolutionary leadership necessary to turn strikes
into a socialist strategy. The future is written in the material contradictions
of the present; the past supplies the lessons to read it.
Notes
The General Strike at the National Archives- www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/explore-the-collection/stories/the-general-strike/
[1]
Socialist Equality Party (UK) announces public meeting series on 1926 general
strike-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/04/09/fhfg-a09.html
[2]
https://notesfrombelow.org/
[3]
See (Lenin, What Is To Be Done?).
[4].
The new pamphlet by Mehring Books (UK), “Trotsky, Stalin and the 1926 British
General Strike: Lessons For Today”.
