Post‑WWI labour unrest and union growth

Hello and welcome to another bonus episode. It’s the centenary of the General Strike of May 1926, the most important industrial dispute in British history, but what really happened and did it really change Britain?

One strange thing about the General Strike is that it happened when industrial relations, which had reached their fiery nadir before and after the First World War, seemed to be cooling down. But tensions between coal miners and mine owners got so bad that the Trades Union Congress had no choice but to join the fight, even though its leaders did not expect to win. It was a showdown that very few people wanted.

The strike began at one minute to midnight on 3 May. The following nine days were intense, exciting and unprecedented. Future Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell and future fascist Oswald Mosley backed the workers, Evelyn Waugh and the Mitford sisters joined the army of volunteers trying to keep Britain moving, and Virginia Woolf just complained. In some places, the strike became a proxy war between communists and fascists. Meanwhile, the BBC faced the first existential crisis of its short life, struggling to maintain impartiality while under the threat of a government takeover.

The cast of characters is a kind of Origin Story all-stars, including prime minister Stanley Baldwin, chancellor and propagandist Winston Churchill, Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald, trade union heavyweight Ernest Bevin, BBC chief John Reith and Liberal peace-maker Herbert Samuel.

The strike ended on 12 May because the TUC surrendered, to the dismay of many workers. At the time, it seemed like an unmitigated defeat for the unions, a humiliation for the Labour Party and a vindication for Baldwin’s Tories. But the long-term consequences were unpredictable and the strike’s legacy is still up for debate.

How did the General Strike become inevitable when almost everybody was desperate to avoid it? What were those nine days like for people on both sides of the barricades? How did the BBC survive? Could the unions have won with different leaders or was it an impossible battle from the start? Why did a Tory victory lead so quickly to a Labour government and a stronger TUC? And why was Churchill such a dick about it?

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Reading list

• Stanley Baldwin – Prime Minister’s Statement, Hansard (3 May 1926)

• David Brandon – The General Strike 1926: A New History (2023)

• A. J. Cook – The Nine Days: The Story of the General Strike Told by the Miners’ Secretary (1927)

• David Hendy – The BBC: A People’s History (2022)

• Roy Jenkins – Churchill (2001)

• Keith Laybourn – The General Strike of 1926 (1993)

• Martin Pugh – ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars (2005)

• Martin Pugh – Speak for Britain! A New History of the Labour Party (2010)

• Julian Symons – The General Strike (1957)

• David Torrance – The Edge of Revolution: The General Strike That Shook Britain (2026)

Written and presented by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. Producer: Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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