General Strike of 1926

Having made a symbolic gesture of support to the miners, the TUC sought to bring the strike to a quick conclusion, both fearful that the strike might get out of control and worried at the rapidly declining financial reserves of the unions. Accepting the Samuel Memorandum, a version of the Samuel/Coal Commission recommendations that neither the coal mine owners nor the coal miners accepted, the TUC effectively surrendered unconditionally at about 12.10 pm on May 12. As a result, the TUC lost much credibility, trade union membership fell, and the government introduced the Trade Union and Trade Dispute Act (1927), which made sympathetic strike action illegal.

Naturally, historians have been divided upon the impact of the General Strike upon the British trade union movement. On the one hand some historians, such Patrick Renshaw and Alan Bullock, have argued that the General Strike marked a changing-point in the evolution of British industrial relations while others, such as Gordon Phillips, Hugh Clegg, and Keith Laybourn, have maintained that very little was changed in the pattern of industrial relations, which continued much as it had done before despite the temporary decline of trade union membership, which in any case might have been affected by the worsening economic depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s, and was reversed from the mid 1930s.

Whatever the outcome of this debate the fact is that the General Strike was a unique period in British history—the only occasion on which trade unionism as a body supported a group of workers by strike action for more than one day. In the end, however, the event has probably indicated more about what was unchanging, rather than changing, in British society. Industrial relations continued much as they had done before, trade unions recovered quickly from their defeat, employers were reminded of the economic dangers of a protracted dispute, and Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government did not introduce the draconian measures against the trade unions that some of its supporters had asked for. Indeed, the three-way division of economic power in the British economy that had emerged between trade unions, employers, and government during the years of World War I continued.

See also Trade Union Movement in Britain