The fourth day of the strike saw the trade union leaders continue their attempts to do secret deals with the government to end the strike. But with every passing hour the mood amongst the workers grew in both militancy and enthusiasm.
The York Central Strike Committee reported that the “greatest difficulty is to keep the men at work who should remain there. They all feel that they should be out helping in the struggle”, and that “The spirit of absolute unity is splendid […] We are confident of success”.
Across the Pennines in Crewe, left-wing Labour MP and former Communist Party member Ellen Wilkinson reported an “extraordinary” march, “over a mile long, lined eight deep”, which must have numbered some 30,000 demonstrators in a town of just 45,000. The march ended with a mass rally at the local football ground, where both the terraces and the pitch were completely flooded. Wilkinson summarised the situation: “Strikers hungry for news. Paralysis complete. Public opinion against the government”.
In the face of a quickly developing situation, the state ramped up its efforts to break the strike. Hull authorities attempted to organise scab labour after 25,000 workers walked out of work. The scabs were met with a thousand-strong crowd of strikers at City Hall, who the police charged with batons.
In Glasgow, violent clashes erupted with the police, resulting in 89 arrests. On the south coast, minor scuffles ensued as a group of 50 Cambridge undergraduates were brought in to load and unload ships at Dover. In Bristol, the government sailed the Royal Navy Destroyer HMS Windsor up the Avon into the city docks to secure the Feeder Road power station. This was the same warship used by Britain in the 1918 Baltic Campaign to aid the White Army as they attempted to take Petrograd and drown the Russian Revolution in blood.
Feeder Road was one of the key battlegrounds of the Strike in the West Country. Following the government’s rejection of the unions’ offer for joint control of the power station, all labour was withdrawn. Without stokers to keep the furnaces burning, the power went out at 9pm. Earl Stanhope, the Civil Commissioner, was forced to promptly round up a group of eager strike breakers who were ferried by lorry and taxi to get the power running as best they could by the end of the night.
The government urged its best lawyers to consider legislation to strengthen its power. They drafted a three-clause bill to ban sympathetic strike action and outlaw the General Strike. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) response was pathetic. The leaders appealed for calm in an atmosphere of increasing unrest and battles with the ruling class. The workers were left to lead the struggle themselves.
After a mass meeting on the Market Square in Darwen, Lancashire, the local District Trades and Labour Council implicitly acknowledged the gap between the workers, who were “loyal and enthusiastic”, and the instructions coming from the TUC, which were “not quite clear”. That was putting it mildly, as the next few days of the strike would show.
Find more articles in our series ‘The 1926 General Strike as it happened‘
