With the dawning of Sunday 9 May 1926, the capitalist papers – the few that went to print, anyway – tell a false story of nervous strikers who want to go back to work, improving transport services, and violent strikers being arrested the evening prior.
Baldwin insisted, on the front of the Daily Mail, that the strike must be called off before he would negotiate with the miners. The Home Secretary appealed for 30,000 people to become special constables and join the police force by Monday morning. The aim was to use heavily armed police to force a path through the pickets for scabs to get into workplaces. As the Home Secretary Joynson-Hicks stated: “in a free country, men have a right to work if they wish to do so.”
The TUC reports from up and down the UK paint a vastly different, far more truthful, and optimistic picture. No trains, no buses, shops and shipyards closed down and quiet, with minimal unrest across towns and cities. No disruption save from the violence of the police baton charges against the picketers. The TUC official bulletins for the day are consistent: “Members solid… Enthusiasm splendid… The position is very good indeed.”
In Kilmarnock, Scotland, non-unionised bus drivers demanded to join the strike in solidarity with the unionised workers, bringing yet more public transport to a standstill without the necessary travel permits. Where lies had been spread by Lord Banbury about mistreatment of the Great Western Railway’s horses due to the strike, they were firmly refuted by the workers who had in fact been caring for the horses as usual.
At High Mass in Westminster Cathedral, Cardinal Bourne declared the General Strike “a sin against the duty which [the workers] owe to constituted authority and to God” and urged Catholic strikers to return to work. This, rather than weakening the movement, angered the workers even more.
Some pickets even took to their lines to keep the Sabbath Day Holy! In Camberwell, 400 strikers who had served during WW1, marched to church wearing their service medals. They wanted to answer the government and the church’s rhetoric that the strikers were anti-British and unpatriotic. These service-members were joined by others in similar demonstrations across the country.
Determination remained high among the workers as the sixth day of the strike drew to a close. The same could not be said for their weakening leadership. Jimmy Thomas, the railway workers’ leader, continued his meetings with Sir Herbert Samuel – the government representative – to find a compromise. Thomas’ efforts to end the strike and appease the ruling classes were relentless. He never wanted the strike in the first place. He was doing everything he could to sabotage its success.
When Arthur Cook, the miners’ leader, rejected Samuel and Thomas’s proposals, the real position became clear. The TUC was now actively working with the government to call off the strike, but the miners were refusing to accept the attacks on their livelihoods this would entail.
Find more articles in our series ‘The 1926 General Strike as it happened’.
