When the General Strike broke out in May 1926, Scottish workers did not hesitate.
From the shipyards and engineering works of the West to the mining communities of Fife, workers answered the call with discipline, confidence and determination. The capitalist press howled about chaos and disorder, but the real picture was very different. The Strike revealed something far more frightening to the ruling class: that ordinary workers, once organised and set in motion, could begin to run things themselves.
Take Methil. There the Trades and Labour Council did not sit around waiting for London to tell it what to do. On May Day it transformed itself into a Council of Action, with subcommittees for Food and Transport, Information, Propaganda, and Defence Corps. In other words, workers were not just stopping production. They immediately began building the machinery of class struggle for themselves.
A courier system was organised with “three motor cars, 100 motor cycles, and as many ordinary bicycles as were necessary,” carrying information and speakers across Fife. Meetings and demonstrations were held daily. A news bulletin was duplicated and distributed. When police attacked the pickets, workers responded by building up a Workers’ Defence Corps from 150 to 700 strong, organised into companies under ex-Non-Commissioned Officers, until, as reports put it, “there was no further interference by the police with pickets.”
The same spirit appeared elsewhere. In Paisley, the strike committee organised itself by dividing the work between different sections. Delegates were elected to each part of the strike network so that information could flow constantly between the centre and the rank and file, keeping workers “fully conversant with the affairs of the sections.” A local strike sheet was issued every day, with a circulation of “roughly about 2000 per day, and gaining.”
In Dunfermline, a Council of Action was formed even before the Strike, though the very name alarmed the timid officials, who insisted it be changed to something more tame. Even then, workers issued a free daily bulletin of 5,000 copies, and when paper ran out, they simply turned to wall news.
Scottish workers were not passive. They were improvising, organising, and fighting. Everywhere, the Strike gave a glimpse of the colossal creative power of the working class.
And that is exactly why the end came as such a shock.
Because the strike in Scotland was not collapsing. It was not ebbing away. It was not being defeated. On the contrary, reports from 12 May reveal precisely the opposite. In one district there was “No sign of weakening whatever.” In Paisley, even more strikingly, there were “No signs of weakening whatever. In fact, there was more solidarity on the last day than on the first.” Think about that. At the very moment the strike was called off, the movement on the ground was not disintegrating. It was hardening.
And yet the Trades Union Congress (TUC) leaders were already scrambling for surrender.
That is the heart of the betrayal. The workers saw the strike as a fight that had to be carried through till the end. The leaders saw it as a bargaining chip that had escaped their control. The rank-and-file were discovering their own strength; the bureaucrats were recoiling in terror from it. While workers built strike committees, bulletins, picket lines and defence corps, the leaders in London searched desperately for a way to shut the whole thing down before it went too far.
Too far for whom? Too far for the bosses. But above all, too far for the reformist leaders, who feared a real confrontation more than they feared defeat.
That is why 1926 remains such a burning lesson. In Scotland, as across Britain, workers showed extraordinary discipline, solidarity, and initiative. They proved that without them nothing moves. More than that, they showed in outline how workers could begin organising society themselves. But the movement was strangled from above by leaders who feared victory more than surrender.
Find more articles in our series ‘The 1926 General Strike as it happened’.
