Matthew Goodwin
Do the events of the British General Strike show that Britain was a genuinely conservative society?
Indeed it could be said that the failure of the general strike and resultantly any real change proves that Britain in 1926 was a conservative society, but others would argue that it wasn’t that the British people wanted change, it was just that the government and the elites didn’t.
Before we can begin to answer this question firstly we have to understand the exact meaning of the word conservative. I have found the meaning to be as follows; “Tending toward maintaining traditional and proven views, conditions and intuitions, favouring the preservation of established customs, values etc and opposing innovation”.
Firstly we will take the approach of the coal owners in the events leading up to, and, during the period of the general strike. I think that that it was clear from the start of the whole fiasco that the coal owners were reluctant toward change. This does not come as a surprise, as because of the war the coal owners were making huge profits and therefore benefited greatly from the war, so when people started calling for higher wages when nationalisation ended and better working conditions they are not going to want to pay the workers more money and give them better conditions as it would cost money. If given the choice whether to earn more money and not change anything or lose money and raise wages with no increase in production, I don’t think anyone would choose the latter. For this reason the coal owners resisted the temptation to give in for so long and in then face of so much opposition and were resultantly seen as conservatist during the strike. So in conclusion I don’t think that it was necessarily that the mine owners were conservatist, that they didn’t want change, but, that they didn’t want to spend money to make the change happen.
