The main aim of the General Strike was to ‘hold-up’ Britain. Without a complete shutdown of the British economy the Strike would have had little impact. Source B (very reliable due to being a photograph from the time) shows us that the country still had a skeleton transport system (only 40 buses from a fleet of 4400 were running) and necessary supplies were being delivered. So from this source we can see that the Strike was not having a enormous impact or the effect desired by the T.U.C. Black-leg labourers were middle class and unemployed people who filled in the jobs of citizens who were on Strike. They drove the buses, trains and food convoys, worked on the docks and in factories. Without them Britain would have entirely shut down and the Strike would have worked. Many of these men were delighted to help, for example by driving buses like in Source B-childhood dreams comes true! The problem was; the black-leg labourers were proving to be somewhat good at filling in for the strikers who became afraid of losing their jobs permanently and so returned to work.
The government was provoking the strikers to become violent. They had armed policemen and soldiers protecting food convoys and the black-leg labourers, as if daring the Strikers to battle. An extract from English History 1914-1945 says, ‘Churchill tried to provoke conflict by parading armoured cars through the streets’. We can see how the government tried to do this from photographs taken during the Strike, though from the photos we can also see the peacefulness of the crowd. In Source C we can see a painting of sturdy, well-fed strikers fighting at the Docks. This was obviously not the real condition the men were in as Britain’s populations consisted mostly of under nourished, over-worked males-who would have been worse for wear due to the Strike. This source is bound to be unreliable and biased because it was drawn by a member of a Trade Union 28 years after the end of the Strike. From Source A we learn that ‘altogether 4000 people were prosecuted for violence or incitement to violence and about a quarter of these received prison sentences’. This is an inconsequential number among the millions of strikers and not a major reason to call off the Strike but if there had been aggression the T.U.C might have never recovered. For if there had been hostility the Trade Unions would have lost the sympathy vote and therefore most of their support. Source A is relatively reliable because it is written after the event by a third party. The government could have created far more effective propaganda from a violent strike than a peaceful one. The government also used propaganda to incite brutality. The main line of attack was through The British Gazette, but the strikers had a newspaper too, The British Worker, and they were able to combat the propaganda and broadcast messages, encouragement, warnings and advice to their followers. The sources from both newspapers announcing the end of the Strike use words that conjure up images of war, for example, surrender, peace and unconditional. In my view this was a final attempt on both sides to justify the Strike, as wars are thought of as ‘just causes’ by some and would make the government happy because they had ‘victory’ and the workers more angry and devoted to their cause due to their ‘losing’.
The Strike had lost some early support due to a number of peoples believing that the Trade Unions were attacking the British system of government and attempting to overthrow it. They linked it to the Russian Revolution which was known for its violence and brutality (towards the upper classes). The Russian Revolution had begun with widespread strikes and troubled workers, so people were afraid. Also individuals were afraid of syndicalism, the belief that the workers should run the industries as this is rather like communism and would leave many factory and mine owners redundant or in the same circumstances as their own workers. Some early support for the Strike had dried up, perhaps it was going on for too long and people lost interest or perhaps supporters became worried as to how it would affect themselves and their jobs. The Strike could be perceived as a class war. Perhaps people believed the working classes were trying to hold the rest of the country to account for its hardships. Others believed it was just two obstinate groups of people on a collision course and assumed they would work out their problems.
Unity in the Trade Union Congress might have been fractured. In a source I have seen; a Punch Cartoon from April 1921 ‘An Employer’s View of the Triple Industrial Alliance’ there is a three headed dog representing Cerberus-guardian of the gates to the underworld. The three heads, labelled ‘transport’, ‘miners’ and ‘railways’ are different. ‘Miners’ looks angry and unsettled whereas the other two look tired and fed up. This shows where most of the turmoil in the T.U.C. was coming from. The ‘miners’ head is in the middle- as if it is controlling the other parties. Though this is from an employers viewpoint it cannot be ignored as the miners seem, throughout the Strike and even before, to be the angriest, most dangerous of the groups-perhaps the others weren’t quite so supportive of the Strike and didn’t want it to drag on. Another place we can see the miners playing a domineering role in the Strike is Sources D and E. These both state that ‘negotiations are to be resumed in the coal dispute’ and that the ‘miners call delegate conference’. There is no mention of the other groups of people on Strike-the miners clearly were forthright and more important.
Philip Snowdon, a Labour MP, (Source F) says, ‘A general Strike could in no circumstances be successful. A General Strike is an attempt to hold up the community, and against such an attempt the community will mobilise all its resources’. Though this is a biased opinion it is true that the government mobilised all its resources as it would against an enemy- though it wasn’t really necessary to call upon Troops except at the Docks. He also says, ‘I remained silent’. He obviously saw this as some sort of ‘experiment’ and most other MP’s probably did as well. It shows how confident and well-prepared the government were compared to the T.U.C, which is a main reason for the end of the Strike.
So in conclusion these sources can tell us opinions and views on the General Strike from both sides but they are mainly biased due to the uses they served. The two newspaper articles announcing the end of the General Strike are extremely brief and show how the government and T.U.C. were trying not to draw great attention to it, as if both sides agreed it was an embarrassment. At the end of the Strike the T.U.C may have hoped that new and unofficial proposals by Sir Herbert Samuel would permit the miners and mine owners to renew negotiations. This was not so. Most men got their jobs back but 3000 men endured recrimination from employers and the railwaymen had to accept pay cuts on return to work. The miners remained on strike for several months. They were ultimately forced back to work after hunger and cold, under the conditions they had abandoned in April. All the recommendations of the Samuel Commission, including the ones the government had accepted, were ignored.
