How Important Was The Governments Use Of Propaganda In Bringing The Strike To An Early end.
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How Important Was The Governments Use Of Propaganda In Bringing The Strike To An Early end
The governments use of propaganda in bringing the strike to an early end was very important because the Britain was running out of coal rapidly so other countries such as India started producing there own supplies. This was good for Britain because if other countries had started to produce there own supplies that meant that they will be no need of the importing goods from Britain, so this way Britain will have money coming in which could result in poor living conditions.
By April 1925, Baldwin put Britain back on the gold standard. The pound was overvalued at $ 4.86c, killing exports. Baldwin ordered a repeat of the Royal Commission ploy, setting up the Sir Herbert Samuel Commission, but the miners had seen all this before with the Sankey Report. There were no members from the Labour movement present. The miners for their part had three points, No wage cuts, No extension of hours and keep the national agreement over wage bargaining. The government wanted to end the subsidies paid to the coal industry. This meant the owners would cut pay. Big mistake came at the start, Saturday May 1st 1926, when the MFGB handed over the power of negotiation to Citrine and the other ditherers at the TUC. Lines of communication were over extended. The delegates from the miners' districts went back to their areas, leaving Cook to mind the shop in Russell Square. The TUC officials disregarded the miners' wisdom that the employers would not negotiate. The miners knew their own bosses. The TUC did not. Moreover, the TUC had a patronising view of Cook. Fred Bramley, the secretary of the TUC when Cook was elected to head up the MFGB called him "a raving, tearing Communist". J H Thomas later said of the miners "They were not trade unionists in a proper sense and did not understand or very much care about what happened to the rest of the movement.
