I thoroughly enjoyed David Torrance’s book about the first Labour Government, The Wild Men, and I was delighted to see that he’s written a book about the General Strike: The Edge of Revolution. This year, 2026, is the centenary of Britain’s biggest general strike and I have realised, from reading Torrance’s book, how little I knew about what actually happened.

To summarise events, a coal miners’ strike in 1921, initially supported by the railwaymen and transport workers, had alerted the Government to the likelihood of a General Strike. The Government reinstated the subsidy of miners’ wages and matters simmered while yet another Royal Commission was held. This gave the Government a few years to put in place its procedures for dealing with emergencies. Unfortunately, the TUC didn’t use the time for similar planning.

On 30th April, 1926, while negotiating with the TUC, the Prime Minister, Baldwin, had ordered posters to be printed, declaring a state of emergency. While one could argue that Baldwin had ordered them “just in case”, the unions saw this as a sign of bad faith and their members voted overwhelmingly for a strike. At this point, the unions handed control of the strike to the TUC General Council. Similarly, the Government discovered that strike notices had been despatched while negotiations were still continuing – also seen as an act of bad faith.

Torrance shows that almost all Council members were against striking but the miners wouldn’t compromise. Jimmy Thomas, an MP and leader of the railway workers, was in tears at one point. Torrance quotes Fenner Brockway’s explanation for the end of the strike, “it was led by people who didn’t believe in it.” The Government downplayed the industrial dispute aspects of the strike and the severe hardship faced by miners’ families; and positioned the strike as a challenge to the constitutionally elected Government (hence the book’s title). The TUC’s organisation was poor and its preparation almost non-existent. Torrance shows, though, that one of the prime reasons for the TUC’s defeat was that it simply didn’t have a goal for the strike and a plan for measuring its success. That ambiguity meant that the miners’ leaders and the rest of the Council would never agree on tactics.

Torrance has used a wide range of primary sources, refusing to endorse the perception that the strike was peaceful and that the British behaved impeccably. Police with horses and batons did charge at rioting crowds; people were killed due to the actions of inexperienced volunteer railwaymen. Torrance’s clever usage of memoirs and official records shows how Baldwin’s greatest failure in leadership (allowing the General Strike to happen) was transformed into his greatest success: framing the strike as a constitutional issue was “a stroke of genius.”

This really is a highly readable account of the strike and contains some excellent analysis.

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