957,000 workers, It had over 200 miners" groups, 153 in engineering, 126 in the railways and five small unions affiliated en bloc. The main slogans for the strike were 'Councils of Action" and for a "Workers Defence Corps". In those days the CP understood the need to orginise the working class against the capitalist state and the govemment. Today there is an urgent need fot such a body. But the one potential force that does exist, the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions, even though it is led by the CP, has retnained a pressure group more interested in allances with the "left" leaders than organising the rank and File.
The Minority Movement did, however, make certain important and vital mistakes. It called for all power to the TUC, thereby ensuring that the control and direction of the strike remained to the end in the hands of the very people who did not want to fight. The betrayal of the TUC should have been predicted and preparations made to take the movement into a real struggle to challenge the capitalist State.
The CP leaders' policies of uncritical support the international classiess society, and then returned to their main job of collaboration with the ruling class. Although the Austrian and French socialists responded to the Paris resolution and called for a general strike on May Day. the German socialist party ordered meetings and demonstrations to take place outside working hours.
The Paris resolution had - like the 1973 TUC resolution — been left deliberately vague. The different national leaderships interpreted it to suif themseives, If May Day was to be used to mount an international general strike as a politicr/ weapon to entorce the eight-hour day. where would it stop! The realisation of a truly internationalist May Day conflicted with their whole outlook on Parliament and reformism. Despite attempts by the English reformist leaders through their control of the London Trades Council to sabotage efforts to make May Duy a mass mobilisation for the eight hour day. there was a magrificent response ftom the London workers. This was initiated hy the newly formed 100,000 strong Gas Workers and General Labourers Union, dockers, various Bast London trade unions, socialist societies and radical elubs. Over 200,000 people thronged into Hyde Park which was a sea of union banuers and slogans calling for the eight-hour day. Frederick Engels, who attended the Hyde Park demonstration, weote: "Entire layers of the working class, with which we would otberwise have made no contact, lave been shaken out of their lethangy. We have drawn bew strength from May Day and the demonstrations lave been like a plough over virgin land. The idea of May Day has taken root in the hearts of the workers whom we could never have reached with our programme.
But that great demonstration which inspired Engels did not spark off a mass militant movement in Britain. Like the continental socialist movements, the British labour movement followed the path of reformism and narrow national interests.
MAY DAY 1973 Again the British working class are on strike this May Day. Again the trade union and Labour Party leaders have failed to give the strike their wholehearted support and have failed to mobiLise the massive potential of the working class. The idea of a political strike against the Government conflicts with everything they stand for. Nevertheless whole sections of workers have taken up the call. May Day was founded as a day of international cluss solidarity, as a step in the struagle of the working class to organise Jtaclf politically on an international basis. The fight for such organisation expresses the fact that its self emancipation from a world-wide system ot exploitation can only be acbieved on ILI HULCEEALIOHEE SLEIL Petrol wagon escorted by mounted police aiong St. George 3 Road, Southwark for the TUC lefts fowed from the policy of the Russian Communist Party, who thought that the best way to defend the USSR was by relying on the so-called anti-imperialist sentiments of the then leaders of the TUC. Today, the CP has taken these policies to their logical conclusions, but in 1926 it did play a major role in organising and defending the strike, and its militants were the most determined fighters.
COUNCILS OF ACTION During the strike the most important local organisation was the Council of Action. The Councils embraced industrial, co-operutive and unemployed organisations. Labour Party milipurpose of carrying out the strike. But an a situation such as May 1926 they become something more. Foroed to face the open and aggrossive power of the capitalist State with its attempts to break the strike, they cither extend their own base in the working class and take over tuictions of govertment and administrstion, etc. or they are crushed. If the Minority Movement and the CP had prepared for this eventuality and worked towards extending the power of the Councils of Action, thus creating a national situation of dual power, then thero would have been a real possibility of a successful socialist revolution.
WHO DECIDES?
The Councils of Acuion were direct bodies of