the 1926 General Strike. It is written into the way that the crisis of British capitalism is working itself out, that the working class will once again embark on this form of struggle in the not too distant future.
The General Strike of 1926 was the culmination of a long drawn-out battle. Millions of workers A bus, immobilized by strikers, being towed anay:
had suffered in the Groat War for capitalist territorial gains, returning with hopes of a so-called better land. Disillusioned with the capitalist slaughter, they now faced disillusionment at home. In 1921 the miners and cotton workers were locked out and their wages cut. This was repeated in 1922 in shipbuilding and engineering. And in 1925 the miners were threatened with another wage cut.
The workers saw that united action was needed to beat these attacks. The offensive arose not because of the nastiness of individual employers, but as purt of an overall fight against the workers" organisations, This was due to the world depression, incrensed foreign competition, and the inspiration towards revolution inspired by October 1917. The collapse of the Triple Alliance of 1921 E and the utter failure of the first Labour Govemment of 1924 lad made the workers more Red Weekly 1 May 1973 Page 4 muster its forces, And muster them it did. Its much heralded Samuel Commission, an alleged impartial body which was to investigate the coal industry, was turned into a forum for attacking the miners. Employers testified that miners" high wages had forced them to lock out engineers and others, hoping to turn the workers against the miners Meanwhile the Government encouraged the TUC to believe that the Samuel Commission would report favourably for the miners, The TUC were only too willing to accept this.
Thomas, the railwaymen's leader, attacking those who wamed that a confrontation was being planned by the Government, specialised in making disarming specches: instead of organising, mobilising and encouraging the feel. ing that war was inevitable, let them concentrate on finding a solution honourable and satisfactory to all sides."
But behind its approving glance at Thomas and the other leaders, the Government built up its strike-breaking forces. These were the real weapons on which it relied. A semi-official body known as the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies was set up with a of a police column, followed by a frame-up trial, started the first May Day demonstrations. Chicago in 1884 was a city of intense class struggle. That year agitation swept throughout the United States for the eight-hour day. By 1886 Chicago was the strong point of this campaign. Its principal labour organisations were affiliated to the Eight Hours Association. The movement was led by anarchists, who were at first scornful of the demand, but later became its most effective and popular advocates. The Chicago beer-wagon drivers, toymakers, and carpenters were its most enthusiastic supporters HAYMARKET MARTYRS May Ist, 1886, was set as the day on which the demand should be put into effect. The employers were implacable in their opposition. Armed workers drilled in secret halli. Bomh-plot scares carculated through the city.
On the first two days when thousands were either on strike or locked out the threatened violence did not take place. The next day Chicago police fired on strikers battling with scabs outside one plant. A number of workers died, many were injured. Later at a mass meeting in Chicago's Haymarket, a bomb was hurled at an advancing police column. After a fusillade of indiscriminate police fire, the lenders of the demonstration were arrested, A witch-bunt trial followed and four of the leaders George Engel, Adoph Fischer, August Spies and Parsons were sentenced to death for inciting the bombings. The Haymarket Martyn were hanged on 11 November, 1887 INTERNATIONAL MAY DAY The frame up and brutal bangings evoked a tremendous reaction throughout the American and European labour movements. The metbods and demands of the Chicago movement - the general strike to enforce the eight-hour day -although not new, were taken up again by many workers parties and trade unions in Europe. It also inspired the first action of the soon-to-betounded Second International.
When the first congress of the International met in Paris in 1889 it carried a resolution calling for 1 May to be a day of international labour demonstrations for the eight-hour day. Thus May Day has its origins in the violent struggles between the capitalist state and the working class, SUNDAY SOCIALISM From its herole beginnings, May Day sank for nearly eighty years into nothing more than a Sunday outing. To the leaders of the Second International, May Day was not to be a demonstration of the strength of the working class as its inspirers had intended. The labour Jeaders who ascended the May Day platforms explained the desirability, but impossibility, of John Burns speaking in Hyde Po