The Government prepared for the General Strike by imprisoning twelve leading members of the Communist Party in October 1925, (left to right): T.A. Jackson, J.T. Murphy, a glorious day in working class history. The threat of a national embargo on coal movement by miners, railway workers and other transport workers forced the Government to grant a nine month subsidy to the mines. The lock-out notices were withdrawn, and the miners' wages maintained.
The defeat of Black Friday four years earlier on 15 April 1921 -when miners were forced to accept wage cuts of up to 40 per cent seemed to be wiped clean. The leaders of the railway workers and transport workers who had deserted the Triple Alliance in 1921 - the Cripple Alliance, the miners called - had been forced to take a stand under the mushrooming pressure of the rank and file, not least the Minority Movement. Yet nine months later this same working class was to suffer the greatest deteat in its history. to the constitution God help us unless the Government won.' In a bitter postscript to the TUC's betrayal a Daily Herald correspondent wrote: "We shall never have anoth er revolution, for Mr Baldwin has an-. nounced that the strike is unconstitutional, and so the TUC packed up and went home.' Only the Communist Party attempted to explain to the working class what a general strike would meant. Analysing the lessons of Red Friday in Communist Review in September 1925, J.T. Murphy wrote:
'Let us be clear what a general strike means. It can only mean the throwing down of the gauntlet to the capitalist state, and all the powers at its disposal. Either that challenge is only a gesture, in which Harry Pollitt, William Rust, Tom Wintringham, J.R. Campbell, Arthur MacManus, Wal Hannington, Tom Bell, Willie Gallacher Communist Party cartoon-note 'All Power to the General Council case the capitalist class will not worry about it, or it must develop its challenge into an actual fight for power, in which case we land in civil war. Any leaders who talk about a general strike without facing this obvious fact are bluffing hoth themselves and the workers?
said this the Communist Party took no independent initiatives to prepare the working class. whole period up to the General Strike the CP's central slogan was 'All Power to the General Council' This was increasingly advanced with only token reference to the need to develop Councils of Action and democratise the TUC So in reality it could only mean giving complete confidence to the existing General Council to conduct the strike. Just as much was admitted by CP leader Harry Pollitt in the wake of the 1925 Scarborough TUC which had been high on left rhetoric but decidediv low in terms of actual preparation for the coming confronCOMPLETE 'In view of the overwhelming decision for complete solidarity registered at Scarborough, the new General Council will simply have to prosecute more vigorously the fight on behalf of the workers. True the right-wing of the Council or two people who do not give sup port to the idea that we are engaged in a class struggle, but I think that OFTHE TRADE The crying tragedy is that having workshop committees and TUC leaders.
had a few ership.
the 'lefts' is strengthened by the return of one COMMUNIST PARTY PREPARATIONS ALL POWER TO THE GENERAL COUNCIL UNION CONGRESS mass pressure from behind will force even them to toe the line.' Such a line was absolutely clear. What the CP envisaged was a re-run of Red Friday and the key task was to keep up the pressure on the So although the CP issued 22 circulars in the coming winter, and was gaining hundreds of sympathisers where previously it particularly after the arrest and imprisonment of twelve of its leading members in October 1925 - no attempt was made to prepare the working class for struggle independently of the TUC leadThe CP subordinated the workers struggle to the Comintern's policy of building a strategic alliance with The same Murphy who had warned that a general strike brought to the fore the question of political power could write a few months later: "The initiative should come from the General Council of the TUC and its sub-committee of trades councils..' and 'there should be no rival body to the Trades Council.. We should avoid rivalry and recog nise the General Council as the General Staff of the unions directing the unions in the struggle.
When the TUC turned down the suggestion of a recall conference in March 1926 to prepare the strike, the CP criticised the decision without pointing out that 'left' Hicks had supported it. And after the Minority Movement's conference on preparedness in March 1926, its acting general secretary George Hardy talked in Workers Weekly of a summer campaign of outdoor meetings as if the General Strike was not around the corner!
With a major slogan of All Power to the General Council, the Communist Party leaders could do only one thing estimate as to what was at stake. Murphy wrote in Workers Weekly ust tree davs berore cue suake began 'that good trade union leaders who have sufficient character to stand firm on the demands of the