On
the 99th
anniversary of the 1926 General Strike we look back to the piece below which was published
in the May 2016 Socialist Standard on the 90th
anniversary of the event.
‘On
the 90th anniversary
of the 1926 General Strike we look again at its lessons and at the
uses and limitations of this class struggle tactic.
The
General Strike lasted from 3 to 12 May in an attempt to defend the
miners. It has been claimed that a significant proportion of the
union leadership actually feared victory. ‘I am not in fear of the
capitalist class. The only class I fear is my own,’ said J.R.
Clynes of the General and Municipal Workers Union. Trade union
leaders were not going to challenge the state even though as the
strike continued, more and more control over the day-to-day
functioning of society passed into the hands of the strikers. The TUC
General Council betrayed every resolution upon which the strike call
was issued and without a single concession being gained. The miners
were left to fight the mine-owners, backed by the government, on
their own.
Most
commentators agree that the strength of the strike came from the
solidarity of the grass-roots mass support and the weakness from
above by an indecisive bureaucracy. ‘There’s never been anything
like it. If the blighters o' leaders here dinnae let us down we’ll
hae the capitalists crawlin’ on their bellies in a week. Oh boy,
it’s the revolution at last,’ said one striker in Glasgow.
Revolution was exactly what the trade union leaders didn't want. The
General Strike had opened a Pandora's Box and in the words of NUR
leader Charlie Cramp — ‘Never again!’ and said Ben Turner of
the TUC General Council: ‘I never want to see another.’ The trade
union activists' shock at the call-off was only matched by the
employers' and government's unexpected surprise. ‘A
victorious army disarmed and handed over to its enemies,’ declared
another Glasgow striker.
What
We Said
The
Socialist Party realistically understood that there was no immediate
question of revolution. We favoured the general strike for the
limited objective of exerting massive pressure upon employers to
concede over pay or conditions. We
had advocated:
‘.
. . combined action by the workers to resist the wholesale onslaught
by the masters upon wages and working conditions . . . that the
old sectional mode of industrial warfare was obsolete; that, while
the development of industry had united the masters into giant
combinations, with interests ramifying in every direction, supported
at every point by the forces of the State, representing the entire
capitalist class, the division among the workers, according to their
occupations, led automatically to their steady defeat in detail. The
only hope, even for the limited purpose of restricting the extent of
the defeat, lay, therefore, in class combination... economic and
political ignorance kept the workers divided and the defeats went on.
Yet even worms will turn, and rats forced into corners will fight
...There is a limit even to the stupidity of sheep; and not all the
smooth-tongued eloquence of their shepherds could prevent the flock
from realising that they may as well hang together as hang
separately.’
The Socialist
Standard (June
1926) lamented the TUC's lack of strike plans:
‘As
an expression of working-class solidarity the response of the rank
and file was unquestionably unprecedented; but the long months, nay,
years of delay found effect in the official confusion between
‘essential’ and non-essential occupations, the handling of goods
by some unions which were banned by others and the issuing of permits
one day which had to be withdrawn the next. Just prior to the strike
the railwaymen were working overtime providing the companies with the
coal to run their blackleg trains ...’
In
particular, we urged the working class to learn the lessons of the
General Strike:
"The
outlook before the workers is black, indeed, but not hopeless, if
they will but learn the lessons of this greatest of all disasters.
‘Trust your leaders!" we were adjured in the Press and from
the platforms of the Labour Party, and the folly of such sheep-like
trust is now glaring. The workers must learn to trust only in
themselves. They must themselves realise their position and decide
the line of action to be taken. They must elect their officials to
take orders, not to give them! ... It is useless for the workers
either to ‘trust’ leaders or to ‘change’ them. The entire
institution of leadership must be swept by the board." At the
time we urged workers that they "must organise as a class, not
merely industrially, for the capture of supreme power as represented
by the political machine... The one thing necessary is a full
recognition by the workers themselves of the hostility of interests
between themselves and their masters. Organised on that basis,
refusing to be tricked and bluffed by promises or stampeded into
violence by threats, they will emerge victorious from the age-long
struggle. Win Political Power! That is the first step.’
The
general strike as a tactic
The
possibility of a general strike keeps cropping up within the trade
union movement. When we speak of the general strike we are not
concerned with the general strike of a single trade union but of all
workers. The movement is no longer a trade union movement but has
become a class movement. For the general strike to succeed, the
working-class must be convinced of the importance of the purpose for
which it is declared. It must be shown that the aim is legitimate and
victory is possible. The general strike cannot be a disguise for
revolution, but simply the exercise of the right to strike on a wider
scale and with a more clearly marked class character. The Socialist
Party dismisses the idea that the general strike is a panacea for
workers.
The
idea of carrying through a social revolution by means of a ‘folded
arms’ policy is romantic. A stoppage of production and
transportation is not enough to bring about the overthrow of a
society. Strikers will stand idly outside places of work, and even if
the workers occupied and took possession of the factories and
offices, it is a pointless exercise for they cannot function while
the economy is suspended and production is stopped by the universal
strike. So long as a class does not collectively own and control the
whole social machine, it can seize all the factories and offices it
wants to, but it really possesses nothing. The failure of a general
strike involves real suffering, and discouraged and disconsolate,
defeated strikers withdraw from the movement into passivity and
apathy. A general strike is ‘All or nothing!’ Workers
should think twice about supporting such a gamble.
There
are some who seek to transform a proposed general strike against
austerity, for instance, into a political general strike, using the
opposition to the cuts as the slogans to mobilise around. They expect
that because of a sustained general strike the normal economic life
of the country will be suspended, and there would be a total stoppage
in distribution and in production. Naturally, workers would be forced
to adopt more forceful methods in order to live. They would seize
food and other provisions wherever they could lay hands on them. The
ruling class would respond in kind with repression and so the general
strike is envisaged to escalate into a revolutionary scenario. That
is the idea of the ‘revolutionaries’. But this sort of strategy
is a trick to delude the working-class. It proposes to drag them far
beyond what was proposed. To imagine that a social revolution can
result from misleading workers in such a manner is nonsense.
Although
the general strike is quite powerless as a revolutionary means of
liberation for the exploited class, nevertheless it is a potent
warning to the capitalist class. It tells them if they are crazy
enough to make the right to unite in trade unions and the right to
strike empty forms, then a general strike may well be the shape that
a labour revolt would take. It would be more as a means of damaging
the enemy to save ourselves than a means of liberation. The trade
union movement has proven itself to be a powerful instrument of a
defensive character.
The
strike weapon is the workers' only means of defence or attack which
it has for the protection of its immediate material interests.
Working people are right to jealously guard the right to strike.
While the Socialist Party fully supports this right for all workers,
it is not our business to incite them to make use of it. It is not
for us to urge or discourage strikes. It is for those immediately
involved, those who will have to endure the consequences of their
decision, to decide without pressure of any kind from outsiders. When
those workers whose interests are at stake have decided upon a
strike, other workers including socialists ought to aid them to gain
every possible advantage from the situation in which they have placed
themselves.
That
is, generally speaking, what is and what should be the conduct of
socialists so far as strikes are concerned. We acknowledge the strike
as a weapon, but recognise that its effectiveness should not to be
exaggerated and that it possesses limited power. Under favourable
circumstances it may compel some employers to yield to union demands
but it has never been able to produce any radical change in the
capitalist system. Here or there some ameliorations have been
achieved but they have not been incompatible with the increasing
prosperity of capital.
The
political expropriation of the capitalist class today is its economic
expropriation tomorrow. To win for socialism the greatest possible
number of partisans, that is the task to which the Socialist Party
concentrates its efforts. What is necessary is to make socialists, to
bring people's wills into harmony with a movement that seeks the
election of more and more socialists to our various elective
assemblies. The political expropriation of the capitalist class today
can be its economic expropriation tomorrow and the transformation of
wage labour to the free association of workers and common ownership.’
ALJO
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-general-strike-weapon-of-class-war.html
