by Pete Goddard and Atul Hatwal
It’s somehow fitting that the fuse for the general strike was lit at the Daily Mail.
The government was still engaged in half-hearted negotiations with the unions when, on Sunday 2nd May 1926 the print compositors at the Mail refused to set an inflammatory editorial, entitled “For King and Country.” Although the companion piece, “Compositing print causes cancer” probably didn’t help either.
Seeing an opportunity to kick things off whilst still blaming the unions, the government summarily walked out of the talks muttering about threats to freedom of speech.
The unions thought, “Walk out will you? We’ll show you a thing or two about walking out.”
The next day letters went out to union members up and down the country and on Tuesday 4th May the whistle blew.
”Everybody out!”
The general strike had begun.
Around 1.5 million to 2 million workers took part in the strike. People downed tools all across the country.
Then, frequently, different people across the country picked those tools up again.
Approximately 300,000 volunteers had joined the overwhelmingly middle class and right-wing Organisation for Maintenance of Supplies. Their task was to help keep the country running during the period of the strike in a sort of extended “working class” themed fancy dress party.
At the same time, with the print setters on strike, someone had to provide the British public with a replacement for their daily sports news, Sudoku and political misinformation. And who had enough spare time to moonlight over hot metal at a time of enormous national economic crisis? The chancellor of the exchequer, of course. Winston Churchill was put in charge of producing the government’s British Gazette.