AHC: 1926 General Strike turns Ugly

The British General Strike of 1926 was a tense affair and effectively pitted the classes against one another, with Communist trade unionists sabotaging rail lines, public school boys running public services, the army escorting imports through huge pickets and hastily raised government paramilitaries clashing with strikers.

There were various moments where reactionary call to arms in the press where surpressed, paramilitaries removed from stand offs to avoid major violence etc.

It was a close run thing and I was wondering could the Strike have turned into a full blown State of Emergency? Martial Law?
 

Macragge1

Banned
My favourite bit about the General Strike is the story of strikers telling the volunteer driver of the Flying Scotsman that the rails ahead of him had been pulled up. The driver went on anyway, and the train crashed. He was a brilliant man.

With regards to the question, I think it's been somewhat overblown how tense the whole thing was. Note, for example, that the Police and the strikers played football against each other more often than they scuffled. If anything was to happen, it would be because Churchill was being a dick throughout the whole thing; the armoured cars and stuff weren't necessary, and nor was the inflammatory rhetoric in the British Gazette. Saying this, I read a statement somewhere that had scab labour (i.e working class scabs) been used instead of OMS volunteers or the army to move stuff around, there would have been a much more adverse reaction by the strikers.

Given that Churchill had plans drawn up for the RAF to be used against industrial action, it is perhaps very lucky that Baldwin shunted him off to go and do his newspaper; things could have become very antagonistic had he had anything to do with the anti-strike measures.
 
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