15. “Road to Wigan Pier”¶
Core Argument¶
The defeat of the 1926 General Strike dealt a devastating blow to the British working class, entrenching the trade union bureaucracy and demoralising the rank and file. Strike days lost plummeted from 162 million in 1926 to an average of four million annually in the subsequent seven years, falling below two million by the mid-1930s. Mass unemployment reached 22 per cent of insured workers by 1933, while union membership halved from its 1920–21 peak to 3.3 million by 1934. Real wages rose slightly for those in work due to deflation, but cumulative wage cuts totalled six per cent by the end of 1933. This quiescence contrasted sharply with the United States, where a massive strike wave from 1933, centred on unorganised industries, saw 484,711 factory occupations between September 1936 and June 1937, and the CIO grew to 3.7 million members in 22 months, overtaking the AFL.
The political betrayal of the 1929 Labour government, led by Ramsay MacDonald, deepened the crisis. MacDonald capitulated to demands from bankers and the City for cuts to unemployment benefit and public spending, then formed a National Government with the Tories and Liberals in August 1931 after a Cabinet split. The ensuing general election reduced Labour to 52 MPs. This betrayal pushed the Labour rank and file leftwards, producing radical policies such as the 1934 programme For Socialism and Peace and proposals for an enabling act to bypass parliamentary obstruction. The Independent Labour Party split from Labour at Easter 1932 over parliamentary discipline of its four MPs, but at the wrong time and over the wrong issue, lacking clear perspective; it was reduced within years to a rump of a few thousand members.
The National Government’s savage cuts, especially to unemployment benefits, were met with spontaneous struggles by the unemployed organised around the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement. In 1932, wage cuts provoked mutiny in the Naval Fleet at Invergordon, forcing government retreat. Huge demonstrations, hunger marches, and pitched battles occurred in Keighley, Glasgow, Birkenhead, and Belfast, where troops shot workers dead. By 1933–34, trade union membership rose and small strikes grew, notably at Firestone Tyre and Pressed Steel Works, though the right-wing union hierarchy opposed unofficial strikes. The rise of Hitler in 1933 provoked consternation, yet the TUC learned nothing from the German debacle. The Comintern’s 1935 Popular Front policy, based on alliance with “progressive” capitalist parties, revived Communist Party influence, but the TUC issued its “Black Circular” to ban Communist delegates. In 1936, the TUC supported “non-intervention” in Spain. The union leadership kept Labour firmly under control, expelling leftists and disbanding the Labour League of Youth, and by the outbreak of war, the TUC lined up behind the Chamberlain government’s war aims.