The general strike was “the greatest effort the British workers had ever made,” wrote the historian and economist G. D. H. Cole. One hundred years ago on May 4, 1926, a million British workers walked off their jobs.These workers struck in sympathy with miners — more than a million of them, who had been locked out by their employers after refusing to accept cuts in pay, in some places as much as 25 percent. And they had refused to work longer hours, publicly declaring their demand: “Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day.”The strike was called by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), the British federation of trade unions. The General Council’s mission was to set up a negotiating committee with employers and defend the pay of the miners. Ernest Bevin, the general secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, speaking for the council, implored “every man and woman . . . to fight for the soul of labor and the salvation of the miners.” He added, “No person in the first grade must go to work at starting time on Tuesday morning; that is to say if a settlement has not been found.”“Not One Scrap of Assistance”The government, led by conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin, set the conflict in motion by ending temporary subsidies to the mining employers. The government’s subsidies were meant to stave off an inevitable crisis in a sick industry. They were also beneficial to the miners, and the miners themselves would pay the price for the subsidies’ removal.The government saw the miners as an obstacle to reorganization and offered the miners nothing in return for their sacrifice. In an opening salvo, the minister of health, Neville Chamberlain, speaking for the government, expressed indifference to the miners, vowed that they would receive “not one scrap of assistance,” and reduced outdoor relief to below unemployment benefits.A. J. Cook, the secretary of the Miners’ Federation of Great…
