Workers’ Rights

The General Strike of 1926 tested whether workers across different industries could use this collective strength to defend the miners. It also tested the British government’s determination to resist pressure from organised labour.

Coal and the road to confrontation

During the First World War, coal was essential to British industry and the war effort. The government controlled the mines, demand was high and miners had plentiful work. After the war ended in 1918, demand and coal prices fell. The mines returned to private ownership, and owners sought savings through closures and changes to employment conditions.

In 1921, mine owners demanded lower pay and longer working hours. The miners resisted, but support from other industries failed to materialise. Workers elsewhere feared losing their own jobs, and the miners eventually returned to work.

A further fall in coal prices brought another confrontation in 1925. Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin agreed to subsidise miners’ wages for nine months. This postponed the conflict rather than resolving the underlying problem: owners still wanted to reduce labour costs, while miners wanted to protect their livelihoods. It also gave the government time to prepare for a possible strike.

When the subsidy expired at the end of April 1926, the TUC organised a general strike in support of the miners. The call was made on 3 May, and the stoppage began on 4 May.

The strikers’ actions and aims

The miners were supported by railway workers, dockers and workers in industries such as iron and steel. The TUC called out additional groups as the dispute developed. By interrupting transport and production, it hoped to put enough pressure on the government and mine owners to secure acceptable terms for the miners.

The stoppage seriously disrupted daily life. Food and goods became harder to deliver, and people struggled to travel to work. This demonstrated the importance of organised workers to the functioning of the country.

The TUC organised pickets and used union funds to help feed strikers and their families. It also published The British Worker to explain the dispute from the workers’ perspective. Its leaders urged peaceful conduct: they wanted to defend pay and conditions, not overthrow parliamentary government. Nevertheless, some confrontations with the police became violent, making it harder to maintain this message.

Government resistance and the struggle for public support

Baldwin’s government had used the months of subsidy to prepare supplies and arrangements for maintaining essential services. During the strike, it used troops, naval assistance and civilian volunteers to help keep goods moving. Police and military protection helped safeguard important transport routes and locations.

These preparations reduced the strikers’ leverage. If essential services could continue without the usual workforce, stopping work was less likely to force the government to concede.

Public opinion was another battleground. The government’s newspaper, The British Gazette, presented the strike as a challenge to constitutional authority. This was a political interpretation, not simply a description of the TUC’s stated aims. By portraying itself as defending order and parliamentary government, the government sought to turn public anxiety about disruption against the unions.

The TUC’s British Worker offered a competing explanation centred on the miners’ grievances. The dispute therefore involved both practical power—who could keep the country functioning—and persuasion—whose account the public would accept.

Why the strike ended, and what followed

On 12 May, after nine days, the TUC called off the General Strike. Its leaders faced financial pressure, concern about violence and difficulty winning sufficient public support. Government preparations had prevented the stoppage from forcing a decisive concession.

Calling off the strike did not produce an immediate, orderly return to normal. Some employers demanded worse conditions before reinstating workers, and some strikers continued their action. There was also victimisation of workers who had taken part. This matters because ending the national stoppage did not guarantee protection for individual participants.

The miners continued their dispute until November 1926. Eventually, financial hardship forced them back to work on lower pay and longer hours. The General Strike had shown substantial solidarity, but it failed in its central aim of protecting the miners’ conditions.

The government also strengthened its legal position. The Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 restricted sympathetic strikes and mass picketing, placed restrictions on unions’ political activity and prevented civil service unions from affiliating to the TUC. The defeat therefore weakened unions both immediately, through the failed dispute, and subsequently, through legislation.

Recovery and renewed conflict after the Second World War

Union weakness was not permanent. The Labour government elected in 1945 reversed the restrictive settlement of 1927. High employment in the 1950s and 1960s strengthened workers’ bargaining position: employers needed labour, making unions better placed to negotiate over wages and conditions.

By the 1970s, unions were again influential. Governments tried to manage their power while dealing with economic difficulties. The Conservative government’s Industrial Relations Act 1971 attempted to regulate industrial relations, but Labour repealed it in 1974. This reversal shows that reform was contested rather than a steady movement in one direction.

Recession and high inflation intensified disputes over pay. During the Winter of Discontent in 1978–79, widespread strikes disrupted public services, including rubbish collection and burials. These visible disruptions helped strengthen the argument that union power needed to be restrained. Margaret Thatcher became Conservative prime minister in 1979, having promised to tackle that power.

How late twentieth-century reforms changed union power

Thatcher’s governments introduced a series of legal changes rather than one single reform. The Employment Acts of 1980 and 1982 restricted picketing and reduced unions’ protection from legal action. Unions could face financial claims for losses caused by industrial action outside the law’s protections. This increased the risks of organising a dispute.

The Trade Union Act 1984 required secret ballots before industrial action. A ballot gave members a direct say and made it harder for union leaders to call action without demonstrating support. Further legislation restricted secondary action and ultimately outlawed closed-shop arrangements. These changes made it harder to spread a dispute beyond the original employer or to require workers to join a union.

Together, the reforms narrowed the forms of action unions could take and increased the procedural and financial obstacles they faced. Supporters argued that this protected individual choice and reduced disruptive union power; opponents argued that it weakened workers’ ability to bargain effectively with employers.

The miners’ strike and the longer-term balance of power

The miners’ strike of 1984–85, led by Arthur Scargill, became the major confrontation between the unions and Thatcher’s government. Resistance to pit closures was central to the dispute. The miners’ defeat in 1985 demonstrated how far the balance of power had shifted towards government and employers.

Union membership fell from around 13.5 million in 1979 to around 8.5 million in 1997, and collective bargaining covered fewer workers. Legislation contributed to this decline, but it was not the only cause: changes in employment, economic conditions and employers’ attitudes also mattered.

The overall pattern was therefore not continuous progress towards stronger workers’ rights. Unions suffered defeat in 1926, recovered after the Second World War, became powerful again and then faced major restrictions in the late twentieth century. They survived, but their ability to compel employers or governments to concede was reduced.