Colchester TUC members share their history ahead of 1926 Exhibition

Here is Raphael Pigott’s historical account of the event based on evidence which will be at the exhibition.

On May 4, 1926, 16-year-old Colchester school boy Eric Rudsdale wrote in his diary: “Strike full on.

“Military guards at the station and all over the barracks. The soldiers (artillery and cavalry) all have steel helmets and fixed bayonets. The trams are also on strike. There are no newspapers at all. Dozens of volunteers have been enrolled and special constables sworn in. This proclaimed to be a state of Emergency. I think this looks like a big business.”

Eric, known as E J Rudsdale, went on to become famous for his wartime diary of Colchester, written when he was curator of Colchester Museum.

However, in 1926, Eric was writing about the impact of the General Strike on the town.

The 1920s saw a difficult period for the British economy.

There had been a short-lived upswing following the first world war, but the post-war boom collapsed in the autumn of 1920.

Unemployment soared, reaching over two million by the end of 1921.

The Conservative government under Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, elected on a landslide in 1924, believed an attack on wages and working conditions was necessary to revive the economy.

In 1925, Mr Baldwin was quoted as saying: “I mean all the workers in this country have got to take a reduction in wages to help put industry on its feet.”

The Miners Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) with over a million members in the most important industry in the country were in the front line.

The proposal was to reduce workers’ wages by 13.5 per cent and increase working hours.

In June 1925, the mine-owners announced the termination of the national agreement in the industry and threatened a national lockout if the new terms weren’t accepted.

A J Cook, firebrand leader of the MFGB, responded with the defiant slogan: Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day.

The miners refused to negotiate with the employers and called on their allies in the transport and engineering industries and the trade union movement generally to support them.

The General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) was able to obtain the agreement of the transport and railway unions.

This lockout of the miners would be answered by a complete embargo on the movement on coal - meaning in practice, the stoppage of all industry.

The government were not yet ready for a confrontation, so played for time by announcing a subsidy to the mine owners for nine months while a Royal Commission was conducted.

It was clear a showdown was coming and the government were only buying time while they prepared.

Home Secretary Sir William Joynson-Hicks said: “I say, coming straight from the cabinet councils, that the danger is not over.

“Is England to be governed by parliament and the cabinet or by a handful of trade union leaders?”

Neither the government nor the miners were prepared to compromise and after months of manoeuvring the MFGB dragged a reluctant TUC into calling a general strike across industry.

On the first day – Tuesday May 4 - between 1,500,000 and 2 million workers came out on strike joining 1 million locked out miners.

The effect was a virtual shutdown in the economy with no movement of goods and factories closed.

As Eric Rudsdale wrote in his diary, there were no newspapers and only the government’s British Gazette and the TUC’s British Worker were produced with very limited distribution.

The Colchester Gazette and the East Anglian Daily Times were only able to produce single issues on one broadsheet during the nine days of the strike.

The government enrolled volunteers in the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies (OMS) a body set-up to keep services running in the event of strikes through using civilian volunteers who would drive buses and trains and work in docks and power stations.

Richard Taylor of West Mersea contacted the TUC with his family history after the Gazette's appeal.

Richard recalls his father Charles, then a 19-year-old student at Cambridge University, volunteered on the railways and cycled the 18 miles to Ely to run a signal box for the duration of the strike.

His father was sent a letter of thanks by the Chief General Manger of the London and North Eastern Railway.

Despite the best effort of volunteers, the strike meant the trains stopped running and the movement of goods, including food, came to a halt.

Eric’s diary entries note the disruption caused locally and there was also considerable violence between strikers, police, and volunteers.

On May 5, Eric Rusdale wrote: “Yesterday there were riots at Ipswich.

“Cranfields lorries were overturned and the flour thrown about. I went down the Hythe this evening. I have never seen such gangs of thorough looking scoundrels before.”

Eric clearly was not impressed with the strikers, but a report from the Colchester Trade Union Council (TUC) said: “Local organisation worked very well.

“Had a car full time to send out speakers and pickets to outlying places. Also, many motorcycle runners.

“Arrests and Defence. - No arrests. All steady here. No specials. Own pickets for meetings. Only police sent asked for by us.”

The Harwich TUC reports were similar but added: “The BBC had a most demoralising effect on our womenfolk, which reacted on their men.”

Despite the solidity and effectiveness of the strike the TUC’s heart was never really in it.

Increasingly nervous that things were getting out of hand they met with the government on May 12 to say the strike was to be unconditionally called off.

The government refused to give guarantees over victimisation of strikers and would not even promise that the Royal Commission’s proposals would be respected.

Eric seems to have had mixed feelings about the strike.

On May 13, he wrote: “The trams are back worse luck, but the railways refuse to go back unless every man is reinstated.

“The miners are still out and causing trouble.”

He may have been unhappy about the return of the trams because it meant he had to go back to school.

Colchester Trades Union Council were extremely unhappy about the strike being called off, sending a telegram to the TUC on the same date:

“Demand resumption of general strike until satisfaction secured.”

The General Strike of 1926 is a largely forgotten event today but was considered hugely significant at the time.

In his autobiography years later, the conservative MP Duff Cooper, said: “[The General Strike] threatened the survival of parliamentary government and brought the country nearer to revolution than it has ever been.”

The Colchester Trades Union Council is holding a 100th anniversary event on Monday May 4 at 2pm at the Headgate Theatre.

There is to be an exhibition featuring local and national items, a panel of speakers, readings from Eric Rudsdale’s diary, and a documentary film made in the early 1970s and recently unearthed in the archive of award-winning Platform Films.