Реферат: General Strike Of 1926 Essay Research Paper

industrial relations was not altered by the General Strike. The only thing that

really changed was the Labour movement’s rhetoric style and as Laybourn

Emphasised, the isolation of the rank and file activists from the trade union

officials and therefore the final decline of the shop stewards’ movement.

However, there is little doubt that the 1920s saw a transition of the whole

Labour movement towards the separation of the political and the industrial

spheres, collaboration and moderation. At the end of the 1920s the Labour Party

was much stronger and even the trade unions, despite their defeat in the General

Strike and their reduction in both finances and members, were now much more

effective. The General Strike, of course, played an important role in this

transition, but more for its final consolidation than as a crucial watershed.

Moreover, its origin and its failure seem today like a paradigm of this

transition. Nevertheless, in the long term the General Strike left some marks

upon the Labour movement, which determined its future fate. Most importantly,

after defeat the miners lost their crucial position within the Labour movement

and great bitterness and frustration emerged among the miners in particular, but

also within the Labour movement as a whole.

Bibliography:

Burgess, Keith: The Challenge of Labour. Shaping British Society 1850-1930,

London 1980.

Clegg, Hugh Armstrong: A History of British Trade Unions since 1889. Volume

II 1911-1933, Oxford 1989.

Jacques, Martin: Consequences of the General Strike, in: Skelley, Jeffrey

(ed.): The General Strike 1926, Lon-don 1976.

Laybourn, Keith: a History of British Trade Unionism. Ch. 5: Trade Unionism

during the Inter-War Years 1918-1939, Gloucestershire 1992.

Mason, A.: The Government and the General Strike, 1926, in: International

Review of Social History, XIV 1969.

Morris, Margaret: The British General Strike 1926, The Historical association