ABSTRACT
Nor was Baldwin troubled with the industrial unrest which culminated in the General Strike during his first administration. The Depression and the decline of the Distressed Areas made a return to such unrest very unlikely. Not until 1937 was there anything like the industrial unrest of the 1920s and this took place mainly outside the traditional centres of militancy. The London Transport strike of 1937 was an unofficial protest by the Communist-led Busmen’s Rank and File Movement against agreements reached between London Transport and the busmen’s own union, the Transport and General Workers.2 On the Nottinghamshire coalfield the strike at Harworth against the breakaway ‘Spencer Union’ was also led by Communists and ended with the imprisonment of one of their leaders, Mick Kane. After 1932 it was not until 1937 that three million working days were again to be lost in industrial disputes, compared with 162 million days in 1926 and an average of 24 million days per year between 1918 and 1926.
