ABSTRACT
The general strike of 1926 was a sorry business. A General Strike, even if its object is purely to aid a body of workers engaged in an industrial struggle, is necessarily a challenge to the Government in power. The General Council, indeed, had clearly never meant the stoppage to occur: its members had supposed that, in 1926 as in 1920 and in 1925, the mere threat would be enough to bring the Government to terms—at the very least, to a compromise which the miners could be forced to accept. Mond thereupon formed an unofficial group of leading employers and approached the General Council of the Trades Union Congress with a proposal to meet its members in order to discuss the future relations of employers and workers with a view to the promotion of Industrial Peace. Members dropped out of the Trade Unions by thousands, and those who remained had little fight left in them.
