From Jacobin:
"The general strike was 'the greatest effort the British workers had ever made,' wrote the historian and economist G. D. H. Cole. One hundred years ago on May 4, 1926, a million British workers walked off their jobs.
"These workers struck in sympathy with miners — more than a million of them, who had been locked out by their employers after refusing to accept cuts in pay, in some places as much as 25 percent. And they had refused to work longer hours, publicly declaring their demand: 'Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day.'
"The strike was called by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), the British federation of trade unions. The General Council’s mission was to set up a negotiating committee with employers and defend the pay of the miners. Ernest Bevin, the general secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, speaking for the council, implored 'every man and woman . . . to fight for the soul of labor and the salvation of the miners.' He added, 'No person in the first grade must go to work at starting time on Tuesday morning; that is to say if a settlement has not been found.'
"The government, led by conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin, set the conflict in motion by ending temporary subsidies to the mining employers...."
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