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The British media is filled with references to the 1926 General Strike ahead of the national rail strikes planned for this week.

Rail strike will bring Summer of Discontent and biggest UK industrial action since 1926, says the Daily Mail. Britain could face first nationwide general strike in 100 years, the Sun. The Times writes, union leaders prepare for a summer of discontent not seen since the 1926 General Strike; the Daily Mirror, The threat of the biggest industrial action to hit Britain since 1926 is looming.

Manuel Cortes of the TSSA white collar rail union said, I dont think we will have seen anything like it since the 1926 General Strike. Rail, Maritime and Transport union General Secretary Mick Lynch has told the BBC, I would take a general strike if we could get one.

At times of acute social tension, history becomes a battleground. Workers are pushed to draw on the experiences of previous battles. The ruling class strives to distort the past to prevent them from doing so. It is aided by the labour bureaucracy and their pseudo-left advocates who seek to cover up their record of sellouts and betrayals.

There are few more bitterly contested historical experiences than the general strike of 1926, a decisive moment in the history of the British and international working class. Begun on May 3 and officially lasting nine days, it was the first and remains the only general strike ever to have taken place in the UK. The action was launched in response to a massive attack on the wages of Britains 1.2 million coal miners, amid a period of widespread labour unrest. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) in charge of the strike was terrified by its revolutionary potential and worked to bring it to an end, succeeding on May 12 and enforcing a crushing defeat.

We are republishing a lecture delivered in August 2007 by Chris Marsden, the National Secretary of the Socialist Equality Party, Stalin, Trotsky and the 1926 British general strike.

The lecture examines the strike primarily from the standpoint of the disastrous line pursued by the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) under the direction of the Communist International led by Joseph Stalin and his allies. Through its actions, the potential for a revolutionary confrontation between the British working class and the Conservative government of Stanley Baldwin was squandered.

The mechanisms for the betrayal of the strike were the Anglo-Russian Committee and the TUC General Council. The Committee was established in April 1925 after a TUC delegation visited Soviet Russia in November-December 1924, pressured by the rank-and-file. Under the direction of the conservative, opportunist faction in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union led by Stalin, it was transformed into a left cover for the left trade union leaders and the entire Trades Union Congress and Labour Party bureaucracy.

Stalins line, Marsden summarises, was based on:

1) Deep skepticism about the possibility of revolution, as evidenced by his assertion of a new period of capitalist stabilization.

2) A turn away from the task of building the Communist Party in favour of opportunist alliances with the trade union bureaucracy.

3) The assertion that these forces could eventually be pushed to the left by militant pressure and act as a substitute for the party.

4) The abandonment or diminution of criticism of Moscows allies, at least of the lefts, and a refusal to draw any practical conclusions even when it became impossible to remain silent.

Under the CPGB-inspired slogan, All Power to the General Council, the left leaders of the National Minority Movement in the trade unions allowed the TUC to lead the strike to defeat. For the working class, the consequences were devastating, clearing the way for the ruling classs assault on the mining industry and then its vicious response to the Great Depression of 1929.

Today, the trade unions are hollowed-out corporatist syndicates, which have abandoned even a limited defence of their members social interests with the onset of globalisation in the 1980s.

Rising opposition in the working class to the betrayals of the unions must become an active political and organisational break, with rank-and-file committees of workers seizing control of the rail and other disputes from the bureaucrats desperate to demobilise them. This requires a new political perspective and programme on which to wage the class struggle. The lessons of the 1926 General Strikeabove all the need to ruthlessly expose the left talkers, reject any conception of the bureaucracy being pushed to the left and instead build an independent, socialist, revolutionary leadershipare essential for the preparation of a renewed offensive of the British and international working class.

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The British General Strike of May 1926 remains, after the passage of more than 80 years, a defining moment in the history of the workers movement. Its lessons are essential for the development of a revolutionary strategy, not just in Britain but the world over.

The general strike was an event that should have signaled the beginning of a pronounced development towards revolutionary socialism by British workers and a political and organizational rupture with the trade union and Labour Party bureaucracy. The strike had the potential to develop as a revolutionary confrontation between capital and labour. From its first days it involved millions of workers, including more than one million miners.

Yet for the most part, historians portray the strike as an exceptional episode in the otherwise reformist, law-abiding and pacific development of the workers movement in Britaina society characterized by sharp class antagonisms but ones which can be resolved through compromise within the framework of parliamentary democracy.

This interpretation is aided by the writings of the labour historians of a social democratic and Stalinist pedigree, all of whom insist that revolution was either never a possibility or, if the danger did present itself, its realization would have been the greatest disaster ever visited upon the British people. Had such a terrible outcome occurred, they claim, those responsible would have been the Tory grandees, whose incendiary actions risked undermining the efforts to secure an industrial settlement acceptable to both sides.

As a recent book,A Very British Strike, 3 May-12 May 1926, byGuardianjournalist Anne Perkins, claims, To a large extent, Britains General Strike in 1926 was an almost accidental by-product of the fear of revolution; in a calmer atmosphere, there might have been no catalyst.

It was supposedly a terrible misunderstanding, resulting from an over-reaction domestically to a perceived threat that was actually external.

This picture is usually backed up with anecdotes about football matches between strikers and the police (which actually took place, courtesy of the union leadersthe strikers won 2-1), and about strike-breakers who were a comical assortment of students, members of the Womens Institute and Colonel Blimp types. Above all, the argument for the strike being an unfortunate incident rests upon its short duration and the subsequent course of development of the working class.

In fact, it was the estimation of the dangers inherent in the strike made by governing representatives of the British bourgeoisie, and not their latter-day interpreters, which was correct. It was one shared by the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party leaders, who responded by selling out the strike after just nine days, leaving the miners to fight alone until they suffered defeat.

It was the rejection by the Communist Party of a revolutionary perspective, in favour of tailing the TUC General Council and the lefts, in particular, which politically disarmed the working class and facilitated this historic betrayal. The Stalin faction of the Soviet Communist Party and the Comintern imposed this line on the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).

Stalin and his allies drew from the defeat in Germany in 1923 the conclusion that capitalism was entering into a period of stabilisation in which there was no real chance of a revolutionary development in Europe. The central task was, therefore, to safeguard the Soviet Union from imperialist attack.

In Britain, this opportunist course was to take the form of the Anglo-Russian Committee established in 1925an alliance between the Russian trade unions and the TUC made to ensure mutual aid and support between trade unionists in the two countries, oppose war and encourage friendly relations between Britain and the USSR.

This perspective was opposed by the Left Opposition, formed by Leon Trotsky in 1923.

In estimating the significance of the general strike and its betrayal, it is necessary to pose the question as to whether a pre-revolutionary situation existed in Britain.

Stalin denied any such possibility. Elaborating on his perspective of building socialism in one country and his struggle against Trotsky, he declared on February 10, 1926, Well, as the victory of the revolution in the West is rather late in coming, nothing remains for us to do, apparently, but to loaf around... from the support of the workers of the West to the victory of the revolution in the West is a long, long way...

What was Trotskys position on the political situation in Britain and the policy of the Stalin faction? He explains in his autobiographyMy Life:

Englands fate after the war was a subject of absorbing interest. The radical change in her world position could not fail to bring about changes just as radical in the inner-correlation of her forces. It was clear that even if Europe, including England, were to restore a certain social equilibrium for a more or less extended period, England herself could reach such an equilibrium only by means of a series of serious conflicts and shake-ups. I thought it probable that in England, of all places, the fight in the coal industry would lead to a general strike. From this I assumed that the essential contradiction between the old organizations of the working class and its new historic tasks would of course be revealed in the near future. During the winter and spring of 1925, while I was in the Caucuses, I wrote a book on thisWhitherEngland?The book was aimed essentially at the official conception of the Politbureau, with its hopes of an evolution to the left by the British General Council and of a gradual and painless penetration of communism into the ranks of the British Labour Party and trade unions.

Trotsky added, ...within a few months the strike of the coal miners became a general strike. I had not expected such an early confirmation of my forecast.

In the May 24, 1925 introduction to the US edition ofWhither England, published later as Where is Britain Going?, Trotsky wrote:

The conclusion which I reach in my study is that Britain is approaching, at full speed, an era of great revolutionary upheavals... Britain is moving towards revolution because the epoch of capitalist decline has set in. And if culprits are to be sought, then in answer to the question who and what are propelling Britain along the road to revolution we must say: not Moscow, but New York.

Such a reply might seem paradoxical. Nevertheless, it corresponds wholly to reality. The powerful and ever-growing world pressure of the United States makes the predicament of British industry, British trade, British finance and British diplomacy increasingly insoluble and desperate.

The United States cannot help striving towards expansion on the world market, otherwise excess will threaten its own industry with a stroke. The United States can only expand at the expense of Britain.

Coal mining came to be at the centre of the struggle to reorganize British economic and social life. It had been brought under government control during the war and was heavily subsidised.

In the face of fierce global competition for markets, particularly with the resumption of production in the Ruhr, government subsidies had to endeven at the risk of provoking ferocious opposition from the working class.

The conservatism and gradualism that permeated the labour movement in Britain are subjected to scathing critique by Trotsky. But he also knew that the objective basis of these featuresthe domination of an aristocracy of labour and the deliberate fostering of class collaboration by the ruling classwas collapsing along with Britains global hegemony.

The radicalization of the British working class had already manifested itself immediately after the war, with three times as many strike days between 1919 and 1921 as in the pre-war years.

But this militant wave had rescinded after Black Friday, April 15, 1921, when the leadership of the rail and transport unions reneged on their Triple Alliance commitment to strike in support of the miners.

Large numbers of workers ripped up their union cards in disgust, and they were determined that no such betrayal would take place in futurea key reason, along with the rejection of any compromise by the government, why five years later the TUC felt compelled to call a general strike.

The working class had looked to a political solution, returning a minority Labour government in 1924. That government was brought down as a result of an anti-communist witch-hunt after only nine months.

The militant and revolutionary temper of the working class was also expressed in the growing influence of the Communist Party of Great Britain, formed in 1920. The CPGB, which had only 4,000 members in 1923, formed the National Minority Movement (NMM) in the trade unions, which in the ensuing years grew to embrace around a quarter of the total membership of the unions and succeeded in electing Arthur James Cook as leader of the miners union in 1924. It also formed the National Left-Wing Movement in the Labour Party in 1925, campaigning for the right to affiliate and against Labours expulsion of Communists.

Communists had succeeded in becoming trade union delegates to Labour constituency committees and the Labour Party conference. At the 1923 conference there were 430 Communist delegates, and in the December 1923 general election the CP put forward nine candidates, seven of whom stood for the Labour Party. The CP candidates received 66,500 votes. TheWorkers Weekly was by then selling 50,000 copies, more than any other socialist weekly.

As Trotsky was finishingWhitherEngland?, the coal owners were pushing for a head-on confrontation with the miners. But the Conservative government of Stanley Baldwin decided that it was not ready, and on July 31, 1925,Red Friday, it backed down and granted a further subsidy to the mine owners to postpone demands for massive wage cuts and restructuring.

Over the next nine months the ruling class made concerted preparations for a general conflict with the working class. It set up the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies (OMS) to head strike-breaking operations, including the training of military forces and the recruitment of civilian volunteers. The OMS became an official home for virtually every fascist and far-right element in Britain. The Emergency Powers Act of 1920 allowed for the arrest without warrant of anyone even suspected of being guilty of an offence and for searches without warrant and by force if necessary. The secretary of state was empowered to use the armed forces at his discretion.

Winston Churchill was then Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was to play the key role in working to crush the general strike, alongside Home Secretary William Joynson-Hicks.

On October 14, 1925, police raided the national and London headquarters of the CPGB, the Young Communist League, the NMM and theWorkers Weekly. Twelve of its leaders were arrested in totaleight then, four laterincluding Willie Gallacher, Harry Pollitt, and Robin Page Arnottalmost the entire political bureau. They were imprisoned and charged with sedition and inciting others to mutiny under an act dating from 1797. They remained in jail for six months or a year, and most were still incarcerated when the general strike began.

A total of 167 miners from the South Wales Miners Federation were also brought to trial in relation to a strike in July and August. Fifty were sent to prison.

The arrest of the CP leaders evoked mass protests. There were marches, one of 15,000, to Wandsworth Prison every weekend and a rally at Queens Hall, London on March 7, described by Labours George Lansbury as one of the biggest meetings ever held in London. Lansbury noted that Labour MPs at the meeting used seditious language to challenge the home secretary to arrest them.

Some 300,000 signatures were gathered on a petition demanding the release of the 12, and one CPGB prisoner, Wally Hannington, was elected to the executive committee of the London Trades Council.

At the heart of the advances made by the CPGB was a political line directing the party to the working class and to a challenge for leadership against the trade union and Labour bureaucracy. This policy was based on the line developed by the Comintern in 1921 under the slogan, To the masses. But the success of such a challenge depended above all on exposing the pretensions of the bureaucracys left-talking representatives.

While right-wingers like Walter Citrine and Jimmy Thomas of the National Union of Railwaymen were explicit opponents of communism, lefts like Alonzo Swales of the engineering union, Alfred Purcell of the furnishing trades and George Hicks of the bricklayers cuddled up to the CPGB and spouted radical and even Marxist rhetoric in order to better deceive the working class.

Purcell was president of the TUC and Bromley its secretary. Their election was a measure of the militant mood in the trade unions. Purcell had joined the CPGB in its earliest days, along with Miners Federation leader A.J. Cook. Both left soon after and established a degree of independence, while maintaining a useful connection to the party that gave them left credentials.

Their most radical statements were usually made on foreign policy questionsopposing war and calling for the establishment of relations with the USSR, issues they felt did not commit them to anything practical and did not cut across their alliance with the right wing. At the 1925 Liverpool Labour Party conference that took the decision to exclude Communists from Labour membership, they said nothing.

It was on the lefts initiative that the TUC Congress of 1924 decided to send a delegation to visit Russia in November-December. The visit led to the formation of the Anglo-Russian (Unity) Committee in April 1925.

Trotsky had not opposed the formation of the Anglo Russian Committee. It was, he said, correct to take advantage of the actual leftward shift in the working class to which the lefts were rhetorically adapting themselves. But the task was to expose the TUC lefts and, in so doing, wage a struggle against the entire bureaucracy and thereby build the influence of the Communist Party.

The Stalinist line was the polar opposite of such a perspective. As Trotsky explained inOn the Draft Programme of the Cominternin 1928, The point of departure of the Anglo-Russian Committee, as we have already seen, was the impatient urge to leap over the young and too slowly developing Communist Party. This invested the entire experience with a false character even prior to the general strike.

The Anglo-Russian Committee was looked upon not as an episodic bloc at the top which would have to be broken and which would inevitably and demonstratively be broken at the very first serious test in order to compromise the General Council. No, not only Stalin, Bukharin, Tomsky and others, but also Zinoviev, saw in it a long lasting co-partnership, an instrument for the systematic revolutionisation of the English working masses, and if not the gate, at least an approach to the gate through which would stride the revolution of the English proletariat. The further it went, the more the Anglo-Russian Committee became transformed from an episodic alliance into an inviolable principle standing above the real class struggle. This became revealed at the time of the general strike.

To sum up, Stalins line was based on:

Zinoviev declared in 1924 at the Fifth Congress of the Comintern, In Britain we are now going through the beginning of a new chapter in the Labour movement. We do not know exactly whence the communist mass party of Britain will come, whether only through the Stewart-MacManus door [i.e., the CPGBBob Stewart and Arthur MacManus were CPGB leaders] or through some other door.

Trotsky presents a withering sketch of the Stalin factions stance and political calculations inMy Life:

Stalin, Bukharin, Zinovievin this question they were all in solidarity, at least in the first periodsought to replace the weak British Communist Party by a broader current which had at its head, to be sure, not members of the party, but friends, almost Communists, at any rate, fine fellows and good acquaintances. The fine fellows, the solid leaders, did not, of course, want to submit themselves to the leadership of a small, weak Communist Party. That was their full right; the party cannot force anybody to submit himself to it. The agreements between the Communists and the lefts (Purcell, Hicks and Cook) on the basis of the partial tasks of the trade union movement were, of course, quite possible and in certain cases unavoidable. But on one condition: the Communist Party had to preserve its complete independence, even within the trade unions, act in its own name in all the questions of principle, criticize its left allies whenever necessary, and in this way, win the confidence of the masses step by step.

This only possible road, however, appeared too long and uncertain to the bureaucrats of the Communist International. They considered that by means of personal influence upon Purcell, Hicks, Cook and the others (conversations behind the scenes, correspondence, banquets, friendly back-slapping, gentle exhortations), they would gradually and imperceptibly draw the left opposition (the broad current) into the stream of the Communist International. To guarantee such a success with greater security, the dear friends (Purcell, Hicks and Cook) were not to be vexed, or exasperated, or displeased by petty chicanery, by inopportune criticism, by sectarian intransigence, and so forth... But since one of the tasks of the Communist Party consists precisely of upsetting the peace of and alarming all centrists and semi-centrists, a radical measure had to be resorted to by actually subordinating the Communist Party to the Minority Movement. On the trade union field there appeared only the leaders of this movement. The British Communist Party had practically ceased to exist for the masses.

This was the cardinal political betrayal of the Stalin clique. InLessons of October, Trotsky had warned:

Without a party, apart from a party, over the head of a party, or with a substitute for a party, the proletarian revolution cannot conquer. That is the principal lesson of the past decade. It is true that the English trade unions may become a mighty lever of the proletarian revolution; they may, for instance, even take the place of workers soviets under certain conditions and for a certain period of time. They can fill such a role, however, not apart from a Communist party, and certainly not against the party, but only on the condition that communist influence becomes the decisive influence in the trade unions.

In an article published in theCommunist Internationalshortly after the General Strike,Problems of the British Labour Movement, Trotsky quoted passages from his correspondence of January-March 1926, immediately prior to the general strike, in which he explained, The opposition movement headed by the lefts, semi-lefts and the extreme lefts reflects a profound social shift in the masses.

However, he continued:

The woolliness of the British lefts together with their theoretical formlessness, and their political indecision not to say cowardice makes the clique of MacDonald, Webb and Snowden master of the situation, which in turn is impossible without Thomas. If the bosses of the British Labour Party form a bridle placed upon the working class, then Thomas is the buckle into which the bourgeoisie inserts the reins...

The present stage in the development of the British proletariat, where its overwhelming majority responds sympathetically to the speeches of the lefts and supports MacDonald and Thomas in power, is not of course accidental. And it is impossible to leap over this stage. The path of the Communist Party, as the future great party of the masses, lies not only through an irreconcilable struggle against capitals special agency in the shape of the Thomas-MacDonald clique, but also through the systematic unmasking of the left muddleheads by means of whom alone MacDonald and Thomas can maintain their positions.

Trotskys urgings were to be suppressed, rejected and denounced, as the Comintern insisted that the Communist Party of Great Britain subordinate itself to the alliance with the Trades Union Congress and its left flank, making the central demand of the party and its press, All power to the [TUC] General Council.

To understand just what a shift was being imposed, we can look at what the CPGB was saying prior to having been brought firmly behind the new line by the Comintern. There were already dangers in the conception of the National Minority Movement, but nevertheless the contrast is stark.

In August 1924, the first annual conference of the National Minority Movement called for the setting up of factory committees and for a strengthening of the powers of the General Council as a weapon against sectionalism. But this was combined with a call for a struggle against the union tops. A resolution stated, It must not be imagined that the increase of the powers of the General Council will have the tendency to make it less reactionary. On the contrary, the tendency will be for it to become even more so... We can guard against the General Council becoming a machine of the capitalists, and can really evolve from the General Council a Workers General Staff, only by, in the first place and fundamentally, developing a revolutionary class consciousness amongst the Trade Union membership...

Writing in 1924 of the role of the lefts in the TUC in calling for relations with the USSR and making anti-war speeches, John Ross Campbell warned, It would be a suicidal policy, however, for the Communist Party and the Minority Movement to place too much reliance on what we have called the official Left wing... It is the duty of our Party and the Minority Movement to criticize its weakness relentlessly and endeavor to change the muddled and incomplete left-wing viewpoint of the more progressive leaders into a revolutionary viewpoint. But the revolutionary workers must never forget that their main activity must be devoted to capturing the masses.

Rajani Palme Dutt wrote in 1925, A Left wing in the working class movement must be based upon the class struggle, or it becomes only a manoeuvre to confuse the workers.

He stated that the greatest danger of the coming period was the ability of the lefts, owing to the weakness of revolutionary development in England, and to the authority and prestige of their positions, to win the ear of the masses with a handful of phrases and promises, so as to gather the rising movement of the masses to themselves and then to dissipate it in a comic opera fiasco... The Communist Party must conduct an unceasing ideological warfare with the left, exposing from the outset every expression that betrays confusion, ambiguity, vain bravado, frivolousness, opposition to actual struggle and practical subjection to the right wing.

Even on the setting up of the Anglo-Russian committee, theWorkers Weeklycommented, Unity that only means a polite agreement between leaders is useless unless it is backed up by mass pressure. Unity that confines itself to negotiations between Amsterdam and the Russian Unions only touches on the fringe of the question... Vast masses of workers everywhere are moving slowly forward. Those leaders who stand in the way are going to be swept aside. The class struggle cannot be limited to an exchange of diplomatic letters.

The political struggle against the lefts was linked to a revolutionary orientation. After Red Friday, 1925, J.T. Murphy wrote that the general strike had been postponed but was still inevitable: But let us be clear what a general strike means. It can only mean the throwing down of the gauntlet to the capitalist state, and all the power at its disposal. Either that challenge is a gesture... or it must develop its challenge into an actual fight for power...

Under the tutelage of Stalin, Zinoviev and company, such criticisms were abandoned and the revolutionary perspective previously advanced was denounced as ultra-leftism and Trotskyism.

Stalin in turn identified revolution with the TUC General Councilinsisting in January 1925 that the incipient split between the General Council of the TUC and the Labour Party was a sign that something revolutionary... is developing in Britainor rejected any possibility of revolution, writing in Pravda in March that year that capital had extricated itself from the quagmire of the post-war crisis, resulting in a sort of lull.

This was taken up by the CPGB. A resolution denouncing Trotsky was sent to Moscow and an article by Bukharin attacking Trotsky was published in theCommunist Reviewfor February 1925, with an editorial comment describing it as a brilliant contribution to the theory and practice of Leninism.

In March and April, a joint plenum of the Comintern executive and the central committee of the Soviet Communist Party was convened to organize a campaign against Trotskyism. Tom Bell reported that the CPGB had no hesitation in associating itself with the Soviet party leadership.

TheWorkers Weeklyof June 5, 1925 reported the CPGBs Congress as giving no countenance to the revolutionary optimism of those who hold that we are on the eve of immediate vast revolutionary struggles. It recognized that capitalism had stabilized itself temporarily.

The second annual conference of the National Minority Movement in August made its central demand the granting of full powers to the TUC General Council, with hardly any qualification.

Dutt, writing in November and seeking to excuse the left allies of the Comintern for not having opposed the expulsions of Communists from the Labour Party in 1925, explained that they lacked self-confidence. To overcome this weakness was an essential task for the future, he declared.

Three days before the general strike erupted, on April 30 1926, Murphy wrote on the front page of theWorkers Weekly, Our party does not hold the leading positions in the Trade Unions. It is not conducting the negotiations with the employers and the government. It can only advise and place its forces at the service of the workersled by others... To entertain any exaggerated views as to the revolutionary possibilities of this crisis and visions of new leadership arising spontaneously in the struggle is fantastic...

(Quotes taken from M. Woodhouse and B. Pearce,Essays on the History of British Communism, New Park, 1975)

The role of the CP in disarming the working class is underlined by the subsequent statement of Murphy that the shock of the strikes betrayal was too great to make any quick throw-up of a new leadership possible.

So too with the comments of George Hardy, acting secretary of the National Minority Movement during the General Strike, in his memoirs that, Although we knew of what treachery the Right-wing leaders were capable, we did not clearly understand the part played by the so-called Left in the union leadership. In the man they turned out to be windbags and capitulated to the Right Wing. We were taught a major lesson; that while developing a move to the left officially, the main point in preparing for action must always be to develop a class-conscious leadership among the rank and file.

If taken at face value, such statements demonstrate that, bereft of any revolutionary guidance from the CPGB, the working class had no possibility of arming itself against the role of the lefts who were being continually boosted under the Cominterns orders.

The lefts were thus able to play a direct and instrumental role in the betrayal of the strike. The right-winger Thomas of the National Union of Railwaymen was in charge of negotiations with the government and worked deliberately to ensure its defeat. But the lefts allowed him to do so, under conditions where millions had no confidence in the TUC General Council or the Labour Party leadership. The chairman of the Strike Organization Committee was Purcell, while Swales negotiated alongside Thomas with the Baldwin government. Hicks and others also occupied leading posts.

The CPGB leaders succeeded in transforming the party into a left ginger group for the trade union bureaucracy, while the Russian trade unions served as mere advocates of industrial militancy. The entire apparatus of the Communist International was mobilized to deny the need for the general strike to be pursued as a political struggle against the state and to insist that united trade union action alone would bring victory.

As for the CPGB leaders having not been warned about the lefts betrayal, this is a simple lie.

Trotsky wrote on May 6, in the very midst of the strike, in his preface to the second German edition of Where Is Britain Going?: It has never yet been possible to cross a revolutionary stream on the horse of reformism, and a class which enters battle under opportunist leaders is compelled to change them under the enemys fire.

The CPGB sought to suppress these warnings.Where is Britain Going?was not published in England until after the TUCs betrayal.

Brian Pearce was a member of the History Group in the CPGB, alongside E.P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm. He was recruited to the Trotskyist movement by Gerry Healy following Kruschevs secret speech in 1956 and wrote some of the best material on the General Strike and the history of the Communist Party. He notes that the preface cited above to the American edition ofWhere is Britain Going?was omitted, as well as an entire paragraph that includes the words, The most important task for the truly revolutionary participants in the General Strike will be to fight relentlessly against every sign or act of treachery, and ruthlessly to expose reformist illusions.

Thanks to the Comintern, the general strike was headed not merely by people who did not believe in revolution, but by a leadership that was the most convinced and determined opponent of revolution. The TUCs attitude to the strike, and by implication the service rendered to it by the Stalin faction of the Comintern, was summed up by Thomas in Parliament on May 13, the day after the betrayal of the strike. He said, What I dreaded about this strike more than anything else was this: If by any chance it should have got out of the hands of those who would be able to exercise some control, every sane man knows what would have happened... That danger, that fear was always in our minds...

Originally posted here:
The British rail strike and the lessons of the 1926 British General Strike - WSWS

click to enlarge

Photo via DeSantis/Twitter

The DeSantis Education Agenda, subtitled Putting Parents First, Protecting Parents Rights, presents a policy agenda that focuses on student success, parental rights and curriculum transparency.

The DeSantis Education Agenda is a student-first, parent-centered initiative focused on setting Floridas children up for success, ensuring parental rights in education, and combatting the woke agenda from infiltrating public schools, the website contends, setting up a survey for candidates who may want the Governors backing. This statewide agenda is for school board candidates and school board members who are committed to advancing these priorities at the local school board level.

Completing the survey in itself is not tantamount to a coveted endorsement, the websitesays.

Among the questions for survey respondents: Whether they support workforce education, the Governors increases in teacher compensation, or the concept of students being locked out of school or subject to forced masking.

What should your school district do to better prepare students as citizens? another prompt asks.

Another question regards protecting dissent: How will you protect a parents right to publicly disagree with their school board?

Respondents are also probed on critical race theory and the horrors of communism.

DeSantis has put limitations on School Boards with regularity thus far, battling with numerous local bodies about COVID-19 precautions for much of the pandemic.

He signed legislation that puts term limits on School Board members, but lamented the three terms required were one too many, and criticized School Boards and the White House for not listening to parents.

DeSantis said parents asked tough questions of School Boards during the pandemic, and were discouraged from doing so by a Joe Biden administration that likened parents to domestic terrorists.

The Governor said he would politicize School Board races last summer. During a cable television interview, DeSantis vowed to turn his political apparatus against Republican School Board candidates who oppose his educational reforms.

Were not going to support any Republican candidate for School Board who supports critical race theory in all 67 counties or supports mandatory masking of school children, DeSantis told Fox News Dan Bongino.

School Board races in Florida are nonpartisan.

Local elections matter. We are going to get the Florida political apparatus involved so we can make sure theres not a single School Board member who supports critical race theory, DeSantis added.

This post first appeared at Florida Politics.

Originally posted here:
CRT and 'the horrors of communism' among topics in DeSantis' new school board survey - Creative Loafing Tampa

NEWS AND ANALYSIS:

A senior Chinese Communist Party official this week repeated Beijings demand that the United States not seek to overthrow the communist system.

Yang Jiechi, dubbed Tiger Yang for his virulent anti-U.S. positions, made the comment during a lengthy meeting with White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan in Luxembourg on Monday.

The White House provided few public details on the conversation other than to say in a statement the exchange between the two officials was candid, substantive and productive. Candid is often diplomatic code for a harsh verbal exchange.

U.S. secrecy surrounding the discussion reflects what analysts see as increasingly conciliatory policies by the Biden administration toward China. Critics say that the administration has sought to pursue a sporting-like competition with Beijing rather than confronting the Chinese over such contentious issues as Chinas aggressive nuclear buildup, its increasingly threatening military activities toward Taiwan and its continued theft of U.S. data and technology.

The White House statement said the meeting was a follow-up to a telephone call between Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Yang in May. The Luxembourg meeting also touched on regional and global security and U.S.-China relations.

Mr. Sullivan underscored the importance of maintaining open lines of communication to manage competition between our two countries, the statement said.

By contrast, Chinese state media provided much greater detail on Mr. Yangs presentation to the United States, including his admonition that the U.S. change its policies to support Chinese goals, including preservation of the communist system.

Maos Communists came to power in China in 1949 and have used deception and quasi-capitalist means to develop the country. Under President Xi Jinping, communism ideology has been revived and is now being exported as an alternative to the U.S.-led democratic system.

Mr. Yang is a member of the political bureau of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and director of the panels foreign affairs commission.

Both are party positions, reflecting the fact that under Mr. Xi, the formal government has taken a back seat to the party in dealings with the United States, even as bilateral relations have grown increasingly tense in recent years.

The official party outlet Xinhua stated in its report on the meeting that Mr. Yang pressed Mr. Sullivan on a reported promise made by President Biden to Mr. Xi that the United States does not seek a new Cold War or aim to change Chinas system.

Communist Party leaders in recent years have adopted an almost paranoid fear of being overthrown and have accused the CIA and other U.S. institutions of seeking to subvert and ultimately defeat the communist system.

Xinhua said Mr. Yang also pressed Mr. Sullivan on other reported pledges from Mr. Biden, such as that the United States will not oppose China through strengthened regional alliances or by backing Taiwan independence, and will not seek a direct conflict with China.

The Chinese side attaches high importance to these statements, Mr. Yang was quoted by Xinhua as saying.

As for the candid part of the exchange, Xinhua revealed that Mr. Yang criticized the United States for allegedly containing and suppressing China in an all-around way.

Such acts, instead of helping the United States solve its own problems, have plunged China-U.S. relations into a very difficult situation and severely damaged the exchanges and cooperation in bilateral areas, Yang said, the news agency reported.

A senior Biden administration official said Mr. Sullivan did not press China on its military buildup or military provocations near Taiwan, but instead called for China to release Americans detained illegally in China.

The national security advisor pressed for progress on key issues of concern to the United States, in particular, underscoring the need for the release of American citizens wrongfully detained and subjected to exit bans in China, the official said. On this issue, in particular, he stressed this as a personal priority for both himself and for the president.

Asked if Mr. Biden will meet with Mr. Xi in the future, the senior official said, Id expect to see additional potential meetings in the months ahead, but nothing specific [is] planned at this time.

Mr. Sullivan asked Mr. Yang to help address increasingly belligerent behavior by North Korea, including missile launches and a potential nuclear test, the official said.

The official would not say if Mr. Sullivan questioned Mr. Yang on Chinas large-scale buildup of nuclear forces.

According to Xinhua, Mr. Yang told Mr. Sullivan that bilateral relations are at a critical juncture and demanded the United States observe Mr. Xis three demands for mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and what Beijing calls win-win cooperation. Mr. Yang also said China is prepared to work with the United States if it agrees to Mr. Xis demands, but that China firmly opposes using competition to define bilateral ties.

The CCP official told Mr. Sullivan that the United States must correct its strategic perception of China and translate Mr. Bidens commitments about not overthrowing the communist system into concrete actions.

Mr. Yang in particular denounced U.S. support for Taiwan, noting China considers the Taiwan issue an internal affair and that any attempt to undermine national unity would fail. Taiwan is an issue that is the political foundation of U.S.-China ties and, unless handled properly, will have a subversive impact, Mr. Yang said.

Mr. Yang also reportedly hammered Mr. Sullivan on U.S. criticism of China for its crackdown in Xinjiang, repression in Tibet, repression of democracy in Hong Kong and military activities in the South China Sea.

The CCP-controlled outlet Global Times said Mr. Yang demanded the United States follow the advice of pro-China experts like former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and ease bilateral tensions. The outlet said that U.S. arrogance and disregardingChinese demands were to blame for tense relations.

Crazily suppressing China on one hand, and expecting China to cooperate on the other, [is] an extremely selfish idea that has not been realized by the U.S. in the past and will never be realized in the future, the Global Times said.

Russian nuclear threats limit Wests support for Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putins threat to use nuclear weapons against the West in response to the Ukraine war has limited some U.S. and NATO actions toward the conflict, according to a report by a national security think tank.

Russian nuclear threats preceded the Ukraine war but have not abated, said Stephen Blank, a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute and author of the study. These threats influence Western responses to the war since they build upon earlier threats and exercises showing that Russia will use nuclear weapons in a conventional conflict to force acceptance of its terms.

The report by the National Institute for Public Policy argues that the nuclear danger has produced pervasive anxiety that inhibited Western relief efforts in Ukraine, such as derailing calls for a NATO-enforced air exclusion zone over Ukraine or sending advanced warplanes to Kyiv.

Western restraint has encouraged repeated and unrestrained Russian threats of nuclear use that are taken as inherently credible ones, even as Western deterrence is not seen as credible, the report said. This trend destabilizes the balance of deterrence.

Russias nuclear weapons strategy in the Ukraine war seeks to intimidate and deter NATO from reacting, providing Moscow with escalation dominance and thus the strategic initiative and freedom of action throughout all stages of a crisis, the report says.

The overall goal is the creation of a seamless web of threats to Russian enemies from both conventional and nuclear weapons to retain that escalation control.

Nuclear forces exercises and saber-rattling regarding the use of nuclear arms have provided a window on Moscows concept of strategic deterrence in action.

Meanwhile Russia will continue to use its remaining nuclear trump card and other kinetic and non-kinetic instruments to undermine Ukraine, the report states.

The report urges NATO leaders to move faster and more broadly at the conventional force level to undermine the force of Moscows nuclear threats: Otherwise Russia may continue to delude itself into believing that it has actually salvaged something from the debacle it has unleashed upon Ukraine and Russia itself.

Contact Bill Gertz on Twitter at @BillGertz.

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Inside the Ring: China to U.S.: Leave communist system alone - Washington Times

Hong Kongs arrest of 90-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen in May signals Beijings growing oppression of religious freedom in Hong Kong amid its widening clamp down on freedoms in the financial hub, according to Andrew Bremberg, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Hong Kong police on May 11 arrested 90-year-old Zen, former head of the Catholic Church in Hong Kong, along with four other pro-democracy figures allegedly linked to a fund supporting Hong Kong protesters. The arrests were made under the citys national security law, which was imposed by Beijing in June 2020 and has been used to quash dissent in the city.

In several months leading up to his arrest we saw in state media outlets repeated, increased mentions of the [Chinese Communist] Partys concern about the influence that religion was having, Bremberg said in an interview on NTD, an affiliate of The Epoch Times.

This was laying the groundwork for greater crackdowns and arrests, he added.

Zen has long been an advocate of religious and civic freedoms in Hong Kong and mainland China and has spoken out against the communist regimes growing authoritarianism, including its imposition of the national security law and the persecution of Roman Catholics in China.

Bremberg, president of the Washington-based advocacy group Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, said the allegations against Zen were an excuse used by the Chinese regime to detain him.

The Chinese Communist Party can create whatever pretext it wants, as an excuse for any individuals arrest. Weve seen this across the board, he said.

Beijings religious oppression in Hong Kong today was an inevitability, according to Bremberg.

As part of the CCPs broader crackdown on Hong Kong, the destruction of democracy and self-governance in Hong Kong, it obviously now leads to greater religious oppression, he said.

Bremberg noted that communist regimes have a history of arresting and harassing prominent religious leaders.

Throughout the last 100 years of communist regimes weve seen religion, churches and other religious figures have always been viewed as a threat to communism, he said.

The advocate pointed to historical examples of prominent religious leaders arrested by the Soviet regime in Central and Eastern Europe.

He singled out the case of Cardinal Jzsef Mindszenty, the highest Catholic official in Hungary, who was arrested in 1948 and then sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1956, Mindszenty was released during the Hungarian Revolution. The cardinal later fled to the U.S. embassy in Budapest as Soviet troops entered Hungary to crush anti-communist protests. He stayed inside the embassy grounds until 1971 before being exiled to Vienna.

Americans should be concerned about Zens arrest, Bremberg said.

Religious liberty has always been a bedrock of the American way of life, he said, pointing out that the founding of the United States stems from immigrants coming to the United States from Europe seeking the freedom of belief.

Crackdowns on religious liberty are frequently the first sign of increasing persecution and totalitarianism and violations of human rights across the board by any regime, he added.

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Hannah Ng is a reporter covering U.S. and China news.

Originally posted here:
Arrest of 90-Year-Old Catholic Cardinal in Hong Kong Signals Beijing's Increasing Persecution: Former US Ambassador - The Epoch Times

HUAC Chairman Harold Velde left Philadelphia in 1953 with an admission of defeat.

The witnesses refused to talk, Velde said in his closing monologue. Instead, they say nothing. One can only draw the conclusion that, though many witnesses have emphasized that they are not today members of the Communist Party, they do not wish to help destroy the Communist conspiracy.

With that, Velde gaveled the hearings to a close.

HUAC may not have achieved its stated goals in Philadelphia. But it had done something. It upended the lives of the teachers in its crosshairs.

The temptation here is to essentialize to draw a clean narrative from the aftermath.

Did HUAC and the subsequent firings destroy these people? Did it stiffen their resolve?

The answer, as always, falls somewhere in between.

Life was certainly different after HUAC at times uncomfortable or worse. Children of the fired teachers recalled play dates canceled and friendships severed in the wake of the hearings.

I didnt feel people hated me, but its clear they were very scared, said David Drasin, whose father, Sam, was among those fired.

Davids mother, Sylvia, wouldve likely been fired, too, but she died of cancer shortly before the hearings began. The family pressed on because it had to.

For John Ehrenreichs parents, Joe and Freda, the firings were a bump in an already bumpy road.

In the late 1940s, Joe, stricken with tuberculosis, left teaching temporarily and moved to a sanitorium. To make up for the lost income, Freda got a job as a school counselor.

Fredas job was a lifeline for the family, but soon after the HUAC hearings she suffered a serious heart attack and had to quit. Within a year, Joe had been fired and Freda sidelined by ill health.

We were pretty poor, said John. We did continue to get some help from my uncles and from some of the family friends. But things were tight.

The scramble for jobs led the teachers in all sorts of unpredictable directions. Herman Beilan became a traveling salesman. A former teacher named William Soler worked at a dental supply firm. Another, Solomon Haas, became an exterminator. Isadore Reivich got into the dry cleaning business.

For some teachers, the events set off by the HUAC interrogation seemed to throw their lives completely off axis.

English teacher Sophie Elfont lived alone in a small apartment in Philadelphias Germantown neighborhood. She never married or had children. Relatives described her as exceptionally bright and caring, but not well-suited to withstand the attention that came with her firing.

Afterward, her world seemed to narrow.

It was devastating for her, said nephew Mark Elfont.

Another relative told me she scratched out a living working for a clipping service. Shed scour the newspaper every day, cutting out articles for a coterie of clients.

She was able to maintain our independence, but it wasnt easy, her nephew said. She certainly did not have an easy life.

Sophie died in 1987. She was alone, Mark Elfont said so alone that it took about two days before anyone discovered her body.

She had dedicated her body to science, so there was no funeral, said Mark Elfont.

Theres a pull toward the tragic here perhaps as a way to indict the government, to prove how reckless it was in its pursuit of these teachers.

But to leave you with just those stories would be misleading. Because many of the fired teachers had rich, varied lives in the decades that followed.

Nathan Margoliss wife, Adele, wrote several beloved books on sewing.

John Ehrenrichs dad, Joe, had a long career as a technical writer.

The unions last president, Francis Fritz Jennings, became a lauded historian.

Perhaps the most interesting post-HUAC life belongs to one of the few Black teachers fired, Goldie Watson. In the years after, Watson hosted a radio show for homemakers and owned an apparel store.

She also kept a defiant foot in the political world, and worked her way back into the mainstream. In 1967, Philadelphia Mayor James Tate appointed Watson deputy commissioner of records. Shortly afterward, she became the administrator of a prominent urban revitalization program.

In the early 1970s, her political ascent culminated with an ideological twist. Conservative Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo, a persistent foe of political and cultural outsiders, appointed Watson as one of his top deputies.

Its hard to imagine that a Black former Communist would get and take a high-profile job in the Rizzo administration. But professor Nicholas Toloudis thinks Watson saw Rizzo much the same way she saw the Communist Party: a means to an end.

She saw the Communist Party as being a toolbox, said Toloudis. The crowbars and the things in that toolbox were things she would use to pry open the segregated institutions of the United States.

Rizzo was a very different type of toolbox, but one Watson thought she could use in her singular pursuit a pursuit she explained to The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1974:

If youre trying to find out what Im all about its that I decided early on in my life that I was going to use whatever talents I had to help other Black people, Watson said.

Somewhere between the lives of Goldie Watson and Sophie Elfont, youll find the story of the Intille family.

Angelina Intille grew up in South Philadelphia one of 10 children in an immigrant family from Italy. She was also the only one of those 10 to continue her education beyond high school, according to her son, Joe.

The studious Angelina fell in with a mostly Jewish group of kids from the neighborhood. Many of them went on to become teachers, Angelina included. Joe, her son, does not think his mom was an active member of the Communist Party just that she was part of the same crowd.

Joes dad was decidedly not part of that crowd. He was a refinery worker with a tendency to gamble away his paycheck, Joe said. He also physically abused Angelina, according to Joe.

One day in the mid-1940s 1946 or 1947, Joe thinks Angelina gathered up her three boys and moved out while her husband was at work. She moved in with Bessie Stensky, another one of the Philadelphia teachers who ended up testifying before HUAC.

Joe, about 8 years old at the time, suddenly found himself in a world of school-teacher-activists.

The names splashed across the front page of the newspapers in 1953 were the people who helped raise him. People like fired teacher Eleanor Fleet and her husband, Irv a kind of male role model for Joe who got him interested in science and technology.

In February 1954, Angelina Intille and her housemate, Bessie Stensky, were among the second wave of Philadelphia teachers to testify before HUAC during hearings held in Washington. Intille, like the rest of the teachers, had already been suspended from the school district. Later that year, she and the others would permanently lose their jobs.

A single parent, Intille needed work, quickly. She and a few of the other fired teachers found jobs at the Sklar School, which served students with special needs. Another group landed at a progressive independent school in the suburbs called The Miquon School.

Joe, then in high school, made a little extra money working as an exterminator for fired teacher Solomon Haas.

That pattern repeated itself. The fired teachers got jobs together. The kids of fired teachers ended up working for each others parents, hanging out, or even, on one occasion, going to prom together.

HUAC hadnt blown them apart.

It bonded them, said Joe Intille.

Even though the union was in various states of decay, as a network of people, it remained intact well after the Supreme Court ruled against Herman Beilan in 1958.

To have a group like that 50 people, said Joe Intille. Whoever heard of such a thing?

As the next decade dawned, the groups legal luck began to turn.

Angelina Intille, Goldie Watson, and two other teachers had already launched a separate challenge based on the fact that their firings had come in a slightly different order than Beilans.

In 1960, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in their favor and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal. Angelina was free to teach again. And she did just that.

Seven years later, in 1967, the high court took up a case about a group of state university professors in New York who were fired for refusing to sign a loyalty oath. This time, the court reversed the precedent it had established in the early days of the Red Scare all the way back in 1952.

Invoking the concept of academic freedom, the majority said the Constitution did protect teachers like the ones fired in Philadelphia.

It was close. A 5-4 decision. But it meant the saga was over.

A few months later, a tiny article ran on page 17 of The Philadelphia Inquirer: Schools Rehire 4 Who Balked at Red Probe

Most of the teachers had moved on. But a handful applied for reinstatement and went back to work nearly 14 years after theyd been suspended

One of them was Judy Gandys father, Herman Beilan.

Why did he return to the school district that had so publicly fired him? Judy figures money was probably a factor. But her dad also loved teaching.

He was completely committed to teaching. Even when he was not in the classroom, said Judy Gandy. He would teach me at home.

Herman Beilan was in his late 50s by the time he resumed his public school teaching career.

Gandy remembers he would take the city bus to work every morning. And he would bring the newspaper along with him, folded up in quarters so that he could read without taking up too much room or inconveniencing the other riders.

He was trying to occupy his brain, which is kind of standard for him, said Gandy.

Herman Beilan and his friends were fired on the front page of the paper and rehired on page 17.

The world had moved on. In some ways, thats probably why they were re-hired.

By the late 1960s, there were new fronts in the culture war. As time passed, those fronts moved further and further from people like Herman Beilan.

When Beilan died in 1981, the Inquirer ran an obituary on page 31. It didnt mention his firing or the Supreme Court case that bears his name.

Angelina Intille also finished her career as a teacher in Philadelphias public schools. But just because she ended up back where she started, doesnt mean the family came through unscathed.

Her son, Joe, ended up in the Navy stationed, of all places, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where his assignments had a distinctly anti-Communist flavor. When he became a civilian, Joe worked as a technical writer. In the mid-1960s, he says he took a job that required a security clearance which the government then denied him because of his moms past.

The clearance denial cost Joe his job, and he ended up selling insurance for a couple of years to stay afloat. Finally, Joe says a government panel in D.C. agreed to review his case.

Theyre sitting up on this counter up there and Im sitting down on the chair and theyre grilling me about my mother and myself, Joe recalled. Why should I get a clearance?

To get his career back, he made a promise to the U.S. government.

I had to promise them that I would not associate with my mother, Joe said.

Joes older brother joined the Air Force and ended up with the same dilemma needing a security clearance to secure a promotion. For Joes brother, it was a breaking point.

It left a very bad taste in my brothers mouth about my mom, said Joe. He basically held it against my mom and never forgave her.

Even though Joe suffered the same consequences, he felt the opposite.

Im not ashamed of any of this, as a matter of fact, I brag about it because I was proud of my mom, said Joe. She stood by her principles.

As for that promise he made to the government about cutting his mom out of his life? He never intended to keep it.

No. No, Joe said. My mothers my best friend.

Angelina eventually remarried, retired, and moved to Florida.

She died in 2004.

Following a generational trend, many of the teachers retired to South Florida. But in their case, it was more than mere coincidence.

All of them all moved up to Lake Worth and they all moved into the same condo complex, said Joe. It was about 20 people.

The Pine Ridge Condominium Complexes sit just southwest of Palm Beach, a sprawling patchwork of two-story buildings and man-made ponds. Pine Ridge doesnt sound like the type of place where youd find a group of accused Communists from Philadelphia. But in the 1980s and 1990s, you could do just that.

Alan Soler the son of two fired teachers, William and Esther remembers visiting his parents and chuckling to himself as they sat around the pool with their friends reminiscing about the glory days of Communism. With near unanimity, the descendants of the fired teachers say their parents and grandparents remained dedicated to left-wing causes and ideology their entire lives.

Alan found the poolside chatter amusing and a bit hypocritical, given the material pleasures of a South Florida condo complex.

But its also a telling image.

Three or four decades after the government called them a threat to the nation, here they were, lounging in the Florida sun.

Theyd made it through. And theyd made it through together.

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Schooled: Revisiting the Philly school system's Communist purge - WHYY