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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