The General Strike

Rating:
Summary: A well researched and well presented book
Review: I found this book particularly interesting for two reasons. First, my father, then a medical student, drove a tram in Hull during the General Strike, as a strike breaker. I doubt if I would have done the same, but the era was very different then. Undergraduates were far more "jaunty", and the atmosphere of fun and games on their part comes across in the book. But the other difference is that the owners (and by implication the government) were trying to force longer hours and pay cuts on the miners (and in the end they succeeded): a different era indeed.

My second reason for being interested is that my thirty two year career in personnel management brought me into frequent contact with trade unions. Unfortunately that included people of the Arthur Cook and Herbert Smith "nowt doing" mentality, which in this case, and others, contributed to a humiliating defeat for the workforce in question. There is an interesting parallel with the Thatcher-Scargill confrontation of twenty years ago.

Not many people come out of this with much credit on either side, except perhaps Sir Herbert Samuel, and possibly to some degree Stanley Baldwin.

The book is well researched, well written and comprehensive. For example it includes extracts on the churches, the press, and sport and entertainment. Even football, a no go area for so many English writers, is included. The "Six Questions Answered" piece at the end is masterful, and the book is impartial and surprisingly undated considering that it was written in 1957.