For the Benefit of Stroud Food Bank
For the benefit of Stroud Food Bank A match to honour and give thanks to those who struck a chord and blow This day a hundred years ago From North and South and West and East Again The Strikers face Police With helmets and flat caps they’ll play In mem’ry...
Plymouth Strikers v Police 1926
Plymouth Strikers v Police 1926 Imagine the scene if you are able: A procession of some 4,000 people, With union banners and a brass band (The day after the same number of people Battled with police when ‘volunteers’ Attempted to break the General Strike, By taking...
The Importance of Paddington
The Importance of Paddington The government knew that if it were to defeat the unions and end the strike, it had to guarantee food supplies reaching the metropolis. The Docks were problematic from the government’s point of view: working-class, unionised and...
The Ghosts of Strikemas Past
The Ghosts of Strikers Past As a boy, I grew up with parents and aunts and uncles and grand parents periodically moaning about strikes on the railways. We were a Daily Express household. But I thought no-one goes on strike at the drop of a hat, and, as a teenager, I...
Proust, T.S. Eliot and a Municipal Rubbish Tip in Swindon
Proust, T.S. Eliot and a Municipal Rubbish Tip in Swindon I’d written the following for the Bristol Radical History Festival April 2026 for a scheduled talk: ‘A Railway Town and the General Strike: Nine Days in Swindon in May 1926 Swindon was a proud GWR town...
Stroud Library and the General Strike
The Stroud Journal May 7 1926 The General Strike Jottings by Jonathan The general strike hit Stroud Public Library a blow from which it will recover, but which for the moment has left it almost breathless, or speechless. No more, do the out-of-work enter its...