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Stroud and the General Strike (Long Version)

STROUD and the 1926 GENERAL STRIKE Stroud, despite its half-mythologised reputation as a radical town – that ‘Mill Town in the Cotswolds’ – has more often than not voted in a Conservative candidate as M.P. And it might help us feel the pulse of Stroud in the General Strike by first looking at the general election results after the end of the Great War. As a historian whose art and practice revolves around footpaths and footprints rather than footnotes, I wandered into Stroud Library at the end of August 2025 with some trepidation. In addition, I’m well known for my lack of dexterity and practical common sense – so the thought of successfully fitting and revolving microfiche, then trying to read tiny font size newsprint with the declining eyesight of a septuagenarian...

Sapperton 1926 and the General Strike

When my father grew old, his grasp for words became slower and his frustration greater. We sometimes took him for a car ride around his Gloucestershire haunts. We would end at a pub, often in Frampton Mansell, and he would sit, making a half pint last forever, with a...

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1926 with Nock and Potts on the GWR

The GWR and the General Strike May 2nd Sir Felix Pole GWR General Manager sent the following message to all GWR stations and departments: ‘The National Union of Railwaymen have intimated that railwaymen have been asked to strike without notice tomorrow night. Each...

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GWR Voices for Performance

The Voice of C.R. Clinker (clerk at Bristol) It would be wrong to give the impression that the General Strike was anything but a very serious calamity. Yet to a young man in his twenties, with only three years’ service, it provided an interlude in daily routine and a...

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The GWR 1926

  The GWR and the General Strike in Gloucestershire   May 2nd Sir Felix Pole GWR General Manager sent the following message to all GWR stations and departments: ‘The National Union of Railwaymen have intimated that railwaymen have been asked to strike...

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General Strike Chronology

March 1926: The Samuel Commission on the Coal Industry issues its long -awaited report: the coal industry should be reorganised but not nationalised; the subsidy for miners’ wages that had been paid for nine months to avert a strike in 1925 should end on April 30th....

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The Workers’ Bulletin

Tuesday May 4th, The Workers’ Bulletin   Congratulations to the workers of Great Britain! Nothing finer has ever been seen … The stoppage is complete. The wanton brutality of the Government and the coal-owners in their combined endeavour to force a reduction of wages...

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