Swindon and the General Strike
Factory walls can sometimes feel like prison walls,
But I always thought the Factory walls in Swindon
Had a welcoming, warm and friendly feel,
Even in the low sun days of midwinter.
For this was a railway town,
A Great Western Railway Company town,
A paternalistic railway company town,
With swimming baths and a hospital,
And a blue print for the NHS;
A Park for exercise and amusement too,
And the Mechanics Institute
For education, reading and advancement.
The largest engineering works in Western Europe,
310 acres, 14,000 employees,
Two railway stations:
Over 50 million tons of coal passed through Swindon each year:
one fifth of the country’s annual output.
But when I started train spotting, aged six,
In that halcyon summer of 1958,
With my in-built respect for the GWR,
And its Western Region successor,
And all its chocolate and cream nostalgia,
How could I have known about the General Strike,
In Swindon, thirty-two years before?
When we placed pennies on the line,
To see how the Cheltenham Flyer
Would burnish and flatten those spare coins,
And when Sir Felix Pole, Castle class, 5066,
Rode rough shod over those pennies,
How could I have known that Sir Felix
Was a real person from thirty-two years before?
The vindictive GWR General Manager during the General Strike?
To a boy in 1958,
1926 was more like the nineteenth century,
…
But on Sunday, 2 May 1926, there were two contrasting events in Swindon: the Archdeacon, Dr. Talbot, preached a sermon strongly condemning a strike; the Trades Council’s second Council of Action conference worked out agreed responsibilities for the conduct of the strike in Swindon to be put to mass meetings … they moved solidly and enthusiastically into action.
And the strike started solidly in Swindon:
With a meeting of 6,000 in the GWR Park. ‘Telegrams from one union after another were read out’ and this resolution passed: “That this mass meeting of trade unionists pledges itself to carry out the instructions of their executive committees and any duties their local committee may call upon them to do, and to act in no way that would lead to any disturbance.”
Mass meetings of those on strike AND their families followed, with thousands in the GWR Park and an array of recreational and educational activities: football and cricket matches; bowls and darts competitions; concerts, socials and literary events while the Swindon ‘General Council’ dealt with the daily demands of overseeing permits, pickets, speakers etc.
In fact, the strike was so solid that pickets were barely needed,
And with the trams and power station municipally owned,
The mayor declared that no trams would run
And fuses would be removed from the main industrial enterprises.
But an irate Town Clerk sent a report to the Civil Commissioner for the South Midlands district, Major the Rt. Hon Earl Winterton MP who ordered an investigation ‘as the condition of affairs there was serious.’ The mayor told the official that if power were restored probably all the workers at the power station would come out and ‘the town would be plunged into darkness,’ Fourteen naval pensioners were eventually recruited from Portsmouth to break any strike if it should occur at the power station.
But resentment would grow in the town
After an official GWR notice was put up
At the Temple Street NUR HQ;
The notice politicised the strike
As ‘a deep conspiracy against the state’;
And as regards railway re-employment
after the strike’s eventual end:
Loss of position, status, pay,
With the threat of damages, costs, and the sack
For leading trade unionists;
A mass meeting in the GWR Park followed.
Sir Felix Pole regarded the strike meetings held in the park
And the picketing at the main entrance to the railway works
As trespassing on company land.
And he no doubt felt elated when he heard that
The Reverend K Crisford, the curate at St Marks Church by the railway line
Who preached a sermon against the railway companies
and the Government and supported the strikers.
And who after the service walked to the park in his cassock and surplice
to address a massed strike meeting.
was forced to leave his post after the strike had ended,
The only member of the established church’s clergy to openly support the miners.
And how could I have known about all of this,
When one of the first songs I learned at my mother’s knee
Followed these railway lines:
‘Down at the station,
Early in the morning,
See the little engines
All in a row,
Man with a green flag,
Blows upon his whistle,
Peep, peep, peep,
And away we go’.
There was another version in 1926,
Which lampooned the upper-class strike breaking train drivers:
Bristol Bulletin ‘To Heaven by the LMS’
Early in the morning, per broadcast from London,
See the little puff-puffs all in a row,
D’Arcy on the engine, pulled a little lever,
Expansion of the boiler – UP WE GO!’
But down at Swindon Railway Works,
There were equally extraordinary scenes,
With the famous WA Stanier, Works manager,
Wielding a hose pipe to inundate
Apprentices who went on strike at the tunnel entrance,
(He was the model for the Rev Awdry’s fat controller btw)
And CB Collett, Chief Mechanical Engineer,
Would issue this notice:
‘In view of the large number of men who have failed to report themselves
for duty these works are hereby closed until further notice’;
It wasn’t just the GWR, of course;
Swindon printers and tram workers were also stopped work on Monday May 3
On the first wave of industrial action;
The Co-operative Society rooms in Harding Street
Became an HQ for coordination of picketing,
And accounting of the Distress Fund, for fully 10,000 people,
By the Swindon Central Strike Committee aka “The General Council”:
‘Magnificent solidarity’ was the initial synopsis;
“United action is our watchword.”
On the other side, there stood, resolute,
The Swindon Volunteer Services Committee;
Whilst troops and police were offered to the GWR;
But Collett informed the Swindon NUR branch:
‘I don’t want them. If you gentlemen sitting here are prepared
to assist me in protecting the property,
I am prepared to do without them.’
The NUR replied:
‘We at once gave him that guarantee.’
Beyond the railway works,
Disagreement and confusion simmered
Over the withdrawal of the electricity supply,
But despite this,
The Swindon Advertiser commented on May14th:
‘The town has been very quiet and orderly.
The police have had no trouble whatsoever’:
Despite, or probably, because of
The daily round of mass meetings in the parks,
The sports matches, the tournaments,
The concerts, the readings, the entertainments …
It was a peculiarly British general strike in Swindon, too …
A few GWR trains began to run through Swindon,
partly due to the Oxford plus four brigade. ‘I say, rather.’
Only nine drivers broke the strike in Swindon.
Fireman Taylor had the idea of treating them as though they were dead, having a mock funeral procession and cremation on the Corporation rubbish tip.
And so, in a Swindonian version
Of the old Skimmington cavalcade,
Whereby transgressors of a local moral code
Were lampooned in effigy and with rough music,
Some strike breakers were honoured with a procession:
A mock funeral cortege that wound its way
To the council rubbish tip for ‘cremation’;
The coffins, made by firemen, were embellished,
By wives, mothers, daughters, grand-mothers and aunts,
With curtains or cloth, and wreaths of nettles
And dandelions for floral decoration;
The cortege was followed by some thousand people,
While every street showed its approbation:
‘Of course, when we called with a coffin all the neighbours came out.
They were delighted! We had no trouble with any of them;
almost everyone in those streets had someone on strike themselves.
We had the whole population with us in the demonstration.’
With the police granting permission
And controlling the traffic
Around ‘Manchester Road, the Centre and down by The Ship’;
Traditional rough music:
The death knell created with an iron monger’s shop sign,
a trowel and a four-foot long set square.
A mock undertaker in top hat, long tail coat,
black gloves and striped trousers led the cortège
A derisive cacophony and pandemonium,
Greeted the cortege on its way to Morris Street,
And mock funeral service and cremation:
‘At each home [of a strikebreaker] when we knocked we told them we’d come to take them for a ride, and that if they didn’t come with us we’d have the pleasure of burying them.’ ‘A woman came out of her shop to give them two gallons of paraffin for the cremation. Joe Baldwin, a train driver, borrowed a white table cloth from a lady in the street, and dressed in this as a surplice he said a burial service over the nine coffins.
As he set fire to them his last words were
‘May the wind blow their remains to the corners of the earth,
And to hell with them all’.
Cars, motor-cycles, side cars and bicycles
Were also used to transport the British Worker
And TUC strike bulletins down to Swindon,
While Friday May 7th would see a report to the TUC,
After the famous Ben Tillett addressed a large rally in the town:
‘Position at Swindon splendid.
Spirit … 100%.
Any other national leaders coming this way
we shall be pleased to accommodate.
Demand for larger supplies of British Worker.
Our lines of communication … excellent.
We have made certain arrangements for your despatch riders to obtain petrol. The CWS here have fixed us up splendid.’
‘The townsfolk got the news from the daily mass meetings of thousands in the GWR Park. It was like a Labour Fete every day.
As regards the Swindon and Wiltshire press,
The Evening Advertiser was a single-sheet,
And British Gazette in tone and some content;
The North Wilts Herald would later fulminate
About the withdrawal of the fuses at Moredon power station,
And consequent immobilisation of the printing presses:
‘a desperate step to stifle the freedom of the press’
‘an amazing action in which Swindon,
so far as we have been able to ascertain,
stands alone among all the civic authorities of the country’;
People didn’t stand alone on the Milk Bank
by the railway station, however;
Crowds would jeer as volunteers drove passing trains,
With women to the fore, aprons full of stones,
To lob at strike breaking footplatemen;
Some striking footplatemen also secretly planned to grease inclines
to make firing and driving more difficult.
But money was tight with strike pay low,
And none at all for those not called out until the second wave,
But unable to work because of the impact of the first wave,
With shortage of fuel or the removal of fuses or lack of transport
That rainy day had arrived for that money put by,
‘Feeding Centres’ and the Coop Distress Fund provided succour for some
Teachers commented on hunger facing large families.
‘Put your heads down on the desks and close your eyes:
“Hands up who didn’t have breakfast this morning?”
And some churches and chapels helped out too,
Despite the GWR notice of Monday May 10th,
Describing the strike as a ‘deep conspiracy’,
Not against the company, but ‘against the state’;
A notice as intransigent and uncompromising
As the one put up outside the NUR Temple Street HQ,
With its conditions about employees returning to work,
And consequent penalties.
In according and predictable consequence,
There was a mass meeting in the railway park,
While the government stiffened its resolve,
And, locally, the mayor was forced to give in,
With the arrival of those twelve naval pensioners,
Fuses were restored with plans for trams to go on the streets staffed by volunteers
More mass meetings followed:
At the GWR Park; and at the Mechanics Institute:
‘one of the finest meetings ever held,
the hall being packed to excess and the members very enthusiastic’.
Another meeting followed at the Princess Street Recreation Ground;
The second wave of strikes was called out,
with another ‘mass meeting of members as soon as possible
and that the wives of members be invited’.
The strike was rock solid both in Swindon and on the GWR:
20,000 men and women not at work in the town and surrounding villages. Discussions continued at the Swindon General Council about what to do about the naval pensioners and the volunteers on the trams
So, it was a bolt from the blue on Wednesday 12th May:
The General Strike was called off.
On the afternoon of Wednesday May 12, Bill Sargent was on Railway Clerk picket duty outside the Mechanics Institute: ‘Someone dashed across from the Park saying that they had heard on the one o’clock news that the strike was over. Of course, we knew that the employers must have given in and that we’d won the victory.’
Victory was presumed at first,
Until the full facts came through in the afternoon.
A meeting was called for the next day at the Park:
GWR employees would stay out
In the face of Sir Felix Pole’s obduracy …
But this talk has to stay within its 25 minutes and so will deal with the nine days only … And so, to conclude … with some personal stories …
Some strikebreakers were veterans but Harry Avern, 26 and with four children, couldn’t resist the offer of a permanent job from the running shed foreman if he would act as a fireman. He faced a hail of stones near Reading and returning from Paddington he was landed with an aristocratic driver who left them stuck in Box Tunnel devoid of steam. Harry didn’t get a permanent job, ‘all he got was an illuminated certificate for strike breaking, and a [guinea] postal order from a grateful GWR.’
And the final conclusion:
The Swindon Advertiser commented that ‘the men and women on strike whose hearts were in the strike comprised an infinitesimal proportion of the whole.’ But the veteran Swindon socialist orator, Reuben George commented that ‘Spiritual life is higher… now for Wherever the men met, the voice of the politician and sectarian was hushed. There were Liberals, Tories, Labour Socialists, Church, Chapel, Roman Catholics, Unitarians, Salvationists; men of strong political and sectarian bias and men of none whatsoever… These men and women met as one. They spoke from the various platforms. They joined in the work of organisation; and what is more and greater than all, they forgot all Party bitterness and sectarian strife. They threw themselves wholeheartedly into the question of help for the miners.’ Swindon Advertiser 18 June 1926
The GWR and the General Strike C.R. Potts Oakwood Press
The General Strike ed. Jeffey Skelley Lawrence & Wishart especially chapter 9 on Swindon by Angela Tucket
The General Strike Day by Day Keith Laybourn Sutton Publishing
