Beatrice Webb’s May 1926 Diary (a small selection)
The net impression left on my mind is that the General Strike will turn out not to be a revolution of any sort but a batch of compulsory Bank Holidays without any opportunity for recreation and a lot of dreary walking to and fro. When the million or so workers have spent their money they will drift back to work and no one will be any the better and many will be a great deal poorer and everybody will be cross … If it be prolonged a week or ten days it may lead to reactionary legislation against trade unionism and possibly to a general election. But I doubt it. If the government keeps its head and goes persistently and skilfully to work in reconstructing services the General Strike will peter out …
For the British trade union movement I see a day of terrible disillusionment. The failure of the General Strike of 1926 will be one of the most significant landmarks in the history of the British working class. Future historians will, I think, regard it as the death gasp of that pernicious doctrine of “workers’ control” of public affairs through the trade unions, and by the method of direct action.
On Monday the seventh day of the strike, Sidney and I travel up by the milk-train to London – it is crowded but not a single remark did we hear about the strike; the 3rd-class passengers at any rate were unusually silent, even for English passengers. More bored than alarmed – and the same silence in the streets, more like a Sunday with the shops open, but with no one shopping.
14 May
Little more than a nine day’s world-wonder … In the first two or three days there was complete stoppage and paralysis of trade, but hosts of volunteers started skeleton services, and Hyde Park and Regent’s Park became great camps of soldiers living in tents, with improvised shelters for the store of milk and other commodities. Not a shot has been fired, not a life lost. In one town the police and strikers played cricket, and the victory of the strikers is played to ten million listeners by the government-controlled wireless! Slowly buses and trams begin to appear; the London taxi-cab drivers decide to ‘come out’, but the next morning the buses are seen in the London streets obviously driven by professionals!