250 visitors to the exhibition. 50 at the performance.
‘I have lived in Stroud all my life and never knew anything about this. Thank you. And great to see Howard beard’s name here. Well done.’
‘Lest we forget! Our history. Our future.’
‘Nicely curated and presented exhibition.’
‘Excellent old photos. Loved it.’ SIMON OPHER MP
‘Thank you. Fascinating!’ ‘Thanks!’ ‘Thank you!” ‘Thanks. Very interesting.’ ‘History can be overwhelming at times. Thank you for the explanations.’ ‘Very interesting. Thank you.’ ‘Fascinating. Thank you.’ ‘Wonderful.’ ‘Thank you so much for taking the time to put this on.’ ‘A community education. Well done.’
‘Illuminating.’ ‘Excellent work. I played the Tolpuddle Festival with Billy Bragg working behind. Joe Trumpet – a member of Stroud Red Band.’
‘Good work!”
‘Great exhibition.’
‘Thank you for this very interesting bit of history. I am Canadian and had no idea about the strike and its local ramifications. Enjoyed the juxtaposition of old and new photos.’
‘Thanks Stuart! Amazing how many people these places employed! Must have been quite a contrast when they stopped walking/cycling to work.’
‘I am an artist from a Radstock mining community – would like to connect with Stuart and Katie.’ ‘Songs: Dunkerton Pit collapse; Song- “The Radstock Tune.”’
‘Well done. Thank you for contributing to the national picture and putting Stroud on the General Strike map.’
‘What do we learn from the General Strike, I wonder. Each of us will have an individual opinion; it would be good to collect them together.’
‘Fascinating. I’m so gutted to have missed the performance. Such great ways to bring History alive.’
‘Stirring stuff! Really well-curated. Very inspiring across a century – the class-war continues …’
‘Interesting, the photos particularly and especially thinking about Stroud mills and landmarks. Interesting that the FoD was such a key industrial area too. Thank you.’
‘Fascinating exhibition. Thanks so much for putting it on and all the work which has gone into it. Inspiring to learn about what happened locally, so many echoes of today.’
‘Fantastic exhibition. Wonderful insights into the events that took place 100 years ago!’
‘I grew up in Newtown, in Mid-Wales. Robert Owen’s birthplace. It’s fascinating for me to make links between past experiments like New Lanark and hopes for a more equal society in 1926.’
‘Such a great way to present information. Art and History, past and present. Beautiful.’
‘So nice to see this space used for something like this.’
‘That piece I’ve just looked at about the train-driver breaking the strike is so moving. Between a rock and a hard place.’
‘My dad left school at 14 and got a job straightaway at the docks. He worked at Wapping and Tilbury. He’s was out on strike a lot. This exhibition is bringing back a lot of memories.’
‘We can’t know where we’re headed without knowing where we’ve come from – so to see this poignant exhibition is a vivid reminder of past times and the current dire state of affirs.’
‘The General Strike was three years before my father was born (into a working-class family in Swindon). I suppose that to me it represents two things: (1.) the possibility of organisation to oppose the system and achieve rights and improved conditions for the disadvantaged and oppressed; (2.) the determination and ruthlessness of the Establishment when confronted by such organisation and opposition.
I remain an optimist, in defiance of history!’
‘It was about half-way between the start of the Great War and the Second World War: “For King and Country”. And the promise of “Homes fit for Heroes” to the dole and wage-cuts. Neville Chamberlain: arch appeaser of Hitler – anything but that towards the unions in the strike. Winston Churchill – “the man who won the war”, a class-warrior during the strike with the British Gazette and desire to take over the BBC.’
‘I grew up with an interest in history. I also grew up in a Labour household. My view of the General Strike is that it was a successful mass action at a time when the treatment of the working class was dire. It demonstrated that workers did have a voice and continue to do despite legislation by subsequent Conservative, Labour and Coalition Governments.’
‘The working-class were in the saddle? Heroic miners and solidarity. Threats to the ruling class. Neglect of our history brought to mind on May 4th 2026.’
‘History is repeating itself. So we need to know about our history.’
‘A fascinating display and wonderful to so readily be able to access and learn about our local history here.’
‘Fascinating exhibition about a subject I don’t know very much about. Really interesting to see the local context. I will be back to absorb even more.’
‘It shows us the importance of uniting together. Together we are powerful.’
‘An excellent well laid out happening; somewhere between museum, exhibition and living pamphlet!
So interesting to see Lud-In-The-Mist included – nothing is ever divorced from the time in which it is written.’
‘Excellent exhibition as always. Lovely to see text in large print too. Thank you.’
‘The Heritage of the Miners, the Forest and beyond. What would happen now if a General Strike was called? Typical Trade Union bosses.’
‘Beautiful and poignant dialogue between image and text, and past and present.
!Solidarity!’
‘Stuart and the team have produced a very important centennial recollection of the General Strike and local participation in this historic endeavour for everyday justice.’
‘It’s been a History lesson for me. Connecting seemingly random events like Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse with coal and the General Strike. A great lesson!’
‘Brilliant research!! An enlightening and refreshing investigation of the extraordinary History of this locality.’
‘Ah! Newman & Hender – I used to work for them. A good wage. Now the General Strike. Let me think. That was caused by going back on the Gold Standard wasn’t? Made our coal exports too expensive.’
I come from a small town in North West Wales, called Blaenau Ffestiniog. It’s a very Welsh place. The 1926 General Strike didn’t include the slate mines of North Wales but would have paralysed transport. I am sure my family would have been supporting.
The miners in Blaenau went on strike for 16 weeks in 1893. It had strong trade union, socialist and chapel traditions.
No traitors in this house were common posters in the strikes across the slate industry in North Wales when a small number of strikers had returned to work.
The General Strike loomed large in my childhood: tales of posh student strike breakers driving buses and the like. Pa!
I’m from the Forest of Dean. Even in the 1960s the memory of the General Strike lived on. Some children were instructed by their parents not to play with others because of what was done in 1926 by grandparents.
When I first heard of the General Strike I remember vividly my mum having a long talk with me about this. It would have been the early 60s and I think it was the result of me asking about something on the radio, about either ‘Students’ or ‘Strikes’.
I was about seven or eight. I remember being told that in the bad old days before the war, students were posh people. Only the rich could afford to go to university. And the next part of the conversation was about the general strike. The workers were on strike because their wages were so low they couldn’t feed their families properly. Then the students came along, drove buses and trains and broke the strike. It was a terrible thing to do but the students probably thought it was ‘jolly good fun’. They were keeping the workers poor because they were part of that was the reason for the strike. Because of what the students and other strike breakers did, it meant that the strike wasn’t successful and working people were kept poor, treated unfairly by the bosses.
The students were scabs,I learnt the difference between a blackleg and a scab and why both were terrible things to be. Around this time, I remember saying that when I grew up I wanted to be a policeman. My mum replied that if I did she would disown me. She needed to explain what that meant. The police were the tools of the ruling classes, keeping the working people poor and in their place.
My mum lived in Camberwell during the 1930s where her dad was a greengrocer who took his barrow to Covent Garden early every morning. They weren’t well off but they had enough to eat. My mum lived surrounded by poverty and terrible housing. Another recurring story in my youth was of kids in the neighbourhood asking her if they could eat her orange peel.
Many of the interviewees in the Ken Loach film, The Spirit of ‘45 share recollections of similar levels of deprivation.