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 well picketed. But the Docks were crucial – hence the government’s eventual use of the military there. Paddington was also crucial: it was the chosen entry point for the supply of milk to the capital during the nine days.
Jonathan Schneer in his recently published, quite brilliant and even-handed Nine Days in May shows the importance of Paddington on page 261.
The GWR officially promised the President of the Board of Trade just before the commencement of the strike that “perishable traffic” would continue to enter Paddington with milk the “first consideration.” With milk traffic by road from the South Midlands into London virtually eliminated, Paddington became the nodal point – Schneer writes that ‘even on the first day of the Strike, milk trains were gliding into Paddington Station, not regularly but often enough, and swarms of volunteers were jumping to unload them, and others were packing thousands of milk churns into trucks destined for Hyde Park … The Strike nearly shut down the Great Western Railway, despite management’s many false statements to the contrary. But the milk trains continued to arrive.’ (‘volunteer and blackleg labour’.)
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. Just a very slight reminiscence of the first days of the Great War, the parking of innumerable motors in the squares and by-streets and here and there officers in khaki, even one or two armoured cars in attendance on a string of motor-buses piled up with food. It is characteristic that government lorries, sometimes driven by army engineers, are labelled ‘food only’, as if to appeal to the strikers not to interfere with them. No strain or fear on the faces of the citizens male or female, only a sort of amused boredom. Universal condemnation of the General Strike but widespread sympathy with the miners….
On Tuesday morning I passed through the Fabian bookshop to see Galton. The hall was occupied by a score or so of men – the strike committee of the London branch of the Railway Clerks’ Association (so I was afterwards told), and one of them was speaking through the phone. I caught the words, “I recommend that we go in.” “What’s up?” I asked Galton. “The usual thing, “said he in his cheery cynical voice. “They’ve got cold feet. A week ago, the man who is the secretary of the committee told me that in three days’ time the Cabinet would be on its knees, that the soldiers and police were on their side and a lot of other bunkum. Yesterday afternoon he came with tears in his eyes. ‘Twenty of our men went in this morning. I saw my boss this morning’, he added, ‘and he says my place is still open but will be filled tomorrow. I can’t afford to stay out – I am going in and I am going to advise the others to do so too.’” Late in the afternoon of the same day Galton told me that at a meeting of about fifty the majority determined to stay out but fifteen, including the chairman and secretary, left the room for their respective offices.
Easy to forget that Beatrice once lived at Standish, near Stroud, with connections to Box, near Stroud, too.