In September 1926, Walter Milne-Bailey, head of the TUC research department, sat down to record his thoughts on the General Strike, which had taken place in May of that year. As we approach the centenary of that event, the typewritten script of his report has been digitized and published online by the TUC Library Collections.¹

Milne-Bailey notes at the very start of his report that it was not the trade union movement but the press and the government which had originally labelled the events of that spring a ‘general strike’, and commented that it was ‘in no real sense a General Strike as the term is commonly understood in Trade Union and Labour theory and history’.

Titled A Nation on Strike: the Causes, Progress and Results of the British National Strike of 1926, the 75,000-word document had originally been intended for publication but this never happened, and its existence became a matter of public record only in 2006, during commemorations for the eightieth anniversary of the strike.

Historian Dave Lyddon has noted that it was the first full-length report by someone close to the centre of events, and writes: ‘It is remarkable for its frankness in discussing the nature of general strikes, and the conditions for their effectiveness, at a time when many in the labour movement were turning their backs on such tactics.’²

The Society for the Study of Labour History created a guide to sources for the history of strikes, lock-outs and general strikes in the UK to coincide with the conference ‘The History of Strikes, Lock-outs and General Strikes’, held at Keele University, 6 May 2006. It was updated in April 2019 and reissued in September 2024.

1. A Nation on Strike (unpublished typescript, September 1926), on the London Metropolitan University website. Available here.

2. ‘Walter Milne-Bailey, the TUC Research Department, and the 1926 General Strike: The Background to ‘A Nation on Strike’, Dave Lyddon, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, Number 29-30 (2010). Available here (subscription required).