A special virtual issue of Historical Studies in Industrial Relations dealing with the General Strike and mining lockout of 1926 has been published to the Liverpool University Press website.

Drawing on articles published in the journal over recent years, it includes an open access selective bibliography compiled by John McIlroy, Alan Campbell, Keith Laybourn, and Quentin Outram running to twenty-four pages.

The virtual issue also reproduces the text of an operetta written ‘almost entirely’ by the historian and activist G.D.H. Cole in July 1926 and performed at ‘various labour and educational gatherings’. An introduction to the text in HSIR notes: ‘Due to the libellous nature of some of its contents, and possible offences against Emergency Regulations in force during 1926, it was not published at the time.’

The issue pulls together the following articles, which will be of wider interest as the centenary of the strike in May 1926 draws closer:

• Citrine’s Unexpurgated Diaries, 1925-26: ‘The Mining Crisis and the National Strike’, by Robert Taylor
• Symposium: 1926 – The General Strike and Mining Lockout
• Memory, Commemoration and History – 1926 in 2006, by John McIlroy
• Revisiting the General Strike, by Keith Laybourn
• The General Strike and the Development of British Capitalism, by Quentin Outram
• Reflections on the 1926 Mining Lockout, by Alan Campbell
• Rapprochement and Retribution: The Divergent Experiences of Workers in Two Large Paper and Print Companies in the 1926 General Strike, by Mike Richardson
• Women of the Durham Coalfield and their Reactions to the 1926 Miners’ Lockout, by Hester Barron
• The Striker Stricken, G. Cole
• Walter Milne-Bailey, the TUC Research Department, and the 1926 General Strike: The Background to ‘A Nation on Strike’, Dave Lyddon
• A Nation on Strike: The Causes, Progress and Results of the British National Strike of 1926, by W. Milne-Bailey
• Book reviews

The issue can be found here.