goods to the empire suffered as the poor of the
world became even poorer. As raw material prices
fell with slackening industrial activity so the
poorest parts of the world earned less and less;
this in turn gave them less to spend on British
goods. Then textile factories, the first stage of
industrialisation, were springing up in India and
Japan and with their low labour costs drove
Britain out of many traditional markets. Actually
Britain was remarkably successful in developing
the industries of the second industrial revolution,
the chemical, electrical and motor industries. But
these successes could not take up the slack of
Britain’s pre-war traditional exports.
The coal industry was one of the worst affect-
ed. The mines were not efficient, and demand for
coal slackened with declining industrial activity in
Europe and the competition of oil. The powerful
miners’ union saw nationalisation as the solution
that would enable the numerous privately owned
mines to be developed on a national basis. The
mine owners, faced with declining profits, argued
for increasing hours and cutting wages. But the
owners’ case was weakened by the fact that they
had not used their large profits of the war years
to modernise the mines. The mines had then been
under state control and the miners were embit-
tered when Lloyd George returned them to their
owners’ control in 1921. A miners’ strike failed
to win better terms. In 1925 a strike was narrowly
averted when the government paid a temporary
subsidy to the mines to prevent wage cuts, and
set up an inquiry. The report of this inquiry (the
Samuel Commission) the following year found
much in favour of the miners’ view but rejected
nationalisation and suggested that less drastic cuts
in wages were probably inevitable. The miners
were anxious to avoid a strike which would bring
hardship to themselves, but in negotiating with
the owners refused to countenance any further
cut in wages or increase in hours. At the end of
April 1926 the government subsidy came to an
end and the mine owners now locked out the
miners.
The importance of the dispute with the miners
lay in the fact that it led to the General Strike of
1926, the most widespread and dramatic break-
down of Britain’s industrial relations for a
century. It lasted only nine days from 3 to 12 May- But these days manifested Britain’s division
into the labouring class and the middle and upper
classes, who for the main part wished to break the
strike. There was more involved than a strike
of miners. The Trades Union Congress (TUC)
involved itself and in doing so involved organised
labour on the one hand, and the prime minister
Stanley Baldwin and the British government on
the other. Its sincere intention was to facilitate a
compromise settlement between the mine owners
and the miners. When these efforts foundered the
TUC used its industrial muscle to call out on
strike key industries, including transport. The
government countered by putting into practice
carefully worked-out emergency measures to keep
the essential services going. The TUC’s attempt
to force the government to coerce the mine
owners failed, though the rank and file over-
whelmingly supported the call to strike. What was
the strike really about then? It certainly was not
an attempt to bring about a revolution. It was not
purely industrial either. At the end of the General
Strike, which the TUC called off, the miners were
left to fight their own battle, which lasted several
bitter months.
In the 1920s and 1930s Conservative-
dominated governments of the Lloyd George,
Baldwin and Chamberlain era were socially con-
scious and anxious to pass measures that would
protect the sick and unemployed and help the
poor. Their finance was orthodox, believing the
country was best served by sound money and bal-
anced budgets but not by direct control of indus-
try. The minority Labour government of 1924
was just as orthodox in financial questions as the
Conservatives. Neither Conservatives nor Labour
followed policies of confrontation and even the
General Strike was not a confrontation that either
side had been keen to invite. What would be held
against the governments of the inter-war years
was the persistence of 1 million unemployed, and
much higher numbers during the most severe
years of depression, concentrated above all in the
north of the country. No government knew how
to ‘cure’ this unemployment in the prevailing
international conditions. It was the biggest argu-
ment against ‘democracy’, yet the great majority