courtesy of John Simkin
It soon became clear that A. J. Cook and Horner would play an important role in the proposed strike. David Kirkwood remarked that: “Arthur Cook, who talked from a platform like a Salvation Army preacher, had swept over the industrial districts like a hurricane. He was an agitator, pure and simple. He had no ideas about legislation or administration. He was a flame. Ramsay MacDonald called him a guttersnipe.
That he certainly was not. He was utterly sincere, in deadly earnest, and burnt himself out in the agitation.”A Conference of Trade Union Congress met on 1st May 1926, and afterwards announced that a General Strike “in defence of miners’ wages and hours” was to begin two days later. The leaders of both the Trade Union Council and the Labour Party were unhappy about the proposed strike, and during the next two days frantic efforts were made to reach an agreement with the Conservative Government and the mine-owners.
The Trade Union Congress called the General Strike on the understanding that they would then take over the negotiations from the Miners’ Federation. The main figure involved in these negotiations was Jimmy Thomas. Talks went on until late on Sunday night, and according to Thomas, they were close to agreement when Stanley Baldwin broke off negotiations. The reason for his action was that printers at the Daily Mail had refused to print a leading article attacking the proposed strike. The TUC negotiators apologized for the printers’ behaviour, but Baldwin refused to continue with the talks. The General Strike began the next day.
The Trade Union Congress adopted the following plan of action. To begin with they would bring out workers in the key industries – railwaymen, transport workers, dockers, printers, builders, iron and steel workers – a total of 3 million men (a fifth of the adult male population). Only later would other trade unionists, like the engineers and shipyard workers, be called out on strike.
On 7 May, Sir Herbert Samuel, Chairman of the Royal Commission on the Coal Industry, approached the Trade Union Congress and offered to help bring the strike to an end. Without telling the miners, the TUC negotiating committee met Samuel and worked out a set of proposals to end the General Strike. These included: (1) a National Wages Board with an independent chairman; (2) a minimum wage for all colliery workers; (3) workers displaced by pit closures to be given alternative employment; (4) the wages subsidy to be renewed while negotiations continued. However, Samuel warned that subsequent negotiations would probably mean a reduction in wages. These terms were accepted by the TUC negotiating committee, but were rejected by the executive of the Miners’ Federation.
On 11 May, at a meeting of the Trade Union Congress General Committee, it was decided to accept the terms proposed by Herbert Samuel and to call off the General Strike. The following day, the TUC General Council visited 10 Downing Street to announce to the British Government that the General Strike was over. At the same meeting the TUC attempted to persuade the Government to support the Samuel proposals and to offer a guarantee that there would be no victimization of strikers. This the Government refused to do. As Lord Birkenhead, a member of the Government was to write later, the TUC’s surrender was “so humiliating that some instinctive breeding made one unwilling even to look at them.”
On 21 June 1926, the British Government introduced a Bill into the House of Commons that suspended the miners’ Seven Hours Act for five years – thus permitting a return to an 8 hour day for miners. In July the mine-owners announced new terms of employment for miners based on the 8 hour day. The miners were furious about what had happened although the General Strike was over, the miners’ strike continued.For several months the miners held out, but by October 1926 hardship forced men to begin to drift back to the mines. By the end of November most miners had reported back to work. However, many were victimized and remained unemployed for many years. Those that were employed were forced to accept longer hours, lower wages and district agreement. It was a terrible defeat for A. J. Cook and Horner. Horner remained a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and in 1933 he stood unsuccessfully as a Parliamentary candidate in the Rhondda East by-election.
Horner retained his popularity with union members and in 1936 he became President of the South Wales Miners’ Federation. According to Will Paynter: “It is my opinion that Arthur Horner was without question the ablest negotiator to come out of the British coalfields.”
On the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Horner and the CPGB was involved in the creation of the International Brigades. Horner was a major critic of the British government policy of Non-Intervention. According to the author of The Spanish Civil War and the British Labour Movement (1991): “Arthur Horner moved the resolution which called on the government to abandon Non-Intervention and to give Spain the right to buy arms, and called on the TUC to convene a meeting of executive committees to examine how to achieve this.”
Horner became president of the National Union of Mineworkers in 1946. He retired from the post in 1959 and was replaced by Will Paynter.
Arthur Horner died in 1968.
To read more of John Simkin’s excellent essays, please visit:
http://spartacus-educational.com