THE RURAL WORKERS’ STRIKE – Rural mining communities were deeply affected by the General Strike

 

THE RURAL WORKERS’ STRIKE – Rural mining communities were deeply affected by the General Strike

Unite Landworker magazine – Summer 2026

Mining communities across rural areas were central to the 1926 General Strike, the background to which was the national Lock-Out, on 1 May of 1.2 million miners who had refused to agree to coal owners’ demands for reductions in pay and conditions.

During WWI, with private enterprise unable to keep the fires of war burning, the government had to take control of several major industries, including coal, the primary energy source.

Once the war ended, the government responded to calls to nationalise the coal industry by setting up a Royal Commission, that subsequently dismissed this proposal.

Mine owners immediately demanded cuts in pay and conditions. In return the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain appealed to the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) and the Transport Workers’ Federation to join them in a General Strike.  (1) When both bodies refused the subsequent miners’ defeat became known as “Black Friday.”

With the USA and Germany heavily investing in their own coal industries, Britain’s coal exports continued falling. In 1925, coal owners again announced cuts in pay and conditions. The Trades Union Congress (TUC), fresh from co-ordinating successful strike action by 250,000 Yorkshire textile workers, brought together various groups of workers such as the Transport and General Workers. On July 31, 1925 a strike of mine, transport and transport workers was due to begin.

This forced Stanley Baldwin’s Conservative government, elected in 1924 in a rigged general election in which the Secret State was key, to provide a subsidy to the mining owners. This victory for the labour movement was termed Red Friday.

At the same time, the government set up another Royal Commission, which lacked trade union representation, to examine the coal industry.

They also established the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies. This was a secretive emergency services organisation, which complied registers of people willing to help run certain industries, including the railways and buses, were compiled. The police, army and navy were given detailed contingency orders.

Meanwhile, the trade unions sat and waited. No plans were constructed about how to act if the Commission overlooked the miners’ demands. Which proved to be the case.

The Tories ended their coal subsidy and the Mining Association owners re-announced proposed cuts. The miners dug deep and refused to budge. 1.2 million were thus locked out.

On Saturday, May 1, 1926, the TUC established a negotiating committee to defend the miners and announced that a first wave of strike action by essential trades in iron and steel, transport and docks, road transport, electricity and gas would begin at midnight on the Monday.

The government declared a state of emergency and 1.75 million workers then walked out on May 3^rd with a second line of workers due to be called out on Wednesday, May 12.

On May 11, a well-attended meeting organised by striking railworkers, strikers from other workplaces and Kent Mineworkers’ Association members was held in Whitstable. Kent trade unionists had shown great solidarity with many compositors and printers out alongside transport workers.

But the following day (May 12) the TUC called the General Strike off

 May, the very day the TUC called the General Strike following pressure from the government and the ruling classes. It was ended despite it enjoying enthusiastic support by strikers and trades councils.  

It was a historic victory for Baldwin’s government.

Only the miners continued the fight. The following months saw support from local trades councils - who where they covered agricultural districts in places such as Cambridge and Oxford organised public meetings in surrounding villages to prevent a loss of morale in such districts. (1) - and the Labour Party who formed relief committees to raise money for miners’ wives and their families.

At first, this helped miners to refuse to return, so that it was only on November 16 that those employed at Tilmanstone Colliery in Kent, finally voted to do so.

It had been a heroic endeavour but eventually all the miners were forced to return to work on much reduced terms and conditions. Many were blacklisted including in rural communities in Kent and Durham.

These included miners in rural communities in Kent and Durham. Kent had 4 mines at Tilmanstone, a small village east of Dover, Snowdon, Chislet, where a six-month strike against wage reductions was organised in 1924, plus Betteshanger, where when the first shaft was cut in 1924 saw 1,500 miners arriving to find work.

Later, Betteshanger, where new houses for incomers were built on former agricultural land,  proved an attraction for victimised miners. Over subsequent decades it became a militant workplace – especially in the 1984-85 year-long national miners’ strike.

Around 150,000 miners in County Durham had waged a brave battle and had received great backing from trade unionists. The Newcastle joint strike committee consisted of 14 organisations, including Unite heritage union, the TGWU. It backed electricity industry strikers and published its own newspaper, the Newcastle Workers’ Chronicle.

Rural based pits dominated Durham. Burnhope Colliery in Craighead Valley lies 6 miles north west of Durham City, home to the Durham Miners’ Gala since 1871.

Aged 14 back then, Joseph Foster later recalled events there in 1926. “It was a terrible time. I saw the worst of the strike. No clothes, no shoes, no food … families couldn’t make ends meet.” He remembered soldiers being sent to Burnhope. “They were walking about with bayonets, with guns.” Many former military men were recruited to the police across County Durham.

Like many places the miners’ resistance was boosted by Labour authorities. In Durham the County Council provided millions of free school meals. Its chairman was Peter Lee, agent of the Durham Miners’ Association and the only trade unionist to have a town named after him in Britain. Peterlee is the birthplace of the author of this piece.

Despite this support it was insufficient to win the struggle. Durham held out for seven months, month longer than anywhere else and even by the end only 5.7%, the lowest anywhere, had returned to work in Durham. For many though there was to be no return.

Victimised by the mine owners, they struck out for Kent, in the hope of a better life. With the Tories then introducing anti-union laws, hopes were placed by the labour movement in the election of a Labour government.

 

Dedicated to Harold Metcalf and Wilf Charlton from Easington Colliery, both Locked Out in 1926.

Mark Charlton Metcalf

1.       As confirmed by a subsequent Labour Research Department survey.

Find Out More

Visit the Kent Mining Museum at Betteshanger Park, Sandwich Road, Deal CT14 0BF. Or visit https://www.kentminingmuseum.co.uk