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Caoimhin O’Muraile  ☭ On Thursday 7th May the British Labour Party and party of government took a real hammering in the elections. 

These elections in England were for local councils and are never a great barometer of how a governing party’s fortunes are holding up. Council elections rarely are mirrored in a general election but that is normally when the loses have been moderate to slightly heavy for the governing party. This was a little different as these losses amount to 1,400 seats largely to the far-right Reform UK, it was a drubbing. 

Back in the nineteen-eighties many people voted with a protest vote at council elections voting for the fascist British National Party (BNP) councillors but nothing on this scale. This appears more than a regular protest and is concerning not only for the British Labour Party but all anti-fascists generally. Reform were undoubtedly the big winners and the BBC poll, the Projected National Share (PNS), which is calculated in 1,000 council wards predicted if people voted along similar lines in a general election it would make the far-right Reform the largest party on 26% of the vote share. The PNS puts the Greens in second on 18% followed by Labour and Conservatives on 17% each. If this is correct it shows up how broken the British electoral voting system of First Past the Post in general elections really is. It is not fit for purpose when a party with just 26% of the vote could form a government. As far-right parties across Europe have been gathering momentum is it an indication that the memories of fascism and the Second World War are fading? Or, are today’s voters not worried by the presence of authoritarian dictatorial parties governing them? Whatever the reason, and immigration is often the major or even only concern voiced by people - wrongly in my view - the presence of the far-right even neo fascism cannot be denied.

Reform by their own admission have no experience of government but have, they maintain, a lot of “business” organisational knowhow, and Reform representatives often criticise the Labour Government for having no “business experience”. This suggests a Reform UK government may introduce corporatism, private enterprise, into the system of government in Britain. This was central to Benito Musolini’s fascist regime in Italy and resulted in the banning outright of trade unions and trade union membership as was also the case in Nazi Germany. Trade unions were replaced with state run bodies like Hitlers ‘Labour Front’ which resulted in worsening pay and conditions and the erosion of worker’s rights! In effect corporatism brings big business into government and the country is organised like a large corporation with the electorate being the employees, with no trade union representation and very few rights. Could a Reform government go down this avenue? 

Another question the electorate should ask themselves at the next British general election before they cast their vote is; if Reform UK were to become the government in Westminster, could it signal the end of liberal democracy and elections in Britain? The last far-right Prime Minister Britain had was Margaret Thatcher but fortunately her party were, though right-wing, not far-right or fascist as was the case with her. When she was ousted as Conservative and Unionist Party leader in 1990, she demanded to remain as PM. She had to be virtually physically removed from that office and was succeeded by John Major, a more moderate Tory. 

Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, was a Thatcherite, a true-blue disciple of Thatcher, and today is a supporter of Trump in the US. Could a Reform UK government put elections into the dustbin of history? Well, Mussolini did in Italy during the twenties as did Hitler did in Germany back in the nineteen thirties and Farage does share some Hitlerite policies like locking immigrants, legal or otherwise, away in remote old army bases similar to concentration camps! Should this come to pass in Britain would anybody protest? Would they dare? Or would they, as was the case in Nazi Germany, just go along with it pretending to agree, fearful of doing anything different? 

Voters should think very carefully before going down the Reform UK unknown entity avenue, though there is an argument which encourages this leap into the unknown and that is; ‘we won’t know till we’ve tried’! Very true but the problem here is a reversal of the electoral decision to elect a Reform government may well prove irreversible? Just a word of caution! 

For those in the Six-Counties who think Farage and Reform will give a ‘border poll’ forget that, they are a strong UK party, a Unionist party, a party whose aims are to strengthen the United Kingdom not weaken it, and though they may make noises sounding as if a border poll might be on their agenda do not bank on it. They could weaponise such a poll, calling a snap vote on Irish unification at a point when it would almost certainly go against Irish unity. Farage would then probably tell all nationalists, including the Twenty-Six-County government; ‘you have had your poll now that’s an end to it’!

In Scotland, elections to the Scottish parliament at Holyrood were being held. Again bad news for the Labour Party was in store. The results there were a fifth term in government for the Scottish National Party (SNP), once called ‘Tartan Toryies', now considered to be to the left of Labour, winning 58 seats. The SNP are down six seats from sixty-four held previously which is significant because the magic number for an overall majority is sixty-five leaving the SNP weaker in this regard than previous. Labour and Reform UK came joint second with 17 seats each, with the Greens coming third with 15 seats, the Conservative and Unionist Party finished fourth with 12 seats and the Liberal Democrats claiming 10 seats. Scotland’s First Minister and SNP leader, John Swinney, is already making noises about another referendum on Scottish independence and why wouldn’t he? A different voting system is applied in Scotland for regional elections to Holyrood with the age of majority being sixteen as opposed to eighteen in a British general election. The system is a little complex for explanation here but involves party lists and constituency MSPs giving the voter two votes.

In Wales the picture for Labour was no brighter with the party leader and First Minister, Eluned Morgan, losing her seat - a major setback. Plaid Cymru won 43 of the 96 Senedd seats with Reform UK coming second securing 34 seats. Labour, hitherto the largest party in Wales, came in with a miserable 9 seats! All in all a very bad day for the British Labour Party and in particular party leader and Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. 

Could these disastrous results for Labour be replicated in a general election? If the polls are correct and at this moment in time well, they probably could be mirrored. These elections resulted in nationalist First Ministers in Scotland, “Northern Ireland” (the Six-Counties), and Wales. Starmer has no worries on this front, at least not immediately, because all these leaders are singing from different hymn sheets. John Swinney, Scottish First Minister, wants an independence referendum right now. Michele O’Neil, First Minister in Stormont, wants a unification referendum by 2030, while Plaid Cymru and expected First Minister, Rhun ap Iorwerth, did not even mention Welsh independence. It appears no unity of minds on the subject of independence or unification referenda among these nationalist leaders. This may come as some relief to Keir Starmer and his government short term.

After this drubbing taken by the party many Labour MPs are demanding Starmer sets an exit plan, a time frame for him leaving, to step down or plainly fucking off. As bad as Starmer is he, like Tony Blair before him, is not a Labour traditional leader or Prime Minister in the Clement Atlee or Harold Wilson mould. The modern British Labour Party bear few similarities to the genuine article and the party’s shift to the right has cost them dearly. To the left of Labour are the Greens who, like their counterparts Reform UK on the far-right, made huge gains in these elections at Labours expense. So, should the PM stand aside? In my view it would be a mistake for Starmer, bad as he may be, to step down because this may well cause a general election. If a new leader were elected, he or she may come under pressure to go to the country and would undoubtedly lose any election. Of course any new leader could refer to John Major becoming leader of the Conservatives replacing Thatcher and not going to the country. They could also look to the example of the walking disaster, Liz ‘take the piss out of MPs’ Truss, who had a brief spell, the blink of an eye, as leader of the Tories and Prime Minister. She was in charge for a couple of hours but again no election was called when Rishi Sunak replaced her unopposed as party leader and Prime Minister. The Conservatives had a huge majority but so too, this time round, do Labour. So, a general election should Starmer resign is not inevitable, though opposition parties would hammer the point. Starmer should, all the same, hang on in there because the alternative is unthinkable, a far-right government who may if elected by sufficient numbers drop their pretence and declare themselves what they are suspected of being, fascist in all but name!

It was not a great day at the races for the main opposition party the Conservative and Unionists led by Kemi Badenoch. They too had huge losses but their losses were less than Labours due to the fact they did not have that many to lose. The Conservatives were drubbed in the 2024 general election by Starmer’s Labour Party and their representation at council level was not great. Of Essex Councils 78 seats in Kemi Badenoch’s backyard Reform won 53 while the Conservatives came in with a paltry 13 seats, down from the 52 they won in 2021. If their representation was not great before these council elections, now it is less than that! 

Will the Tories demand the head of Badenoch? Highly unlikely. They will in all probability divert their losses into attacking Keir Starmer and demanding he steps down. The Tories, like Labour, know in a general election - if called tomorrow - they would be hammered and Badenoch would be a handy scapegoat to blame, they’re good at that. 

It is my prediction both leaders, Starmer and Badenoch, will stay in place for the time being because the alternative is not worth thinking about, a Reform UK government! This scenario does put the Conservatives in a slightly stronger position than Labour because if an election were to be called and Reform won, but not with the huge majority some expect, then a deal with the Tories is always possible. Many Reform UK candidates in any general election will be former Tory defectors. Therefore, a parliamentary pact between the right-wing and far-right is a strong possibility given certain conditions. 

Either way it spells bad news for Labour who, thankfully, still have the ball as far as elections go in their court! They will not by any rule or protocol be forced to call an election should Starmer go, unless Parliament votes for one. However opposition MPs would make huge waves in the Commons should the government not go to the country with a new leader at a time when Labour need to regroup and lick their wounds. They still have a huge majority in the House and could ride the storm. Starmer needs to rally his backbenchers at a time when unity, even a façade of agreement, will be paramount. Labours recent history of supporting the party leader is not great, remember Jermy Corbyn? Will they do the same to Starmer or will they, albeit reluctantly, back him?

 

     
Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Should Starmer Stay Or Go?

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Seventy One

 

A Morning Thought @ 3145

Jim Duffy ✍ Sinn Féin is well known to be by far the most corrupt party in Ireland, or Britain, or possibly in Europe. 


There are never-ending stories of dodgy money, suspicious transactions, hidden accounts, cover organisations pretending to be independent but really just Sinn Féin.

By law, All parties are required to submit detailed comprehensive accounts to SIPO (The Standards in Public Office Commission). All the parties but a handful obeyed it. Micro-parties said they couldn't afford accountants to do their accounts. Among the larger ones, the only one to refuse to comply point blank was Sinn Féin. SIPO had to threaten to report them to the DPP for prosecution before they agreed to obey the law. The accounts they supplied were so convoluted and dodgy that a specialist forensic accountant who worked with the NYPD on tracing Mafia accounts had to be hired to deal with the Sinn Féin accounts.

In Britain a media investigation into corruption in Westminster among politicians. To the surprise of the London media, Sinn Féin came out as even more corrupt than the Tories. The scams they committed were off-the-scale. In every parliament they win seats in, they are surrounded by sleaze on a gigantic scale.

They are also brazen in their hypocrisy. They once made a big deal about the Oireachtas buying in highly expensive top-of-the-range printers, performing faux outrage. They never mentioned that the party that had demanded the Oireachtas buy those printers was . . . Sinn Féin. Its TDs wanted them.
The media of course never mentioned that fact. I asked a journalist once why they didn't mention that it was Sinn Féin that had demanded those printers be bought. He said "everyone knows it!" No they didn't. That was the problem. Just because he and I both knew it, and people around Leinster House knew it, did not mean voters did.

Then again, Sinn Féin is the embodiment of hypocrisy. I remember before the Lisbon Treaty the Minister for European Affairs invited all the spokespeople on Foreign Affairs, and their advisers, into his office on the Ministerial Corridor in Government Buildings to brief them in detail on the treaty. We all turned up and sat around the round table, but there were two empty seats - for the Sinn Féin spokesperson and his adviser.

Afterwards, Sinn Féin accused the government of excluding them from the briefing. It was garbage. Their names were visible on group email sent. Their office was rung repeatedly, including once by the minister in front of me. Someone from Labour went to the Sinn Féin floor to remind them the meeting was about to start. I rang my opposite number in Sinn Féin, whose number I had, to remind them. After half an hour, we gave up waiting and held the meeting.

We knew what they were up to - pretend they were not invited, to play on their usual tactic of claiming victimisation. They also ran a campaign that was 100% built on lies - including the usual rubbish they say in every single EU referendum (this is about joining NATO, if you vote for this you will be voting away your right to ever vote on treaties again, this will introduce abortion, bla bla bla). They are the single set of reusable lies. 

If the Sinn Féin people had turned up and trotted out that nonsense, in a room full of people who knew the treaty in detail, they would have gotten short shift and couldn't claim "nobody told us we were wrong!". They could spoof journalists, few of whom had read the treaty, and use the ludicrous 'equal time' rule on television and radio to their advantage. The rule is nonsense as it takes far shorter to make an allegation than to disprove it. It is like claiming that someone is a spouse abuser in 8 seconds, and then expecting someone to disprove it in 8 seconds. It is why in US presidential debates, a person usually has two minutes to respond to an allegation. Disproving a claim about a treaty article means being able to quote the article, so by definition that takes longer.

One of the few journalists who knew his facts, of course, was then RTÉ Europe editor Sean Whelan. One left wing anti-EU politician tried to spoof that Article 48 of Lisbon meant voters were voting away their right to have referendums - which was laughable. However, usually they got away with the lie. However Whelan correctly pointed out all the changes were made to how the EU institutions approve treaties, Not to how the member states approve treaties.

The article said "The amendments shall enter into force after being ratified by all the Member States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements." In other words, no change. How countries ratify treaties is decided by them based on their constitutional rules, and nothing there is changed.

In Ireland's case, the rules are simple: If a treaty increases the EU competences, that requires a constitutional amendment to allow that, and that requires a referendum and always will. If a treaty does not increase the competences, then as those competences were authorised by a past constitutional amendment, there is no need for a new amendment, so no need for a referendum. The Oireachtas has the constitutional power to ratify the treaty in that case.

That has been the case for decades. It is dead simple. New competences = referendum. No new competences = no referendum. In other words, not one iota of the procedures in member states changed. The only change was creating two procedures rather than one for how EU institutions, not the member states, approve treaties.

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

Brazen In Their Hypocrisy

The Guardian 📰 Written by Sam Jones Recommended by Hedley Lamarr. 

7-May-2026

The Spanish government awarded the UN legal expert Francesca Albanese one of its highest civilian honours in recognition of what it termed her “extensive work in documenting and denouncing violations of international law in Gaza”.

Albanese, an Italian human rights lawyer who serves as the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, has been vocal in her criticisms of Israel’s military operations in Gaza, which she has described as genocide.

She has also called out the international community over its failure to prevent and punish acts of torture, genocide and other serious human rights violations.

Albanese has faced the prospect of arrest in Germany over her use of language and has been hit with sanctions by the US government for urging the international criminal court (ICC) to investigate American and Israeli companies and individuals over their alleged complicity in gross human rights violations.

In a ceremony in Madrid on Thursday, Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, awarded Albanese the Order of Civil Merit. Sánchez is one of the most vociferous European critics of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

Continue @ Guardian. 

Spain Awards UN Legal Expert Francesca Albanese One Of Its Highest Civilian Honours

Seamus Kearney 🎤 'False friends will launch their covert sneers,
True friends will wish me dead.
And I shall cause the bitterest tears that you have ever shed' -  Emily Bronte.

After watching Freddie Scappaticci deliver his odious speech in his solicitor's office on 14th May 2003, Sylvia Jones became enraged at this charade and decided to bring it to an end. Jones had been the journalist with the Cook Report back in August 1993 and had secretly bugged the car Scappaticci climbed into at the Culloden Hotel. She felt her profession was being undermined and dragged through the mud so wrote an article in the newspaper, The People, on 20th July 2003, in which she recounted meeting Scappaticci on 26th August 1993 in the car park of the Culloden Hotel outside Hollywood, County Down. She wrote:

A senior officer in the then RUC warned us in the strongest terms that everything possible should be done to protect Scappaticci because even the slightest slip could put his life in danger and threaten their most important source of intelligence. 

She then released the tape recording of Scappaticci from the bugged car to settle the matter. When Scappaticci was presented with the tape recording in the solicitor 's office he had the audacity to ask could he challenge the tape recording, but was told he couldn't because an independent' voice over expert ' had verified that the voice on the recording matched Scappaticci's voice, in other words they were one in the same person.

The man who had duped the IRA leadership for so long and ironically had entered into a dubious pact with them in order to save his own skin while indirectly helping the IRA hierarchy to save their credibility, had finally run out of road. He contacted his military handlers who faithfully extracted him from the island of Ireland, leaving behind his wife and children. And thus began his life in exile.

In early June 2003 I received a phone call to go to a house in West Belfast in relation to my brother Michael's death. When I arrived i was greeted by a man who told me that he had been Michael's Company OC in 1979. He actually went on to say that he felt guilty about meeting me because 'I am the man who handed your brother over to those shower of traitors and still don't feel good about it'.

When I pressed him further he explained:

When Michael was released from Castlereagh in June 1979 he came to me and I debriefed him. It was me who told him to write out his de-briefing report and to put it somewhere safe as he would need it in the near future. He told me he had been given a severe beating by the Special Branch in Castlereagh and was under pressure. So, to take the pressure off him somewhat he had revealed the whereabouts of a small cache of explosives which were redundant and waterlogged. I myself knew about the cache and knew it was waterlogged, so told Michael not to worry about a useless dump. Immediately after this I informed Brigade about Michael's situation and told Brigade I had debriefed my Volunteer.

Their reply: 'That's not a problem, we value your counsel'.

I thought that was the end of the matter until a few days later, Wednesday June 27th 1979, I was ordered by a Brigade Staff Officer to go and collect Michael and hand him over to 'the Security Team', which was the newly formed Internal Security Unit (ISU). When I protested and told him there was no need for the ISU to be brought in, I was told Brigade had invited the unit in, as was now standard procedure, and they wanted to interrogate Michael in depth. When I said I would need to be with Michael as he wouldn't know anyone in the Security Team, I was told by the Brigade officer,  'He will be fine, there will be a familiar face there.' Which meant Michael would know someone who would be familiar to him. I was ordered to drop Michael off near the Glenowen Inn, Glen Road, West Belfast and that there would be two cars waiting for him in the car park. After I dropped him off at the roundabout on the Glen Road, I watched him walk toward the Glenowen and never saw him again.

When I heard that Michael Kearney was executed in the early hours of 12th July 1979 I went ballistic and demanded an explanation from Brigade who had orchestrated this and invited in Internal Security to further interrogate Michael. To say there was 'dissatisfaction among rank and file' would be an understatement, as other IRA Volunteers and our own support base in Lenadoon were outraged at what had happened to Michael.

A few months later those of us who were disgruntled the most over Michael Kearney's execution were taken aside and had to listen to a statement being read out from Brigade, which claimed Michael Kearney had been a paid agent who had compromised weapons and tipped the British off over the Short Strand bombs, 42 cylinder bombs which had been captured on 6th March 1979. I never believed the validity of this Brigade statement, and thought Michael Kearney had been scapegoated to die to cover up someone else.

After the meeting ended I thanked Michael's former OC for his honesty and returned to my group for a further update. A complicated situation just got even more complicated.

Seamus Kearney is a former Blanketman and author of  
No Greater Love - The Memoirs of Seamus Kearney.


Stakeknife 🕵 The Rise And Fall 🕵 Act XVIII

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Seventy

 

A Morning Thought @ 3144

Gary Robertson ⚽ By the time I write my next column it’ll all be over.

The SPL champions will be crowned and a bonkers season will be put to bed.

It’s hard to remember one quite as ridiculous as season 25/26.

Helicopter Sunday and the title win by The Rangers in 1991 but they pale into significance when we look at this year. With two matches remaining the title could be won or lost by Celtic at Celtic Park next Saturday (May 16th).
 
Of course they have the formidable hurdle of Motherwell to overcome on Wednesday whilst Hearts face Falkirk at Tynecastle.
 
Providing Hearts and Celtic win their midweek matches, whilst a draw against Motherwell wouldn’t be a disaster for Celtic providing they can better the goal difference on the last day these permutations can be tricky to navigate and I’m fairly certain both Martin O’Neill and Derek McInnes along with the fans prefer a “winner takes all” 90 minute battle under the high noon sun. 

Strictly from a Celtic point of view I hope the sun continues to shine as it seems to bring the best out of the enigma that is Daizen Maeda. In horse racing circles there’s a saying that some horses run better in the spring with the sun on their backs, Maeda is one of those horses or so it would seem.
 
There are matches of course still taking place. At the weekend past on Saturday we had the “New Firm Derby”, Aberdeen v Dundee Utd which resulted in a 2-0 victory for the Dons. Dundee putting 3 past hapless Livingston and Kilmarnock doing their survival hopes no harm with a 3-0 victory over St Mirren.
 
Further down the leagues promotion and relegation playoffs are under away and I need to quickly apologise to fans of Edinburgh City who aren’t quite out of it yet but are currently involved in a battle with Brora Rangers to stay in the SPFL.
 
Others include:

A championship promotion playoff final on Saturday at 5-30 between Stenhousemuir and Alloa Athletic, available on BBC Alba and of course the aforementioned Edinburgh City who face Brora Rangers at 3pm (which coincidentally is the same time as the English FA Cup final),

The teams for the SPL playoff final have yet to be determined but they will be announced next week.
 
Other matches of note this weekend include Hibs hammering Falkirk 3-1 away and Hearts putting the title into Celtic's hands by dropping points at Motherwell in a fiercely contested 1-1 draw.
 
Then there was the usual skirmish on Sunday in the shape of the Glasgow Derby.
 
A game neither side could afford to lose and for 45 mins that showed as at half time there was nothing between the teams. 1-1 at the break was about right but the second half, that was something else.
 
Sure we had the Yang controversy over Celtics first goal but Walsh and the VAR team allowed the goal to stand and that was good enough for me.
 
The argument Butland couldn’t see has been proven nonsense several times from different angles and it’s nitpicking and sour grapes to suggest otherwise. Yang's goal was a gud ‘un but better was yet to come.
 
After the break Celtic were a different animal, hungry, full of desire while worryingly for some of The Rangers fans their team looked beaten and dejected. A lack of passion and a “it’s just another game” attitude rather than being the biggest derby on earth.
 
Even Kris Boyd on Sky Sports questioned the players' mentality. The lack of care if you like was visible throughout the second 45 mins.
 
Before we get to that we have to discuss the Alastair Johnston tackle. He clearly got the ball in what was a fabulous tackle and whilst he also caught the Rangers' Moore afterward the intent wasn’t there in the tackle. Sure he was booked and possibly rightly so for a bad tackle it wasn’t an intentional move to injure the opposing player, therefore the yellow was the right decision. Anyone with any qualms about this feel free to read the rules and take it up with Mark Clattenburg. He got the ball; yes, he caught the man, but he got the ball first and the secondary tackle wasn’t made with intent, therefore a yellow is the right decision on this occasion.
 
So to the second half and it took little time for Celtic to impose their authority on the match. Just seven mins after the break a cross from Tierney was met by Maeda who slotted the ball past the Rangers player of the year Butland to put the Celts in control.
 
I genuinely hope we (Celtic) can keep hold of him in the summer as he’d be a massive hole to fill, a very difficult player to replace.
 
Still the magic is yet to come.
 
The 56th minute (I’ll provide a link) produced a goal the likes of you’ll be hard pushed to better in a Glasgow Derby.
 
A ball controlled first time then an overhead bicycle kick by the man of the moment, Daizen Maeda, landed in the net past a statuesque Butland, sending the Celtic fans into dreamland.

Game highlights including that goal can be found here.

Coming too late to usurp Chermitis’ overhead kick against Celtic for Goal of the season, it was truly sensational stuff. Leaving Celtic fans open mouthed and Rangers fans heading to the exit.

After which there was only going to be one winner and whilst the Rangers did at times attempt to threaten what little fight they had was fairly easily dealt with by Celtic

And so another weekend is over, two games to go for both Celtic and Hearts. Whoever wins both will be Champions.
 
It’s really that simple.
 
This’ll be a week remembered long in the memory of both sets of fans.

Til next time …

🐼 Gary Robertson is the TPQ Scottish football correspondent.

Winner Takes All

Evangelical Times ★ Written by Mike Judge.

A court has delivered its ruling in the Jonathan Fletcher abuse case. 

The findings against him are grievous. They are painful to read. They are painful to write about. Yet truth matters. Justice matters. The protection of the vulnerable matters.

A court has now found the allegations against Fletcher proved at an examination of the facts hearing, after he had earlier been ruled unfit to plead due to his dementia. 

Reports state the court accepted evidence that men under his spiritual influence were subjected to abusive treatment over many years.

This included naked beatings, coercive discipline, and degrading conduct presented as pastoral care or character formation. I’ll spare you the grim details. The offences were said to span decades and involved those who trusted him as a minister and mentor.

Many readers will know the wider background. Fletcher was once a prominent figure in conservative evangelical Anglicanism. He served for many years at Emmanuel Wimbledon. He influenced numerous younger ministers. He was widely respected in some circles. 

That history makes this case even more sobering. ‘Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall’ (1 Corinthians 10:12).

Continue @ ET.

A Warning To Every Evangelical Leader, As Jonathan Fletcher Is Found Guilty Of Naked Beatings

Barry Gilheany ✍ The week gone past marks the centenary of a seminal moment in British labour and political history . . . 

. . . the General Strike, when on 1st May an overwhelming majority (3,653, 526 for and 49,911 against) of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) General Council voted to support nationwide industrial action in support of the coal miners who almost for a year had been resisting attempts by mine owners to impose wage cuts and longer working hours. 

Unlike the 50th anniversary, the occasion has largely been ignored by the mainstream media. There are no drama documentaries of the sort that commemorated the 30th and 40th anniversaries of the 1984-85 coal strike which arguably had as consequential an impact on workers’ rights and trade union activism as the 1926 event. There were no academic discussions or historical features on television or radio reaching back into the archives to recall the testimonies of strikers or other actors such as the volunteers who signed up to run daily services such as trains and trams and distribution of essential supplies as there were in 1976 – possibly the highest watermark of trade union influence on decision making and membership. 

It is certainly remembered in locally organised activities such as the Colchester Trades Council commemorative walk that I took part in (at least until my dodgy osteoarthritic knees forced me to pull out!) as part of the Jane’s Walks programme that occurs annually in early May; named after the urban geographer and activist Jane Jacobs. The TUC General Council organised events up and down the country to mark the General Strike and the liberal left’s newspaper of record, The Observer/Guardian, did carry a review of four recently published books on it, which I will reference throughout this article. It is featured in exhibitions and events in libraries and museums. But it is a largely forgotten event, from a vanished era which unlike other events from over a century ago such as World War One and the Easter Rising with a mini cottage industry of literary and broadcasting output that they have generated, which has largely disappeared from public consciousness. It is the intention of this article to resurrect the memory of “The revolution that never was.”[1]

Background to the General Strike

The General Strike lasted from the 3rd to 12th May. Approximately 1.7 to 3 million workers across heavy industry, printing and other key sectors effectively brought Britain to a standstill. The TUC ended the strike after nine days in the realisation that that it could not sustain disruption to essential services and the miners themselves remained on strike for nearly eight months.

The principal economic driver of the process that led to the General Strike was the fall in the international price of coal in the aftermath of the First World War. The Dawes Plan in 1924 allowed Germany to re-enter the international coal market by exporting “free coal” to France and Italy as part of the reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles for the war. This extra supply reduced the price of coal. Worse was to follow when Winston Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1925 reintroduced the gold standard against at its pre-first world war parity of $4.86 to the pound. It would not be the last time in the twentieth century that decisions taken by Chancellors on currency and exchange rate mechanisms would have momentous and deleterious effects on the UK economy. In this sterling became too strong for effective exporting and so there was a further fall in the price of coal. Coal production had fallen to just 199 tons by 1920-24 and total coal output had been in decline since 1914.[2]

The response of the mine owners attempted to force down wages by up to 25% and impose longer hours. Miners resisted and demanded: “not a penny off the pay, not a minute off the day.”

To get some understanding of the issues involved and virtually existential nature of the conflict in the coal mining industry and the raw emotions it generated, it is necessary to briefly explain the structure of the coal mining industry in the early part of the twentieth industry. It was a particularly badly run sector of the British economy, with around 1,400 separate firms owning nearly 2,500 collieries. Many of these were small enterprises, with 95% of the coal produced by a mere 600 collieries.[3] The polarised mindsets of both pit owners and miners’ union leaders were legendary. One member of the Sankey Commission into the state of British coalmining in 1919 remarked:

It would be possible to state with certainty that the union leaders were the stupidest people we had ever met, if we had not on occasions to meet the owners.

One Tory cabinet minister said of the coal owners: “They are about the stupidest and most narrow-minded employers I know.”

The working conditions of the miners need to be described in the starkest of terms which Jonathan Scheer does in his book Nine Days in May: The General Strike of 1926. Miners were paid for their shifts of seven hours at the coalface. But it took them sometimes a couple of hours of crawling on hands and knees to get to and from the seams. Proposing to extend the working day by an hour as the mine owners did was a matter of life and death in the subterranean depths of the coalfield. For it was at the tired end of the working day – the “murder hour” – that most industrial accidents occurred. On average, during the first half of the 1920s, three miners were killed in accidents daily across Britain. In addition there were on average about 500 injuries, at least ten of which were serious. Herbert Smith, the president of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, had lost his father in a mining accident and the union’s secretary, Arthur Cook, had seen a fellow worker killed beside him in a rockfall during his very first day underground.[4] Such tales of death and disability including memories of mass casualty pit explosions have left powerful emotional legacies such as miners as supreme pantheons of labour struggles and wider reverence and awe for what these authentic heroes of class struggle experienced in their everyday working lives.**

After the owners had made their wage cut and work extension proposals, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin intervened with a compromise: a nine-month government subsidy to the coal industry to maintain the status quo. On “Red Friday” 31st July 1925, the owners backed down and the government commissioned the Samuel Commission to investigate the industry. However, the government began to make arrangements for a general strike. They set up OMS (Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies); stockpiled food and fuel and trained university students and other young people from upper middle-class families to drive trains and operate essential services. In March/April 1926; the Samuel Commission report called for wage cuts of 13.5% and the withdrawal of the subsidy. The miners refused to accept these recommendations and after the failure of negotiations initiated by the TUC, the general strike commenced at a minute before midnight on Tuesday 2nd May 1926.

Course of the Strike

The General Strike went ahead despite the concerns of Labour Party leaders who were troubled by revolutionary or anarcho-syndicalist elements within the union movement and of the damage they could do to the party’s new reputation as a party of government.[5] However the point of return was passed because of an eleventh-hour decision by printers of the Daily Mail newspaper to refuse to print an editorial titled For King and Country, objecting to the following passage; “A general strike is not an industrial dispute. It is a revolutionary move which can only succeed by destroying the government and subverting the rights and liberties of the people.” Fearing that an all-out general strike would bring revolutionary elements to the fore, the TUC limited the participants to railwaymen, transport workers, printers, dockers, ironworkers and steelworkers as they were regarded as pivotal in the dispute.

The printers’ strike gave Stanley Baldwin’s government a pretext to break off negotiations to break off negotiations – freedom of the press. Churchill then took control of the state’s media operation by publishing The British Gazette as a government newspaper for the strike’s duration. The government had no need to put any restriction on the new medium of broadcasting as John Reith, the managing director of the then British Broadcasting Company (BBC), self- censored to such an extent in order to avoid any threats of state takeover that, for example, he prevented Randall Davidson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, from issuing a conciliatory message on the BBC.[6]

In an ecclesiastic contrast, in a rare political radio broadcast, Archbishop Francis Cardinal Bourne, the leading Catholic prelate in Britain, condemned the strike, knowing that many strikers were Catholic. He advised his flock that “It is a direct challenge to lawfully constituted authority … All are bound to uphold and assist the Government which is the lawfully constituted authority of the country and represents the authority of God himself.”[7]

Rather than a syndicalist strategy influenced by the revolutionary ideology popular in France and Spain at the turn of the century and which influenced the thinking of then leader of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) Arthur Scargill during the epic miners’ strike of 1984-85, the General Strike was in the words of Jonathan Scheer “an enormous sympathy strike”. The TUC General Council sought merely to force the government to re-open negotiations rather than overthrow the state. As has already been pointed out, the leadership did not mobilise the full complement of the unionised workforce and maintained some provision for essential needs. The central organisation of the strike included a Food and Essential Services Committee, while its Building Committee permitted construction work to continue for ordinary housing and for hospitals.[8]

By contrast, the government in its objective of the defeat what it regarded a clear and defiant anti-constitutional challenge to its authority. In a manner which prefigured the Thatcher’s years preparations for the 1984 coal showdown, it made comprehensive contingency plans well in advance of the collapse of the talk. Both Baldwin and Thatcher governments posed the question that Ted Heath asked of the UK electorate in February 1974 when the three-day working day and power cuts were imposed in response to the miners’ strike: “Who governs?” and were determined to answer, in the affirmative, the government of the day. It has also been pointed out earlier, that Baldwin’s administration stockpiled food and fuel and mobilised its volunteer strike breaking battalions just as the Thatcher government had stockpiled sufficient supplies of imported coal.[9]

Much saccharine accounts of the General Strike claim that it was a largely peaceful affair and tell comforting stories about football matches between strikers and police in Plymouth and sentimental stories of young persons realising ambitions to drive trains. However the full panoply of the state was deployed to ensure that the country ran as normal as possible. On 4th May under the Emergency Powers Act; troops were employed against workers taking united action for fair pay. Battleships with guns were aimed at docks in the major port cities of Hull, Bristol, and Liverpool. There were also more than a few incidences of violence and sabotage. For example, a group of miners in Cramlington in Northumberland removed rails from the track of a train ahead of a train, which caused its engine to overturn and the derailment of five coaches with mercifully only one person injured.

One strike participant and dock worker from East London, Harry Wilson, recalls the increasing violence with which the police handled the strikers:

One morning we had word that there were troops in the docks unloading ships and the lorries were coming up the Victoria Dock Road… We got to Barking Road outside Canning Town station. Up come the lorries with barbed wire all-round the lorries’ canopy with troops with guns sitting behind the barbed wire… The people were jeering and boing but that was the extent of it. Then the police started pushing from behind and they kept pushing and pushing and pushing and we were pushed onto the road, and it led to arguments and before we knew it the police were laying about us with their truncheons. There were a few broken arms as a result of the blows we had been subjected to[10]

In Britain’s Revolutionary Summer, Edd Mustill rightly takes apart the myth that the strike was a sedate affair in which nobody died. Untrained volunteers were ill-equipped to handle buses and trains with several deaths in train collisions and bus crashes that were attributable to their incompetence. On other occasions, their efforts led to farcical outcomes such as the 37 hours it took for a mishandled steam train to get from King’s Cross station in London to Edinburgh[11]

In the words of Harry Wilson:

We were never voting to involve ourselves in any physical violence in any shape or form. And the strike itself never needed it. I was being guided in my thinking by the elder men that we were going to win this one because it was a national strike and by the kind of power and authority that they exercised. There was no question that there would be capitulation by the government on this matter.[12]

Such hopes were to be crucially dashed by the decision by the TUC on 12th May to call off the strike with no resolution if the government offered a guarantee that there would be no victimisation of strikers. The government stated that it had “no power to compel employers to take back every man who had been on strike.” The miners maintained their resistance until they were virtually starved back to work at the end of November 1926 for longer hours and lower wages. The miners were to taste more bitter fruit with many denied their jobs leading to the choice of the workhouse or emigration with Canada a common destination. The divisions that emerged within the ranks of the miners with the decision of the “Spencer” unions in Nottinghamshire to break the strike by an early return to work added another layer of pain and bitterness in mining communities which returned with a vengeance in the 1984-85 strike.

Legacy of the General Strike

The immediate legacy of the General Strike was the 1927 Disputes and Trade Union Act which included the prohibition of sympathy strikes and mass picketing and which led to trade unions having to implement the opt-in political levy to Labour arrangement. But the disappointed expectations of Harry Wilson powers the radical left view of the outcome of the General Strike as a “sellout” the consequences of which we still live with. Callum Cant and Mathew Lee’s book The Future in our Past locates the plight of today’s precariat in the might-have-beens of 1926: we live now in a future that could and perhaps should have been so different. In the same vein, Mustill bemoans the “squandered solidarity” of 1926, the “unfulfilled promise of working-class power” betrayed by a supine leadership. The “will to unity” seen in 1926, he notes, has long since dissipated even among moderate trade union leaders.[13]

As against this recurring meme of betrayal of the working class by the Trade Union and Labour establishments, are the facts that one of the trade union movement’s big beasts of history Ernest Bevin who co-ordinated the General Strike was never persuaded of its utility again. The basic demand of the TUC was the reversal of the wage cuts and longer working hours being forced on the miners and it was on those grounds that it can be termed a failure at least in the short to medium term sweep of history. But in a much wider historical context, the TUC argues that the strike reinforced the importance of a collective voice for workers. It also claims that such workplace rights such as paid holidays, safe workplaces, protections against unfair dismissal, maternity and paternity rights and the national minimum wage are the true legacies of 1926 as these gains were the results of workers organising together and demanding change.[14]

The much-reduced collective bargaining power of labour a century on from the General Strike is rather more the consequence of the defeat of the NUM in 1984-85 (followed by the defeat of the printers in Wapping in 1987) that of 1926. I would argue that that had the NUM strike had the same undoubted democratic mandate that the General Strike; that means there should have been a national ballot of members, then victory would have been much more likely and that Thatcher could have been ousted from power and the attack on employment rights could have been prevented. In a vastly changed world of work, the General Strike still has something to offer in the historical memory of worker solidarity. Can they be applied to the world of the Amazon distribution worker, the social care worker, the call centre operator and all the other casualised sectors of work? Yes, they can.

References

[1] Colin Kidd, The Revolution That Never Was, The Observer New Review Books 3 May 2026 pp.34-35

[2] Wikipedia

[3] Kidd, p.34

[4] Ibid

[5] Martin Pugh (2011)

[6] Kidd, p.35

[7] Neil Riddell, (1997), The Catholic Church and the Labour Party, 1918-1931. Twentieth Century British History 8 (2) pp.165-193 at p.172

[8] Kidd, p.34

[9] There is a corrective to this narrative which is often promulgated by supporters of the 1984 coal strike. Richard Vien agrees that the Tories certainly discussed the prospect of a strike from the mid-1970s. However he argues that they did not have a clearly worked out plan or much confidence in their ability to win such a dispute. They were even more reticent after their humiliating retreat for the threat of a miners’ strike in February 1981 (a possible sign of the weakness of the Thatcher government at that time). So he argues that stockpiling coal was initially designed to deter a strike rather than to defeat one. Furthermore Thatcher was not always keen to confront the miners and many of those who designed and executed the strategy were not Thatcherites. Indeed some were civil servants not politicians. Richard Vien, A War of Position. The Thatcher Government’s Preparation for the 1984 Miners’ Strike. The English Historical Review Vol.34. No.566. February 2019 pp.121-150

[10] Harry Wilson Memories of the general strike.

11] Kidd, p.35

[12] Wilson, op cit

[13] Kidd, p.35

[14] TUC Website General Strike 1926: Why It Happened and Why It Still Matters 

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.

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