1926 – a year to remember

by Andy Brooks

May 1926 – when the unions tried, but sadly failed, to halt the employers’ offensive against the miners. The fledgling British communist party, founded a few years earlier in 1920, did its best to rally the workers during the general strike that was called off by the defeatists and gravy-trainers in the big unions on surrender terms that set back the labour movement in Britain for many years to come.
On the 100th anniversary of the General Strike the NCP is republishing Stalin’s comments on this momentous event in the history of British trade unionism. The new pamphlet includes a brief historical review of the strike written in 2006 by Ken Ruddock, a leading member of the New Communist Party who sadly passed away in 2020, together with Stalin’s report delivered at a meeting of railway workers in Tiflis on 8th June 1926. 
Another tribute, this time from the Socialist History Society includes a reprint of Ernie Trory’s long out-of-print Brighton and the General Strike and other articles on great strike.
It’s called Remembering the Battle of Lewes Road and it’s edited and introduced by Christian Høgsbjerg for the Brighton & Hove trades council.
The booklet contains two pamphlets. One by Ernie Trory, the famous NCP Brighton communist and unemployed workers’ leader, and another by Andy Durr of the Brighton Trades Council that were first published in the 1970s. Above all, it is an affirmation of the support which the working class of Brighton gave to the miners in their dispute with the coal owners and the Conservative government, and an homage to the 22 men who were imprisoned from two to six months for their attempt to prevent the tram sheds at Lewes Road being opened for strike-breaking purposes on 11th May 1926. Both pamphlets draw from the personal experiences of those involved, and the pamphlet finishes with Ernie Trory's rewriting of the song Sussex by the Sea, written in the idiom of the strikers. This is a must for anyone interested in the history of the labour movement on the South Coast.
The General Strike of 1926 pamphlet can be ordered from the Lit Dept at the NCP for £4:00 including postage. Remembering the Battle of Lewes Road is an illustrated booklet which can be obtained for just £6:00 from the Strike Map online store at: https://organiseandstrike.sumupstore.com/