IN MAY 1926 the Trades Union Congress (TUC) called a general strike in support of the miners’ union, whose members faced wage cuts and increased working hours.

A Royal Commission, set up by the Tory Government of the day, resulted in the Samuel Report coming out in favour of the coalowners.

On May 1, the executives of the TUC unions voted by 3,600,000 to 50,000 for all the major unions to take strike action on May 3, in support of the Miners Federation of Great Britain (MFGB).

After nine days of strike action, the General Council of the TUC capitulated to the Tory Government and called off the strike, despite more workers joining the action every day.

The TUC leaders abandoned the MFGB and the miners fought on alone for a further nine months, until they were starved back to work.

It is well known that the Prime Minister Sir Stanley Baldwin and his Cabinet – Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill, Home Secretary Sir William Joynson Hicks and Foreign Secretary Sir Robert Hodgson – backed the creation of the scab outfit, the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies (OMS) in the months before the strike.

The TUC General Council did not want the strike and actually issued a statement declaring that the general strike was only an industrial dispute and begged ‘Mr Baldwin to believe that’.

However, Baldwin and forces in such agencies as the secret service and the police’s Special Branch knew that a General Strike challenged the Government, the state and the capitalist system.

They feared that the working class would not be held back by the TUC leaders.

This is abundantly clear from Home Office documents which only became public last week at the National Archive in London.

(Documents HO144/6891 and HO144/7985).

The officials of the capitalist state considered these documents so sensitive it has taken almost 80 years for them to see the light of day!

What they reveal is that the Baldwin government and the agencies of the state set out to find out about the organisers of the strike, and the communications between the TUC General Council and the regions.

They were prepared to disrupt and cut off communications if they considered it necessary.

The British miners and the whole trade union movement had the backing of trade unionists all over the world and of workers in the Soviet Union.

The state agencies worked determinedly to block international solidarity action and funds.

Home Secretary Sir William Joynson Hicks issued warrants for the General Post Office (GPO), to intercept mail, pass it on to the Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police, who forwarded the information to the Home Office.

On May 3, 1926 the following letter, marked ‘SECRET’, was sent by the Home Secretary to the GPO.

‘I hereby authorise and require you to deliver, open and produce for my inspection all postal packets and telegrams addressed to –
‘Trades Union Congress, General Council, at 32, Eccleston Square, SW1, or any other address if there is reasonable grounds to believe that they are intended for said Trades Union Congress, General Council and for so doing this shall be your sufficient Warrant.

‘W Joynson Hicks, One of His Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State’

On May 6, 1926, the Home Office wrote to the GPO:
‘Acknowledging letter for Mr Locke – want to look at telegrams to Ernest Bevin [it gave his home address] and TGWU headquarters [address].’

A second letter (12.5.26.) clarified the situation. It said: ‘Dear Mr Hatswell [at GPO] . . . it is not desired that any telegrams should be stopped under the Warrant, only that copies of all such telegrams should be made and sent under cover to me. Yours very truly C Joynson Hicks.’

In addition, warrants were issued to intercept international telegraphs through the GPO and private telegraph companies coming to the TUC from the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), which supported the Second (Socialist) International, and the Soviet Union.

On May 5, Joynson Hicks at the Home Office noted a ‘Message stopped from the Amsterdam International Federation of Trade Unions’.

It read: ‘The message noticed was to South Africa and was intended to stop coal being sent to England.

‘. . . it is likely that in addition to the Amsterdam International both telegrams and letters will be addressed to the Amsterdam International.

‘I have told to Post Office to hold up the telegram to South Africa.

‘Special Branch will examine anything stopped under Warrant. The Warrant should cover both outgoing and incoming messages.’

Another message from the Home Office, dated May 7, 1926 stated: ‘I wired the appropriate ports last night that [IFTU leader Jan] Oudegeest should be refused permit to land at Harwich or Hull.’

The British Ambassador in the Netherlands, Sir C Harding, sent a telegram to the Foreign Office, which was forwarded to the Home Office concerning the ‘Coal Strike’.

It read: ‘Manifesto of Dutch transport workmen’s union states following decisions taken:

‘(1) No coal to be shipped to England and seamen to leave colliers.

‘(2) Bunkers to be refused to ships which would have bunkered in England. British strikers to telegraph names of ships coming here to bunker.

‘(3) Seamen not to sign on British ships.

‘Unsure how far these instructions will be followed by them.’

Joynson Hicks issued Warrants for intercepting telegrams from the private companies, Great Northern Company, Western Union, Eastern Telegraph Co and Commercial Cables.

The GPO wrote to the Home Secretary on May 7, 1926: ‘In accordance with your telephonic request this afternoon, I enclose copies of 7 telegrams set to Lloyds Bank from Moscow on May 5th and 6th.

‘I have not got the appropriate code.

‘The telegrams were sent via the Great Northern Telegraph Company.

‘D O Lumley, Private Secretary, GPO’

Soviet telegrams were coded and the Home Office decoded them. The transcriptions are in these files.

On May 11, under amended Emergency Regulation, the Home Secretary prohibited transactions ‘for any purpose prejudicial to the public safety or the life of the Community.’

Under this Joynson Hicks ordered Lloyds Bank not to transfer two sums it had received it had. These were £25,000 originating from the Chase Bank in New York, from the US trade unions, and £175,000 from the Deutsche Bank, which had originated from the Narodny Bank in the Soviet Union.

The interception of Bevin’s and the TGWU’s mail and telegrams was stopped, by revoking of the Warrant on May 17, 1926, after Bevin and the other TUC leaders had called off the General Strike.

However, Balwin’s government was still very concerned that the MFGB should not receive funds from the international trade union movement and the Soviet Union.

The head of the Metropolitan Police Sir John Knox was informed on May 22, 1926, ‘This telephone conversation was overheard as a result of checks which we re-imposed during the crisis just for a short time.

‘It may be of interest to you in view of the new Emergency Regulation.’

The phone tap was on the Miners Federation and there is a transcript in the Home Office files of a conversation between Andrew Rothstein, a leading member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) (who later became a life-long Stalinist) and a union official.

What interested the Special Branch was that there was mention of transfer of money to the miners from the Soviet Union.

Rothstein asks: ‘Is it a fact that you had a telegram from the Russian miners expressing their. . .’

The union official asks Rothstein to tell the Soviet miners to ‘place the money at our disposal. . . the CWS [Cooperative Wholesale Society] Bank that’s the only way. . .’

Special Branch also reported to the Home Office on May 19, that the telegraphs sent to Moscow, copies of which were supplied by the Great Northern Telegraph Co., were in Rothstein’s handwriting.

There is a document amongst these Home Office files, marked ‘SECRET’, which is a report from the British Embassy in Moscow on differences which emerged at an internal meeting of Profintern, between Grigorii Zinoviev and the Mikhail Tomsky over relations between the Communist-led trade unions and the IFTU.
The Home Office files contain a detailed 15-page report on funds donated to the MFGB, with the dates and amounts, and a summary at the end.

It reads: ‘General Council of Soviet Trades Unions £380,000, Ukraine £1,070, Leningrad Unions £7,000, WIR £35,000, United Mineworkers of America (Kennedy) $50,000, International Miners Federation May 30, . . Central-Soyius and Agricultural Cooperatives £2,700, Dutch Trades Unions 70,000 guilders (£5,750 c. plus loan of £80,000 for three years to the TUC), Dutch Labour Secretariat £300, TUC Johannesburg £500, IFTU £7,000.’

The Home Office documents made public last week reveal that, during the 1926 General Strike, it was at the centre of an intelligence-gathering operation involving intercepting and opening mail and telegrams, and telephone tapping.

When it considered it necessary it stopped these communications and was involved in other ‘dirty tricks’, including blocking funds and the movement of key figures of the international labour movement.

Today, trade unionists and socialists should always be aware that the Home Office and MI5 is engaged in more extensive and much more diabolical ‘dirty tricks’.