181 years since the 1842 General Strike
The Tory version of British history allows for only one General Strike in 1926. General Strikes are for other countries. Except they aren’t. There was a Scottish General Strike in 1820 and there was a brief one in 1972 around the Pentonville Five dockers.
The months of July and August see the 181st anniversary of the 1842 General Strike. Where mainstream histories mention it, they refer to the ‘plug plot’. Flying pickets moved from mill to mill across the north disabling the power that allowed them to run.
There remains only one study of 1842 by Mick Jenkins. The strike itself was ultimately brutally repressed by the army leaving numbers dead and injured not least in Preston.
Debate continues about how far the strike was a major industrial dispute and how far it was influenced by Chartist politics to produce a wider change in society. The links below provide ways in to that discussion.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/the-great-strike-of-1842-halifaxs-peterloo
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