The 100th anniversary of the General Strike has seen a number books, events and discussions. The focus here is on new research which can bring fresh insights into what the Strike was about, what’s its politics and potential were, and what remains relevant one hundred years on.
Edd touched on a number of important research issues. Some points:
The centrality of oil supplies at the Thameshaven depot in Essex where workers had struck
The use of a paramilitary force in the last official days of the strike to try and break picket lines and the presence of a small number of fascists in this organisation.
The reports sent by police to the Government on who strikers were which reliably referenced if they were thought to be Jewish or foreign.
The role and form of the General Strike as a strategy in the class struggle and its relation to the Mass Strike
Edd Mustill, Britain’s Revolutionary Summer. The General Strike of 1926
David Attenborough’s 100th birthday has allowed a significant download of his back catalogue on the BBC IPlayer.
It is an impressive body of work (not just Attenborough but all the camera crew,techies and support staff) and dating back to the 1970s is now, at least the earlier decades, social history.
It includes the first natural world TV in colour, Life on Earth, and amazing shots of animals in their natural habitats as the technology developed.
One interesting detail is Attenborough’s voice. He was brought up in Leicestershire but has lived for many years in south-west London. He was responsible for running BBC2 from its launch in 1965 and then by 1970 had control of all the BBC’s TV output.
During this period his voice is of the standard Reithian Received Pronunciation delivery. It was of course designed to be classless, although in fact mostly spoken by those of the middle and upper classes.
In more recent decades Attenborough’s voice, still clear, has moved away from RP, to what might be assumed to be his ‘natural’ and instantly recognisable day to day voice. Arguably as someone who might be called a ‘people’s broadcaster’ that represents progress in history..
John Curtice is arguably the most reliable pollster- psephologist- currently working. He is an academic rather than someone involved with a commercial polling organisation.
He oversaw the BBC’s election coverage on 7th May and has provided further analysis in The Times (9th May).
Of course we know that Reform did quite well, although not as well as in 2025, as did the Greens who perhaps fell short of winning a few Councils they could have done. Labour meantime did badly, although again, not quite as badly as the worst case scenario.
What of the Tories. They lost 563 seats on May 7th from a low base.
Curtice notes:
Where Leave won more than 60% of the vote in 2016, Reform won 40% on average. Where less than 40% backed Brexit, Reform’s tally was just 10%. Many of the voters who backed Boris Johnson to ‘get Brexit done’ in 2019 have now switched to Nigel Farage’s Party… Indeed it is the Conservatives who have suffered most where Reform have done best. On average the Party’s support is down on 2022 by 11 points. But it has fallen by 17 points where Reform have won more than 30% of the vote
Blair’s ex-speech writer on Jurgen Habermas (1929-2026). .
Philip Collins was a speech writer for Blair back in the day. More recently he was a Times columnist for a period and nowadays pops up in the New Statesman. He has written an obituary of the Frankfurt School theorist Jurgen Habermas for Prospect magazine.
Its notable for making no reference to Marxism or the left, although this broadly was where Habermas situated himself for most of his life. Even The Times lengthy obituary made a few nods in this direction.
Habermas over the decades had a number of pieces in New Left Review and was the leading figure in the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, associated with Adorno, Marcuse and others.
Habermas is known for a range of theories and expositions some of which are covered in Collins obit. His work on the eighteenth century public sphere, where democratic discussion, as he saw it flourished, and its absence in recent times remains in my view of interest.
E P Thompson who saw the Frankfurt School as one with a broader Western Marxism and even Althusser was critical.
He noted in the Poverty of Theory an emphasis on ideological domination ‘which destroys every space for the initiative or creativity of the mass of the people- a domination from which only the enlightened minority of intellectuals can struggle free.
Thompson argued this led to the ‘intellectual’s disinclination to extend himself in practical political activity’
Habermas did make political interventions mostly until recent times on the left but was not associated with political organisation.
Collins ‘New Labour’ Habermas has some politics but not Habermas’s politics, problematic as they were for the left.
Remembering Gordon Brown 2008-10. Boom & Bust & nationalising the Banks
Starmer has appointed Gordon Brown as an envoy on global finance and cooperation. There is no question that Brown does know something about these matters. One half of New Labour (the other being Blair) Brown was a long time Chancellor and the PM.
Since he left Parliament he has not, unlike Blair, spent the time enriching himself or urging wars but has focused on child poverty and more recently on pushing for prosecutions in the UK over the Epstein scandal.
It is 18 years since the demise of Lehman Brothers caused a worldwide financial crisis the impact of which is still being felt today.
The late historian Eric Hobsbawm argued at a meeting of the Communist Party Historians Group in the 1950s that they ‘must become historians of the present too’. That is historians should be able to provide an historical context which will help understanding of what happens in the current day.
Many will think that Hobsbawm was a much better historian than he was political analyst and it remains to be seen whether his Forward March of Labour Halted will be seen over time as much more than an intellectual apologia for the rise of New Labour.
Even so Hobsbawm had a very good point when it comes to histories of the present. In the 24-hour news cycle, fed by the sound bite, there is little room for analysis let alone context.
Gordon Brown was Prime Minister when Lehmans went under and before that he had been the New Labour Chancellor since 1997. He set the Bank of England free from direct Government control and focused on a Labour policy that was pro-market capitalism. He claimed that his economic policy had moved beyond the boom and bust cycle that is inherent in capitalism. Clearly Brown had read even less of Marx’s Capital than Harold Wilson apparently managed.
2008 underlined big time that Brown most certainly had not abolished bust. He acted to shore up the capitalist system and it is worth reflecting that while he had some success in preventing a total collapse the then Tory opposition led by Cameron and Osborne offered no ideas whatsoever about what might be done to sort out the crisis.
Of course by 2010 they had had an idea of sorts. They still did not know how to address the fall-out from Lehmans but they were determined that their class was not going to pay for it. A policy of austerity was introduced, with the assistance of the Liberal Democrats in a Coalition Government.
The plan was simple. Market capitalism and market capitalists had suffered a near catastrophic crisis, largely due to their own greed and in some cases stupidity. Yet they were not going to pay for it either in corporate or personal terms. On the contrary those who had had absolutely nothing to do with the crisis, the working class, were going to pay through relentless cuts to public services.
We might also reflect, as Tony Benn did in his diary at the time, that 2008 was also the time when a New Labour Government had to do something it was in principle ideologically opposed to. Namely nationalise large parts of the British banking system.
A trend that was clear in the 2024 General Election has been further underlined in the May 2026 local elections. In 2024 Green candidates ran Labour second in many Constituencies in North-East London. That is to say in Waltham Forest, Hackney and Haringey.
In May 2026 the Greens took control of Waltham Forest and Hackney from Labour. Haringey is currently NOC with the Greens holding 28 seats and the combined forces of Labour and the LibDems holding 29. Of course no such combined force exists so it will be interesting to see what happens next, as it will in Enfield where the Greens hold the balance of power between the Tories and Labour.
However one may situate the politics of the Greens they are clearly to the left of Starmer Labour. Conversely the Greens do not have a good record when actually running Councils. In fact very few Councils of any stripe do given the contingencies of austerity.
Independent community, left and socialist candidates in the three Boroughs polled far higher than previous efforts reflecting a leftward move. None get elected however underlining that currently particularly in the light of the unfortunate at least partial implosion of Your Party, Greens have the recognised national brand.
On 9th May 1968 local elections in London saw Labour lose all but three Councils to the Tories
Cecil King then the head of the Daily Mirror publishing empire- the paper sold over 5 million copies a day in 1968- ran a front page Editorial demanding that the Labour Government headed by Harold Wilson was forced from Office. It was headlined ‘enough is enough’
King went further than that. He organised a meeting attended by Louis Mountbatten and others to see if a military coup could be organised to depose Wilson. To their credit Mountbatten and Co. refused point blank.
King was fired by the owners of the Mirror IPC on 30th May for damaging the interests of the Company.
The coup attempt came on the back of the very poor local election results for Labour and a poor economic performance. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was Roy Jenkins.
Tony Benn recorded in his Diary (10th May 1968) ‘At about midnight Harold Wilson rang up and asked if I would go and see him tomorrow morning. Cecil King’s attack was the big news in all the papers and Harold’s paranoia is being fed’
Benn recorded that at the meeting, Wilson told ‘I’m not quitting you know’. He didn’t but lost the June 1970 General Election.
The London election results of May 2026 are not as bad for Labour as 1968- an important corrective to ‘of the moment’ news media. At the same time while in 1968 London politics went right, in 2026 its going at least to the left of Starmerism with Green Party gains
We are not of course comparing like with like. 2017 was a General Election, while 2026 are local elections in England and national ones in Scotland and Wales.
However psephologist John Curtice has noted that Reform is polling well in areas which voted for Brexit. 2017 was of course the first post Brexit vote election. Labour was clearly better at winning the support of Brexit voters in that year that it has been, with a different strategy in 2026
David Attenborough the acclaimed natural world broadcaster and former controller of BBC2 as it moved to colour TV in the 1960s is 100.
The BBC has made available many of Attenborough’s programmes on IPlayer and Sounds. Amongst them is one which recalls the first series he ever produced for the BBC in 1954.
It was a six part series presented by Alan Lomax which showcased live folk music from the BBC studios at Alexandra Palace in North London.
The series was not recorded but the programme has interviews, musical performances and Attenborough’s memories.
Alan Lomax was an American who came to Britain in the 1950s to study and recover British folk music. He may also have been avoiding an appearance at McCarthy’s anti-socialist and communist witch hunt hearings although this is disputed.
Certainly Attenborough recalls that the issue was raised that the programmes were showcasing left-wing and Communist performers. However he was able to deflect the matter.
He was also successful in getting extra funding, Lomax not being someone who worked to a budget and for getting the go ahead for performers to drink beer live on air
It is perhaps a sign of Michael Rosen’s impact on British (and beyond) life that as he turned 80 on 7th May he is the lead birthday in the daily Times list. It’s unclear if the paper’s owner Rupert Murdoch has ever read any of Michael Rosen’s writings and its unlikely that he is an Arsenal fan.
Its notable that Thelma Houston and Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann are also both 80 on 7th May while Christy Moore is 81.
Michael Rosen however may have the plaudit that at 80 he is keeping on keepin’ on.
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