Welsh Journals

THE GENERAL STRIKE. By Patrick Renshaw. Eyre Methuen, 1975. Pp. 301. £ 9.75. Patrick Renshaw claims, as the 'main justification' for this re-telling of the General Strike, his use of 'new sources'. These consist, mostly, of the recently available Cabinet papers, Baldwin's papers and T.U.C. documents of various kinds. The material allows him to narrate the 'high politics' of the story in a detail not possible hitherto, and in a style that is highly readable throughout. Nonetheless, the book has some grave flaws. Not the least of these are the publisher's fault. There is the excessive price which could, presumably, have been lowered by omitting useless photographs of assorted prime ministers, various coalowners, and a clutch of economists; proof-reading that has The Miners' Next Step published, on two occasions, in 1913, and twice (correctly this time) in 1912, that has Lloyd George in office until 1932 (instead of 1922), Herbert Smith as M.F.G.B. President until 1938 (instead of 1930), and A. J. Cook dying, in the same year, at two different ages. Other mistakes in a book that has lengthy, and sometimes valuable, introductory chapters on the development of the coal industry, can only be the author's fault. Thus, we are told again (Mr. Renshaw is not the first historian to err) that The Miners' Next Step was written by Noah Ablett and A. J. Cook. Some- where it should be emblazoned that Cook had no hand in its writing- Ablett, Rees, Hay, Gibbons, Mainwaring and Dolling are the guilty parties-nor was it published by the Plebs League, nor was Ablett a leader of the Ruskin College strike of 1909 (he had already left) which was against closer contact with Oxford University (not for it, as Mr. Renshaw would have it). D. A. Thomas was hardly a 'great local ironmaster', whilst Vernon Hartshorn, who waited so long for his seat at Maesteg, is scarcely credible as a 'Derbyshire miners' M.P. Too often there is a quick brushstroke intended to fix an impression. The result is a blur. Lloyd George figures, irrelevantly and erroneously, as a 'compulsive womaniser', and the appellation of 'Anarchist' sits as uneasily on John Maclean as does 'Marxist' on R. H. Tawney. It is as if the background has to be coloured in swiftly so that attention can be focused on the central drama of commissions and committees, meetings and memoranda. Naturally, the evidence of that arch committee-man, Walter Citrine, is listened to respectfully, as are Tom Jones's malicious darts. However, not all the world resembles the forced logic of a committee agenda, a point that worried those T.U.C. leaders to whom 'success seemed as dangerous as failure' and who felt 'as the strike entered its second week that the situation might rapidly lurch out of control'. And this despite the fact that 'there were few signs of weakness from any of the main regions'. It was, indeed, this strength that was the cause of their fear because the strike was, if it succeeded or went 'out of control', in contra-distinction to the principal tendencies of British trade unionism. This key point, around which all accusations of 'betrayal' revolve, this paradox, which alone explains the final inexplicable capitulation, with no concessions won at all, receives scant attention, even though the gap between the power the T.U.C. leaders could feel, and their willingness to wield it, is central to any argument not prepared to slip, as this one does,