1926 General Strike - Workers Taste Power

by Peter Taaffe

May 2006 marked the eighteeth anniversary of the 1926 General Strike in Britain - the most important and earth-shattering moment in the history of the British working class. To commemorate it and, more importantly, to draw out the lessons from this movement, Peter Taaffe has written this book outlining the course of the nine days that shook British capitalism to its foundations. It is more than a narrative and chronology of the events themselves, although this will be important for those newer to the movement. Following the public-sector workers' strike during March 2006, the biggest strike of the British working class since 1926, it discusses the use of the demand for a general strike. But it particularly deals with the revolutionary possibilities of the General Strike and the question of whether the fledgling Communist Party of Great Britain had the right strategy, programme and tactics to take full advantageof the strike and the period.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction

185 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Peter Taaffe was a British Marxist Trotskyist political activist and a longtime leader of the Socialist Party and its predecessor, the Militant tendency.
Taaffe was the founding editor of the Trotskyist Militant newspaper in 1964, and became known as a leading member of the Militant entryist group in the Labour Party. Taaffe was expelled from the Labour Party in 1983, along with four other members of Militant's editorial board.
Taaffe was influential in the policy decisions of Liverpool City Council of 1983–1987, according to the council's deputy leader Derek Hatton, and in the formation of the Militant tendency's policy regarding the Poll Tax in 1988–1991.