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The strike that changed the nature of Labour politics
JOHN FOSTER looks at how the 1919 general strike which began in the Clydeside shipyards ignited a Britain-wide struggle
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ONE HUNDRED years ago, on January 27 1919, workers in Scotland struck work to secure a 40-hour week. The strike was called by the Scottish Trade Union Congress, Glasgow Trades and Labour Council — then one of the biggest in Britain with 200 delegates — and the Clyde Workers Committee representing the shop stewards’ movement.
It was a political strike. It demanded action by the government to limit hours of work — and thereby to create more jobs and halt the return of mass unemployment. Millions of men were being discharged from the army and tens of thousands of women from the munitions factories.
The longer-term objective was to protect the bargaining power which trade unionists had built up during the full employment of the war years and particularly the power of the shop stewards’ movement.
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