General Strike Centenary Commemorations

Emma Foody Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)]

It is a great honour to bring this Adjournment debate before the House to mark the centenary of the general strike of 1926. Twelve years after the general strike, the Welsh miners’ poet, Idris Davies, asked,

“Do you remember 1926? That summer of soups and speeches,”

which was a reference to the bitter months endured by the miners and their families after the general strike ended. He also referred to the strike itself, which he called

“The great dream and the swift disaster”.

I am really grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to Mr Speaker for granting parliamentary time so that we can answer that question in this place and do so in the affirmative, just as it has been answered at events across the country during the past month.

The general strike remains the most extensive confrontation in our national history between organised labour on the one side and employers and Government on the other, and it remains contested history.

[Emma Foody (Cramlington and Killingworth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing this important debate on the general strike before the House. Does he agree that when we remember the general strike as the national event that it was, we should also reflect on the countless local stories of solidarity, mutual support and sacrifice that defined so many communities, such as those in my constituency, home of the train wreckers? A local group of miners derailed the Flying Scotsman and suffered severe consequences as a result. It is such an important part of our labour movement and our national story that we remember those local actions as well.

[Laurence Turner]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention and for sending me a copy of the documentary on the Cramlington train wreckers ahead of this debate. It was moving to see those men in their later years. It is telling that the general strike tends to be remembered as local history, and there will be much to say throughout this debate about the general strike in Birmingham and elsewhere.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Dearden]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention. I will come on to exactly that point about the importance of solidarity.

The next nine days became the largest expression of worker solidarity in British history. Some of the strongest support for the strike was found in industrial heartlands, such as the area that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield represents, where unions had a strong presence. Those areas included south Wales, the midlands and northern constituencies like mine of Halifax, where 10,000 people attended a mass meeting in Savile Park on 9 May 1926 to support the strike. The trains stopped running, and the Halifax Courier, itself impacted by some of its workers joining the action, reported that even the clock at Halifax station stopped ticking during the strike. This was a pattern experienced across the country: public transport stopped, newspapers could not be printed, and many parts of the economy stood at a standstill.

The Government responded with emergency measures to break the strikes, deeply dividing the country. After nine days, the TUC called off the strike action, though the miners continued their struggle for several months, with many returning to work, though on worse conditions than before.

[Emma Foody]

I wonder if the Minister will indulge me in paying tribute to a particular striking miner who was born in Hirst in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery). His name was Robert Wallace Pringle. He was one of the striking miners, and he died the following year in a horrendous accident as an assistant lamplighter, after catching on fire as a result of the fuel-soaked rags. He was my great-grandfather, and I wanted to take this opportunity to get his name on the record.

[Kate Dearden]

I sincerely thank my hon. Friend for bringing that story to the House and commemorating the memory of her family member. What an incredible story to share with the House.

Although the strike did not achieve its immediate aims, it became a defining moment for the British labour movement. For many workers, it was a stand against falling living standards and a system that was stacked against them. The strike brought workers from across different industries together to demand a fairer deal.

The events of 1926 changed the relationship between workers, employers and the Government, helping to shape the labour movement for the next century. It reinforced the importance of trade unions as a collective voice for workers and sparked debates about workers’ rights, industrial relations and the role of the state. Those debates, as we have heard, continue to this day.

Over the decades since 1926, union campaigning and collective action have secured many of the rights that people now rely on at work, from paid holidays to safer workplaces, protections against unfair dismissal, maternity and parental rights, and the national minimum wage. Those gains were not inevitable; they were the result of workers organising together and demanding change.

One hundred years on, it is clear that many workers in this country feel, as they did back in 1926, that the system does not work for them. After 14 years of Tory austerity and attacks on rights in the workplace, I understand why so many people feel angry and left behind. That is why this Labour Government are working to change that. Our plan to make work pay has brought employment rights legislation into the 21st century, ensuring that workers are paid fairly, have secure work and are protected from discrimination and harassment, extending the protections that many of the best British companies already offer their workers.

My hon. Friends will know that we will not build a robust and growing economy by rewarding the minority of businesses that offer insecure work and predatory environments; instead, we must build an economy based on job security for workers, fair pay for hard work and fair competition between businesses. That is the path to greater productivity in the workplace and our wider economy.

The Employment Rights Act 2025 is the first phase of delivering our plan to make work pay, supporting employers, workers and unions to get Britain moving forward. Alongside the new industrial strategy, the Act supports this Labour Government’s mission to increase productivity and create the right conditions for long-term, sustainable, inclusive and secure economic growth.

For too long, employment rights legislation has only protected some of our workforce—not all. The Act changes that, delivering stronger rights, greater fairness and more security for more than 18 million more people, providing a new baseline of protection from sexual harassment, strengthening statutory sick pay, introducing the right to guaranteed hours, tackling fire-and-rehire and reversing previous Governments’ laws that restrict workplace democracy.

As a lifelong trade unionist, I am proud that this Government champion the vital work of unions in protecting and representing workers across the country, ensuring that they are listened to, supported and heard. By tearing down barriers to trade union activity and ensuring that industrial relations are carried out in good faith, the Government are empowering working people to organise collectively, helping to settle disputes and secure a fair deal in their workplace.

As part of that, the Act repeals the majority of the Trade Union Act 2016 and the entirety of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023, undoing the Tories’ damage to our workers and our economy. By simplifying the statutory trade union recognition process, strengthening trade unions’ rights of access to workplaces and introducing a duty on employers to inform all new employees of their right to join a union, we are enabling unions to recruit and organise.

We are also delivering new rights and protections for trade union representatives, alongside tackling the illegal blacklisting of trade union members through predictive technologies. This is the biggest increase in trade union and collective rights in a generation, but we know that legislative change alone is not enough; we need attitudes to change, too. That is why we are committed to introducing a new framework for industrial relations, setting out the Government’s vision for a new approach: one that is fit for the challenges of the 21st century, based around the principles of collaboration, proportionality and accountability, and which balances the interests of workers, businesses and the wider public.

My hon. Friends posed questions and raised some important points in the debate. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Cramlington and Killingworth (Emma Foody) and for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) for raising the issue of the Cramlington derailment of the Flying Scotsman. I know that the memory of the incident still inspires strong feelings in the region, and there will be a range of opinions on how that memory should be marked. I pay tribute to the Cramlington community hub in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Cramlington and Killingworth, which has done some brilliant work in commemorating the incident. My hon. Friend the Member for Blyth and Ashington mentioned pardons, and I direct him to the process to submit a petition to be considered by the Ministry of Justice.

Once again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield for bringing this important debate to the House and allowing parliamentary time to commemorate the events of the general strike. Many Members who were unable to make the debate have shared their stories with me, as I am sure they have with other Members in the Chamber. We must never forget these important parts of history, and we must take the time to reflect on how we can work across Government, industry and the union movement to deliver a stronger, fairer future for working people.

Question put and agreed to.