The Liberal opposition ceased to exist, with the exception of Mr. The remnants of the Liberal Party in the Parliament became good Tories, justifying and supporting the actions of the Government in its measures to suppress and defeat the General Strike. In its relations with other parties the governing party can record singular triumphs. So thoroughly have they gripped the State apparatus and knit the auxiliary forces to it, that they have reduced to absurdity the project of the Fascists, who dreamed of superseding the State apparatus by an Italian brand. The capitalist leaders of Britain are now not only theoretically equipped as a result of their studies of European revolutions, but have a mass of material and experiments from their own experience which will prove invaluable to them in subsequent struggles. No one can dispute that for the whole of the nine days the Government was enabled to go ahead, unhampered, with experiments directed towards the complete subjugation of the working class. So pleased were the bourgeoisie with the result, that over £200,000 has been raised for a police fund in a fortnight. It gave the police excellent exercise in all the preliminaries and manuvres of street fighting, raiding and confiscation.
#STRIKE MEANING TRIAL#
For nine days it was enabled to give its machinery a thorough trial run against a minimum of opposition with the stage of civil war set, with one side unarmed and quiet. It has been able to test its army, its navy, its police, its auxiliary organsations such as the special constabulary, the O.M.S., its whole apparatus of food control and transport. Before provoking the General Strike the Government put in at least nine months’ preparation. Let us see what the capitalist forces have gained in this experience. Worshipping the ballot box instead of taking it at its real worth, they are blind, wilfully or otherwise, to the realities of life. Of course to those who confuse the garments of power with power itself, this definition is rank heterodoxy. By political power I do not mean simply the counting of noses upon other classes. That they have increased their political power can hardly be disputed.
That they will use their increased political power to secure economic advantage is more than likely, but at the moment they are holding back from a general attack pending the settlement of the issue with the miners. The Conservative Party and the whole capitalist class are exceedingly jubilant about their “victory.” Up to the present their “victory” is entirely a political victory and not economic. Our task now, therefore, is to examine the effect of the General Strike on this process. This process in the capitalist class had as its corollary in the working class a great awakening to political consciousness on the part of millions of workers and the crystallising of the class consciousness in the formation of a party, the Communist Party, based upon the interests of the working class. I produced evidence pointing to the fact that the more difficult the economic and social problems became, the more intense and powerful became the grip of the capitalist class upon political power through its most conservative party.
I there showed that this evolutionary process took the form of sharpening the class alignments, widening and deepening class conscious in parliament, but the power of one class to impose its will ness and intensifying the class war. In the chapters preceding my narrative of the strike, I outlined the events leading up to it, and placed them in line with the evolution of class forces in Britain.
Because it is tragic and not farcical, it is now time to take stock. Were it not so tragic for the millions who responded to the noblest of human impulses, and risked everything they possessed, the situation would be farcical.
Called by leaders opposed to it, conducted by leaders who did not want it, it has been surrendered by the same leaders, who were anxious to see it defeated. WHATEVER the likes and dislikes of leaders or of anybody else as to the way history ought to have been made, the big fact now remains that it has been made by the General Strike. The Political Meaning of the Great Strike J.