Poetry anthology marks General Strike centenary
An anthology containing poems by more than 60 poets to mark the centenary of the General Strike in support of locked-out miners resisting pay cuts and harsher working conditions, which lasted from 4-12 May 1926, is being launched by the co-operative Culture Matters.
The foreword to Shoulder to Shoulder is written by Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite. She likens the struggle of 1926’s miners to that of today’s Birmingham bin workers, and adds: “A century later, the battleground looks different, but the principle is the same. The British Gazette being edited by the Chancellor [Winston Churchill], but hostile headlines printed by corporate party donors, and rage bait and fake news on social media platforms owned by anti-union oligarchs.”
She observes that “in the modern retelling of the Strike on mainstream websites, it often gets turned into a story of British eccentricity, with amusing stories of men in bowler hats driving buses and bankers delivering milk as if it were Britain entering the Twilight Zone. It’s framed as a moment of inconvenience rather than a confrontation between classes in Britain after the Great War. That retelling isn’t accidental, but the ruling class’s version of events after the fact.”
The anthology also includes poems about the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the 1976 Grunwick dispute, the 19th century matchgirls’ strike, the Derby death of suffragette Emily Davison, the Spanish Civil War, the work-in at Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, equal pay and the women from Dagenham, the women of Greenham Common, the Wapping print dispute and, of course, the 1984-85 miners’ strike.
