Workers Organisations & Strikes Archives - Page 3 of 22 Bristol Radical History Group

‘An industrial Red Cross’

Labour women’s support for the miners’ lockout in the south west

This talk will describe the setting up of the Women’s Committee for the Relief of Miners Wives and Children in London by the Labour Party Chief Woman Officer, Marion Phillips. It will then focus on the efforts of Labour women to raise funds and to organise relief in the southwest and the support they gave to relief committees in Bristol and in Radstock. It will suggest that the Lockout gave them the opportunity to demonstrate that they had the necessary skills to organise relief on a national […]

The 1926 miners’ lockout in the Forest of Dean and the Somerset coalfield

Women, Rough Music, and Direct Action during the 1926 lockout in the Forest of Dean Ian Wright will discuss the use of rough music and skimmington-style protest by miners' wives against blacklegs and the police during the 1926 miners’ lockout in the Forest of Dean. The talk will then explore the subsequent occupation of Westbury Workhouse by around 300 women and children in response to the withdrawal of Poor Law relief for miners’ families. Resistance and resilience: the 1926 General Strike and […]

Reflections on the General Strike

What should we learn from the 1926 General Strike and what might the 2026 General Strike look like? Were the TUC fully to blame for the failure of the strike? Why does the labour movement memorialise our failures rather than our victories? What is the relevance of 1926 today? Chairing this discussion and Q&A is Chris Bowkett, a trade union activist, USDAW Bristol branch chair and contributor to the Bristol Radical History Group. Chris has recently written a pamphlet on the relationship […]

The Centenary of the 1926 General Strike

May 2026 marks the 100th anniversary of the nine day ‘General Strike’. This solidarity action was an attempt by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to prevent wage reductions and increasingly bad working conditions for 1.2 million coal miners who had already been locked-out by their employers. Around 1.7 million workers, mainly in transport and heavy industry, responded and the country was confronted with explicit class war. “I will not see the strikers’ own food left to rot!” Chris Bowkett from the […]

Coal Not Dole Exhibition

Bristol Miners' Support Campaign Archive

Bristol Radical History Group (BRHG) are putting an exhibition dedicated to the 1984/85 Miners’ Strike on display at Bristol Archives over February. The exhibition celebrates the work of the Bristol Miners’ Support Campaign during the year long dispute. Over the last eighteen months BRHG has sponsored a project to collect and preserve documents and other materials from the campaign, one of many around the country that aimed to support the communities that were at the forefront of the strike. It […]

John Williams: The Making of a Miners’ Agent

John Williams was born in 1888 in Kenfig Hill and started work at the International Colliery in the Garw Valley at the age of thirteen. In 1922, Williams was selected for the paid post of agent for the Forest of Dean Miners Association (FDMA), which was the trade union representing Forest of Dean miners. Williams remained committed to representing the Forest miners until his retirement in 1953 and lived in the Forest from 1922 until he died in 1968. The social, political and industrial movements […]

Coal Not Dole Exhibition

Bristol Miners' Support Campaign Archive

Bristol Radical History Group (BRHG) are putting an exhibition dedicated to the 1984/85 Miners’ Strike on display at Bristol Central Library this December. The exhibition celebrates the work of the Bristol Miners’ Support Campaign during the year long dispute. Over the last eighteen months BRHG has sponsored a project to collect and preserve documents and other materials from the campaign, one of many around the country that aimed to support the communities that were at the forefront of the […]

Mass meeting on the Downs – 16 May 1926

By Richard Musgrove

On 16 May 1926, in the wake of the calling off of the General Strike four days earlier, a mass meeting was held in the evening on Durdham Down. A demonstration had been formed on Old Market which then marched the two and a half miles to the Downs for a rally with speeches in support of the still locked-out miners. Though details of the meeting are scarce, it must have been of considerable size, with the Western Daily Press reporting on the 17 May that there were 15 speakers spread across three […]

General Strike 100

By Rob Whitfield

May 2026 marks the 100th anniversary of the nine day 'General Strike'. This solidarity action was an attempt by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to prevent wage reductions and increasingly bad working conditions for 1.2 million coal miners who had already been locked-out by their employers. Around 1.7 million workers, mainly in transport and heavy industry, responded and the country was confronted with explicit class war. Bristol Radical History Group are delighted to be a part of the General […]

1926 General Strike In Bristol

In 1973 the Bristol Trades Union Council got the go-ahead to make a programme on its centenary as part of a BBC's Community Programmes initiative. Engineering worker and Trades Union Council delegate Ron Whiteford contributed his account of the 1926 General Strike in Bristol