The Future in our Past

A fresh, accessible history of the 1926 General Strike on its centenary – telling a story of working-class community then and now.

The Future in Our Past tells the remarkable story of Britain’s only ever General Strike on its centenary. It is an on-the-ground account of how workers brought the country to a standstill for nine extraordinary days. Callum Cant and Matthew Lee take us on a journey through a Britain living on its nerves, from the London docklands to the South Wales coalfields and the railways and warehouses of middle England. They compare the struggles of 1926 with those of workers in these same communities today. We meet a Bangladeshi courier involved in wildcat strikes on the Isle of Dogs. The great grandson of a Welsh miner facing redundancy at the blast furnaces of Port Talbot. This is social history at its most immediate and relevant.

Churchill feared that labour militancy presaged a Bolshevik-style revolution. But for socialists, dreams of a brighter future would have to wait. Cant and Matthew Lee ask why this monumental standoff ended in defeat for the unions despite their huge mobilisation. They set out why the General Strike still matters and the lessons it has fIntroduction

Chapter 1. The Road to 1926:

Chapter 2. South Wales: ‘And I swear to God if I ever see the Sun...’

Chapter 3. East London: ‘I began to hate the police’

Chapter 4. Swindon: ‘That is a lie!’

Conclusion: ‘Be loyal to instructions and trust your leaders’

AcknowledgementsCallum Cant is the author of Riding for Deliveroo and coauthor of Feeding the Machine. He writes for the Guardian on strikes, the future of work and workers’ rights. He is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Essex and co-editor of Notes from Below, a journal of worker writing.


Matthew Lee is a librarian and independent researcher and co-editor of Notes from Below. He is a contributing author to the upcoming book Higher Education’s Labor Upsurge.