GENERAL STRIKE

stoppage of work by a substantial proportion of workers in each of a number of industries in an organized endeavour to achieve economic or political objectives. A strike covering only one industry cannot properly be called a general strike. The idea of a general strike, as a deliberate part of the tactics of collective bargaining, apparently began in Great Britain, where the term had entered the language by the 1830s. The theory of the general strike as a method of social revolution was developed later in the century in France by syndicalist thinkers, who believed that workers could achieve a social revolution by using a general strike to directly overthrow the capitalist owners of industry. General strikes first became possible with the growth of large trade unions late in the 19th century. Two large general strikes occurred in Belgium in 1893 and 1902 in support of universal manhood suffrage. A large-scale strike took place in Sweden in 1902 over similar issues and was followed by one in Italy in 1904 protesting the use of soldiers as strikebreakers. The general strike that gripped Russia during the Revolution of 1905 forced the tsar to issue the October Manifesto, in which he promised to create a constitution and a national legislature. In 1909 Sweden had another general strike, this time in response to the wage-freeze and lockout policies adopted by employers because of falling profits. Nearly half of the country's total workforce struck, and the stoppage lasted a month before the strike was settled. The Swedish general strike encouraged the idea in other countries that major economic reforms could be achieved without resorting to violence. A general strike in Berlin thwarted a right-wing takeover of the German government in 1920. In 1926 Britain faced one of the largest of all general strikes, which was undertaken by the Trades Union Congress in support of the nation's coal miners, who were in a bitter dispute with the mine owners. About 3,000,000 of Britain's 5,000,000 trade-union members were involved in the strike, which was intended to force the government to intervene in the coal dispute. The strike lasted only nine days and ended on May 12, however, after the TUC realized that it was unable to prevent the government from keeping essential services running. General strikes have been infrequent in Europe since World War II. Notable exceptions were the outbreak of a general strike in France (May 1967), touched off by student demands for educational reform, and nationwide strikes for social security and educational reform in Italy (November 1968) involving more than 12,000,000 workers. In the United States, labour has accepted in principle the inviolability of the collective contract and consequently has in principle always opposed the general strike. A general strike would lead to universal breaches of existing agreements and would expose weaker unions to reprisals from employers. In Asian and African countries, trade unions allied with independence movements often resorted to general strikes as a means of political protest during colonial rule. The smallness of industry in these countries has limited all trade-union action. Wherever organized trade unions exist, however, they have continued to use the general strike as an instrument for achieving economic as well as political ends.