Why Did the British General Strike Fail?

The British general strike failed owing to a number of circumstances, of which the following, at least, should be mentioned:
Firstly. The British capitalists and the Conservative Party, as the course of the strike has shown, proved in general to be more experienced, more organised and more resolute, and therefore stronger, than the British workers and their leaders, as represented by the General Council and the so-called Labour Party. The leaders of the working class proved unequal to coping with the tasks of the working class.
Secondly. The British capitalists and the Conservative Party entered this gigantic social conflict fully armed and thoroughly prepared, whereas the leaders of the British labour movement were caught unawares by the mine-owners’ lock-out, having done nothing or practically nothing in the way of preparatory work. It should be mentioned in this connection that only a week before the conflict the leaders of the working class were expressing their conviction that there would be no conflict.
Thirdly. The capitalists’ general staff, the Conservative Party, waged the fight as a united and organised body, striking blows at the decisive points of the struggle, whereas the general staff of the labour movement—the T.U.C. General Council and its “political committee,” the Labour Party—proved to be internally demoralised and corrupted. As we know, the heads of this general staff proved to be either downright traitors to the miners and the British working class in general (Thomas, Henderson, MacDonald and Co.), or spineless fellow-travellers of these traitors who feared a struggle and still more a victory of the working class (Purcell, Hicks and others).
How could it happen, it may be asked, that the powerful British proletariat, which fought with unexampled heroism, proved to have leaders who were either venal or cowardly, or simply spineless? That is a very important question. Such leaders did not spring up all at once. They grew out of the labour movement; they received a definite schooling as labour leaders in Britain, the schooling of that period when British capital was raking in super-profits and could shower favours on the labour leaders and use them for compromises with the British working class; whereby these leaders of the working class, becoming ever more closely identified with the bourgeoisie in their manner of life and station, became divorced from the mass of the workers, turned their backs on them and ceased to understand them. They are the kind of working-class leaders who are dazzled by the glamour of capitalism, who are overwhelmed by the might of capital, and who dream of “getting on in the world” and associating with “men of substance.” There is no doubt that these leaders—if I may call them that—are an echo of the past and do not suit the new situation. There is no doubt that in time they will be compelled to give way to new leaders who do correspond to the militant spirit and heroism of the British proletariat. Engels was right when he called such leaders bourgeoisified leaders of the working class.56 Fourthly. The general staff of British capitalism, the Conservative Party, realised that the gigantic strike of the British workers was a fact of tremendous political importance, that such a strike could be seriously fought only by measures of a political character, that the authority of the king, of the House of Commons and of the constitution would have to be invoked to crush the strike, and that it could not be brought to an end without mobilising the troops and proclaiming a state of emergency. The general staff of the British labour movement, the General Council, on the other hand, did not, or would not, realise this simple thing, or was afraid to admit it, and assured all and sundry that the general strike was a measure of an exclusively economic character, that it did not desire or intend to turn the struggle into a political struggle, that it was not thinking of striking at the general staff of British capital, the Conservative Party, and that it—the General Council—had no intention of raising the question of power. Thereby the General Council doomed the strike to inevitable failure. For, as history has shown, a general strike which is not turned into a political struggle must inevitably fail.
Fifthly. The general staff of the British capitalists understood that international support of the British strike would be a mortal danger to the bourgeoisie. The General Council, on the other hand, did not understand, or pretended not to understand, that the strike of the British workers could only be won by means of international proletarian solidarity. Hence the refusal of the General Council to accept financial assistance from the workers of the Soviet Union57 and other countries. Such a gigantic strike as the general strike in Britain could have yielded tangible results if, at least, two fundamental conditions had been observed, namely, if it had been turned into a political struggle, and if it had been made an action in the struggle of the proletarians of all the advanced countries against capital. But, in its own peculiar “wisdom,” the British General Council rejected both these two conditions, thereby predetermining the failure of the general strike. Sixthly. There is no doubt that a role of no little importance was played by the more than equivocal behaviour of the Second International and the Amsterdam Federation of Trade Unions in the matter of aiding the British general strike. In point of fact, the platonic resolutions of these organisations of Social-Democrats on aiding the strike were actually tantamount to a refusal of any financial aid. For in no other way than by the equivocal conduct of the Social-Democratic International is it possible to explain the fact that all the trade unions of Europe and America together donated not more than one-eighth of the amount of financial aid which the trade unions of the Soviet Union found it possible to afford their British brothers. I say nothing of aid of another kind, in the form of stopping the transport of coal, a matter in which the Amsterdam Federation of Trade Unions is literally acting as a strikebreaker. Seventhly. There is likewise no doubt that the weakness of the British Communist Party played a role of no little importance in contributing to the failure of the general strike. It should be said that the British Communist Party is one of the best sections of the Communist International. It should be mentioned that throughout the general strike in Britain its attitude was absolutely correct. But it must also be admitted that its prestige among the British workers is still small. And this circumstance could not but play a fatal part in the course of the general strike.
Such are the circumstances, at any rate the chief ones, which we have been able to ascertain at the present time and which determined the undesirable outcome of the general strike in Britain.