Working Class History WCL15: Literature of the 1926 General Strike
Sep 16, 2026
Literary scholars Charles Ferrall and Dougal McNeill, co-authors of Writing the 1926 General Strike, explore why Britain’s General Strike became a literary event. They discuss working-class fiction, poetry, pamphlets, contested memories, crowds, regional voices, and the blurred line between modernism and realism. The strike’s impact on Lady Chatterley’s Lover and To the Lighthouse also comes under scrutiny.
01:15:17
1926 Meant Defeat And Beginning
- Left-wing writers remembered 1926 simultaneously as a crushing defeat and the beginning of something new.
- Idris Davies captured that tension through images of soups, speeches, jazz bands, suffering, and “the great dream and the swift disaster.”
Writers Took Sides In The Strike
- The strike became literary because writers participated directly, while their experiences later shaped major works.
- Auden supported the strike by driving for the TUC, whereas other future-famous writers performed volunteer strike-breaking work.
Print Made The Strike A Literary Event
- Print dominated public life in 1926, making newspapers, pamphlets, poetry, and literacy central to political struggle.
- Strike bulletins used tightly rhymed verse to entertain readers, satirize government claims, and circulate working-class perspectives.
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Intro
00:00 • 4min
Why the Strike Became a Literary Event
04:12 • 4min
Defeat, Memory, and Political Beginnings
08:02 • 3min
Writers Caught in Class Conflict
10:49 • 4min
Print Culture and the Strike
14:41 • 6min
Contested and Layered Historical Memory
20:11 • 3min
James Hanley’s Layered Strike History
23:20 • 3min
Modernism and Realism in Working-Class Fiction
25:57 • 2min
Artistic Ferment on the Left
28:25 • 5min
Crowds, Collective Deliberation, and Politics
33:36 • 7min
Regional Voices Beyond London
40:49 • 5min
Ad break
45:56 • 2min
The Strike’s Influence on Canonical Novels
47:44 • 60sec
Class, Sex, and Politics in Lawrence
48:43 • 2min
Virginia Woolf and Working-Class Labor
50:20 • 10min
Woolf and Lawrence’s Political Trajectories
01:00:34 • 4min
Working-Class Writers Looking Outward
01:04:54 • 5min
Ellen Wilkinson’s Labour Politics in Clash
01:09:40 • 5min
Outro
01:15:09 • 3min
#129122
Writing the 1926 General Strike
Dougal McNeill
Charles Ferrall
Writing the 1926 General Strike examines the strike as a major literary and cultural event rather than solely a political or industrial dispute.
Charles Ferrall and Dougal McNeill connect working-class writing with responses from figures such as Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, W. H. Auden, and Christopher Isherwood.
The book explores competing memories of defeat, solidarity, class conflict, and political betrayal across Britain.
It also considers how realist and modernist forms represented crowds, collective action, and historical change.
Its central contribution is to restore the strike’s significance within twentieth-century literary history.
#125714
THE FURIES
James Hanley
The Furies examines industrial conflict through a narrative that deliberately unsettles the precise boundaries between different strikes.
James Hanley combines detailed social realism with modernist attention to psychological experience, fragmentation, and historical memory.
Its crowds are neither simply irrational mobs nor anonymous masses, because individual personalities and competing responses remain visible within collective action.
The novel portrays class struggle as a process involving solidarity, fear, desire, gossip, and contradiction.
Ferrall and McNeill regard Hanley’s treatment of crowds and overlapping strike memories as among its major artistic achievements.
#92611
Mayday
John Sommerfield
Mayday imagines the outbreak of a general strike in the mid-1930s.
John Sommerfield uses modernist techniques to represent capitalism and class struggle as mass, interconnected processes rather than as the actions of isolated heroes.
The novel is notable because it retains formal experimentation despite the contemporary communist movement’s hostility toward modernism.
It participates in literary debates about how crowds, masses, mobs, and collectives should be represented.
The episode links it to later criticism of the British Popular Front novel and to Eleanor Taylor’s analysis of political modernism.
#55364
Clash
Ellen Wilkinson
Clash is Ellen Wilkinson’s fictional treatment of the 1926 General Strike.
Its central perspective is that of Joan Craig, a full-time union official, so rank-and-file workers often remain peripheral or unnamed.
The novel criticizes aspects of the strike while also reflecting Labour’s emphasis on discipline, organization, and institutional political action.
Its use of romance and popular-fiction conventions to represent mass working-class struggle makes it an unusual historical document.
The discussion presents the book as both an important artifact of Labour politics from above and a text worth reading for its narrative contradictions.
#59392
Loyalties
Raymond Williams
Loyalties is Raymond Williams’s late novel about several generations shaped by the British left.
It explores political commitment through intertwined stories of friendship, family, institutions, and ideological disagreement.
The book considers betrayals involving Stalinism, the state, political organizations, and personal relationships.
The memory of the 1926 General Strike remains a background presence within these larger debates about continuity and rupture.
In the episode, it is connected to the contemporary problem of preserving traditions after unions, parties, communities, and places have been transformed.
#68826
The Popular Front Novel in Britain
Eleanor Taylor
The Popular Front Novel in Britain examines how British fiction represented political solidarity and mass movements during the Popular Front period.
Eleanor Taylor’s study pays particular attention to the relationship between literary form and political organization.
It discusses writers such as John Sommerfield and analyzes how novels distinguish crowds, masses, mobs, and collectives.
The book is useful for understanding how modernist and realist techniques could coexist within politically committed fiction.
In the episode, McNeill recommends Taylor’s work as an important framework for reading Mayday and related strike literature.
#92686
Fantasia of the Unconscious
D.H. Lawrence
Fantasia of the Unconscious presents D. H. Lawrence’s speculative theories about human psychology, sexuality, instinct, and social relationships.
Lawrence begins by challenging Freudian psychoanalysis but develops his own account of unconscious forces and bodily knowledge.
The work reflects his recurring attempt to explain emotional conflict through symbolic, sexual, and psychological patterns.
Its arguments are often controversial and philosophically uneven, but they illuminate the ideas informing his fiction.
Ferrall mentions it as evidence that Lawrence did work through psychological questions rather than merely displaying them in novelistic form.
#70951
Scottish Quair
Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Scottish Quair is Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s trilogy comprising Sunset Song, Cloud Howe, and Grey Granite.
Through Chris Guthrie and the changing communities around her, it traces the transition from semi-feudal rural society to modern capitalism.
Gibbon combines historical breadth and social realism with formally experimental techniques, including striking shifts in voice and perspective.
The trilogy depicts collective politics, family tensions, gossip, militancy, and the contradictory effects of radicalization.
In the episode, it demonstrates that modernist experimentation and politically committed working-class writing continued to overlap during the 1930s.
#66928
Lines and Shadows
Christopher Isherwood
Lines and Shadows contains Christopher Isherwood’s recollection of the atmosphere surrounding the 1926 General Strike.
Isherwood describes participating in activities that supported the government while feeling morally repelled by them.
His account emphasizes the militarized atmosphere, public excitement, and unsettling social tensions of the dispute.
The experience becomes a moment of political and personal self-recognition, exposing his hatred of his own class position.
Ferrall presents the work as evidence that political consciousness among young writers began before the more commonly cited radicalization of the 1930s.
#86726
Grey Granite
Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Grey Granite is the final volume of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Scottish Quair trilogy.
Set amid the political and economic crises of modern industrial Scotland, it depicts unemployment, demonstrations, communist activism, and conflicts within the left.
Gibbon avoids reducing history to the actions of named leaders, giving significant attention to anonymous people caught up in collective struggle.
The novel’s second-person passages and polyphonic structure emphasize contradictory individual responses to political events.
The episode highlights its treatment of gossip, crowds, militancy, betrayal, and the tension between revolutionary commitment and personal relationships.
#1479
• Mentioned in 38 episodes
Lady Chatterley's Lover
D.H. Lawrence
The novel centers around Lady Constance Chatterley, who is married to Sir Clifford Chatterley, a wealthy and paralyzed war veteran.
Constance's marriage is emotionally and physically unfulfilling, leading her to an affair with Oliver Mellors, the gamekeeper on her husband's estate.
The relationship between Constance and Mellors highlights the class differences and the search for integrity and wholeness through a balance of mind and body.
The novel is known for its explicit descriptions of sexual intercourse and its reflection on the impact of industrialization on modern society.
It ends with Constance and Mellors separated but hopeful for a future together once their divorces are finalized.
#11722
• Mentioned in 6 episodes
Sons and Lovers
D.H. Lawrence
#14175
• Mentioned in 5 episodes
Three guineas
Virginia Woolf
Published in June 1938, *Three Guineas* is a non-fiction essay that responds to an imaginary letter from an educated gentleman asking for Woolf's opinion on how to prevent war.
The essay is structured as a series of responses to three different societal questions, addressing issues such as the prevention of war, the lack of support for women's education, and the barriers to women's professional employment.
Woolf critiques societal norms, patriarchal systems, and the role of women in society, advocating for gender equality and the eradication of war.
The book is characterized by its dialogue format and Woolf's pessimistic yet hopeful views on societal progression towards gender equality.
#1762
• Mentioned in 34 episodes
To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse, published in 1927, is a groundbreaking work of modernist literature by Virginia Woolf.
The novel is divided into three sections: 'The Window,' 'Time Passes,' and 'The Lighthouse.
' It follows the Ramsay family during their summer visits to the Isle of Skye, delving into the inner thoughts and emotions of the characters through stream-of-consciousness techniques.
The novel reflects the impact of World War I on the family and society, and it explores themes such as loss, subjectivity, the nature of art, and the problem of perception.
Woolf's intricate prose and rich exploration of consciousness make this novel a masterpiece of world literature.
#110
• Mentioned in 227 episodes
Ulysses
James Joyce
Ulysses is a groundbreaking and complex modernist novel that chronicles the experiences of three Dubliners over a single day.
The novel is loosely based on Homer's epic poem 'The Odyssey', with Leopold Bloom paralleling Odysseus, Stephen Dedalus paralleling Telemachus, and Molly Bloom paralleling Penelope.
It explores themes such as antisemitism, human sexuality, British rule in Ireland, Catholicism, and Irish nationalism.
The novel is known for its innovative use of language and narrative techniques, including stream-of-consciousness and multiple literary styles.
It captures the essence of early 20th-century Dublin, providing a detailed snapshot of the city's social, political, and cultural landscape.
#8861
• Mentioned in 8 episodes
Goodbye to Berlin
Christopher Isherwood
Goodbye to Berlin is a novel by Christopher Isherwood, set in the late Weimar Republic era.
It is a collection of interconnected stories that reflect Isherwood's experiences in Berlin from 1929 to 1933.
The novel explores themes of decadence, political upheaval, and personal identity, featuring characters like Sally Bowles, a young English flapper, and the diverse inhabitants of a Berlin boarding house.
The book is a poignant farewell to a city on the brink of transformation under Nazi rule.
#76265
Border country
Raymond Williams
Raymond Williams’s Border Country is a novel that charts the life and consciousness of a man returning to his Welsh hometown, probing the intersections of family, class, and political history.
The narrative explores how broader political and economic shifts affect intimate relationships and local identity.
Williams uses the protagonist’s reflections to critique industrial decline and the transformations of mid‑20th century Britain.
The book blends literary storytelling with sociocultural analysis, characteristic of Williams’s combined roles as novelist and critic.
It remains a notable work for understanding cultural responses to political and economic upheaval.
#11868
• Mentioned in 6 episodes
Sexual politics
Kate Millett
In 'Sexual Politics', Kate Millett critiques the patriarchal structures and heteronormativity reflected in Western literature.
She argues that the power imbalance between the sexes is a social construct rather than a biological fact.
The book analyzes works by authors such as Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, and D.H.
Lawrence, highlighting how their writings perpetuate patriarchal views and the subjugation of women.
Millett also explores the historical context of the sexual revolution and its failure to overthrow patriarchal rule, as well as the role of social sciences, particularly Freudian ideas, in legitimizing traditional sex roles.
The book is a central text of second-wave feminism, emphasizing the political nature of personal relationships and the need for gender equality and sexual liberation.
As part of our work to mark the centenary of the UK's 1926 general strike, we sat down with with Charles Ferrall and Dougal McNeill, authors of the excellent Writing the 1926 General Strike: Literature, Culture, Politics to talk about some of the literature texts produced in response to the strike, both from established authors and emerging working-class writers.
Our podcast is brought to you by patreon supporters of both Working Class Literature and Working Class History. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise and other content. Join us or find out more at patreon.com/workingclasshistory
In our discussion, Charles Ferrall and Dougal McNeill explain why they wrote their book and what they mean when they say the strike was “a literary event.” We also discuss the works of a number of different working-class authors responding to the strike, not to mention those of more famous authors that were also affected by the strike, in particular Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) by DH Lawrence and To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf. Further reading and a transcript available on the webpage for this episode: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/wcl15-literature-of-the-1926-general-strike/
Acknowledgements
Our podcast is brought to you by patreon supporters of both Working Class Literature and Working Class History. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise and other content. Join us or find out more at patreon.com/workingclasshistory
In our discussion, Charles Ferrall and Dougal McNeill explain why they wrote their book and what they mean when they say the strike was “a literary event.” We also discuss the works of a number of different working-class authors responding to the strike, not to mention those of more famous authors that were also affected by the strike, in particular Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) by DH Lawrence and To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf. Further reading and a transcript available on the webpage for this episode: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/wcl15-literature-of-the-1926-general-strike/
Acknowledgements
- Thanks to our Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jazz Hands and Fellow Worker.
- Our theme tune for this episode is Montaigne’s version of ‘When the Coal Comes from the Rhonda’, a folk song originating from Welsh miners in the early twentieth century and sung during the general strike. Download the song here. More from Montaigne: website, Instagram, YouTube.
- Edited by Jesse French