204. Forward to revolution?

The promise of building Britain into a ‘land fit for heroes’ never came close to being kept. Instead inflation undermined wages, unemployment rose, and living conditions, with widespread slum housing, remained dire.

When the government handed coal mining, an industry employing over a million men, back to the private sector after having taken direct control during the war, the drive for profitability led to mine owners demanding major wage cuts. The miners struck and called on the Triple Alliance of Dockers, Miners and Railwaymen, the unions in what were by then the main industries, to support them.

This episode looks at how that call failed on Black Friday in 1921, and why.

It also looks briefly at how a new Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, saw off an attempt by one of the more entitled Lordlings of England, Lord Curzon, to become Prime Minister in his place, and how he found what slum housing was really like.

Illustration: Striking coal miners in Neath, South Wales. Photo: Illustrated London News, 16 April 1921

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License