The Definitive Strike: A History of the Great 1919 Railway Strike
by Brian Denny
(RMT, £5)

“COLLECTIVE bargaining without the right to strike is little more than collective begging,” Ieading British labour lawyer John Hendy QC wrote in  recent pamphlet about what a future for trade unions could look like.
 
It is fair comment at a time when the strength of working people in this country is at a historic low. While one in nine workers languish in insecure work, the trade union movement struggles to gain new recruits and the number of employees covered by strong unions who bargain on their side has plummeted to less than a third of the overall workforce.

If our movement is to turn this bleak future around, it needs to learn the lessons of our forgotten history. As part of their longstanding commitment to workers’ education and emboldening their members, the RMT have published The Definitive Strike, a short and accessible account of the intense class confrontation that engulfed Britain after the first world war.

Written and researched by RMT news editor Brian Denny and accompanied with a foreword by general secretary Mick Cash, the pamphlet powerfully evokes the 1919 railway strike as a culmination of a decades-long struggle of railway workers to defend guaranteed hours, standardised wages, paid holidays and overtime agreements.