The British General Strike of 1926: New Directions of Research

The British General Strike of 1926: New Directions of Research, 7-8 May 2026

The Labour & Society Research Group are organising 'The British General Strike of 1926: New Directions of Research’ conference on Thursday 7 and Friday 8 May.

Tickets (no charge) can be booked at:

[DAY 1] https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/null/t-yzzmpzr 

[DAY 2] https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/null/t-oeeazmk 

As the recent General Strikes in Greece, Italy, Belgium, and Portugal exemplified, a general stoppage of labour by workers in all or most industries remains a powerful strategy of the working-class movement. This action has coincided with a global wave of blockades, port disruptions, strikes, and slowdowns, particularly at critical nodes like transport hubs and arms manufacturing sites of Israeli militarism.

While we intend this to be a scholarly conference, we also wish to make space for an active dialogue between people studying protest and industrial disputes in the past and practitioners of solidarity in the present. We are convinced that such mutual learning can generate insights that will enrich both scholarship and activism.

The aim is to bring together scholars, trade unionists, and interdisciplinary thinking to discuss the new areas of study of 1926. It brings together papers that focus on concrete histories of solidarity and the General Strike, whether at sites of coal extraction, transportation, distribution, and everywhere in-between.

We will also be organising a public roundtable discussion on Day 2 of the conference.