General Strike

A general strike (or mass strike) is a strike action in which a substantial proportion of the total labour force in a city, region, or country participates. General strikes are characterised by the participation of workers in a multitude of workplaces, and tend to involve entire communities. General strikes first occurred in the mid-19th century, and have characterised many historically important strikes.

An early predecessor of the general strike may have been the secessio plebis in ancient Rome. In the Outline Of History, H.G. Wells recorded "the general strike of the plebeians; the plebeians seem to have invented the strike, which now makes its first appearance in history." Their first strike occurred because they "saw with indignation their friends, who had often served the state bravely in the legions, thrown into chains and reduced to slavery at the demand of patrician creditors."

Wells noted that "[t]he patricians made a mean use of their political advantages to grow rich through the national conquests at the expense not only of the defeated enemy, but of the poorer plebeian..." The plebeians, who were expected to obey the laws, but were not allowed to know the laws (which patricians were able to recite from memory), were successful, winning the right to appeal any injustice to the general assembly. In 450 BC., in a concession resulting from the rebellion of the plebeians, the laws of Rome were written for all to peruse.

The general strike action only became a feature of the political landscape with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. For the first time in history, large numbers of people were members of the industrial working class; they lived in cities and exchanged their labour for payment. By the 1830s, when the Chartist movement was at its peak, a true and widespread 'workers' consciousness' was beginning to awaken in England.

The first theorist to formulate and popularise the idea of a general strike for the purpose of political reform was the radical pamphleteer William Benbow. Closely involved with planning the attempted Blanketeers protest march by Lancashire weavers in March 1817, he became an associate of William Cobbett and passed his time "agitating the labouring classes at their trades meetings and club-houses."

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