The Voice of Strikers: Strike Stories Since 2020

Robert Poole and Henry Fowler, Co-founders of Strike Map

For Strike Map, this is something special: our own special edition of the excellent Notes From Below (NfB).

For many years, we have deeply admired the work of NfB, not only for promoting workers’ inquiry, the critical Marxist method of analysis and action, but also for providing a platform where workers can debate, discuss, and organise in some of the most difficult and least unionised sectors of the economy.

This has never been passive admiration built solely on shared social media posts. We share a common political commitment: the importance of building rank-and-file struggle and bringing together those leading these struggles across different workplaces and industries. That shared perspective is why we produced this pamphlet together and why we would trust no one else to publish the “Strike Stories” we have collected since December 2020.

This collection spans a relative upsurge in class struggle across Britain. It begins during the height of the pandemic, with the British Gas “fire and rehire” dispute involving GMB members. This nationally significant confrontation exposed the brutality of bad employers and the severe limits of employment and labour law. It reminded us that the law does not protect workers from exploitation, nor does it prevent CEOs and shareholders from enriching themselves at workers’ expense.

That dispute revealed not only the challenges of organising workers remotely during lockdown, but also the limitations of routine trade union activity under capitalism. It demonstrated the need to innovate, to stretch and break restrictive laws, and to build solidarity actions that involve workers across connected industries to genuinely challenge rogue employers.

Wind the clock forward five years, and you arrive at the strike story written by one of the many heroic Birmingham bin workers. Like the British Gas dispute, this struggle has national significance for the entire working class. Arguably, it was a dispute that helped define Strike Map itself. We remain enormously grateful for the trust and respect those workers showed us, supporting our efforts to bring the movement together through megapickets, disruption of production, and solidarity actions, even as the courts effectively prevented workers from picketing their own workplaces.

Alongside these nationally recognised disputes - the ones even the mainstream press could not ignore - our “Strike Stories” have consistently tried to capture the lived reality of taking industrial action: the tensions, the breakthroughs, the tactical lessons, and the strategies that can help workers engaged in struggles of their own.

Together, these stories form a rich and dynamic tapestry of working-class struggle. In this anniversary year especially, they reaffirm a simple but vital truth: workers make history. Despite everything, it is our collective struggles that continue to shape the world around us.

We are proud to be part of the General Strike 100 national partnership - a platform to commemorate and reflect upon the centenary of the 1926 General Strike. What makes this pamphlet so powerful is the way these contemporary struggles echo that history: attacks on pay and conditions, mass solidarity across industries, and the mobilisation of the full force of the state against organised workers. The parallels with British Gas “fire and rehire” and the restrictions placed upon Birmingham workers’ picketing rights are impossible to ignore.

Over the coming years, we will work even harder to document these “Strike Stories” and preserve the experiences of workers in struggle across the country. At a time when mainstream media ownership distorts industrial reporting - and when serious labour journalism is increasingly marginalised - this kind of writing from below performs a vital journalistic and political role.

Although many of these stories have appeared previously on our website and Substack, this is the first time they have been collected together in print. We want to thank those who contributed these accounts, and also to recognise the collective power contained within them.

Workers continue to make history. The General Strike was never the end of struggle, if anything, it was one expression of an ongoing process. It reminds us of the power of collective action, and of the importance of struggle to our shared future.

Foreword from General Strike 100

Henry Fowler, coordinator of the General Strike 100 national partnership

Two years ago, while the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) was celebrating its 125th anniversary, it struck us that another major milestone for our movement was fast approaching.

We knew that many organisations, including several with whom we have close relationships, were already planning events, exhibitions and educational activities to mark the centenary of the 1926 General Strike. The question we faced was simple: how could we bring these efforts together at scale and make them accessible to everyone? How could we create a genuine “one-stop shop” for the remarkable work being undertaken by trade unions, museums, libraries, archives, trades councils, and radical history and cultural groups across the country?

Out of these discussions with key partners, the General Strike 100 national partnership was born. At its heart is an interactive website that brings together partners from every corner of the United Kingdom, alongside a growing map of the sites, events, and stories connected to those famous nine days in May 1926 in towns and cities across Britain.

But we wanted this centenary to be more than a digital directory of events. We wanted to give it a living urgency, connecting the struggles of the past to those of today. That is why we developed the printed passport, encouraging trade unionists and the wider public alike to visit as many participating sites and events as possible and engage directly with the history and culture of working-class struggle.

Over the years, through conversations, planning meetings, and collaboration, the partnership has grown to include more than 60 organisations. Together, we have promoted one another’s exhibitions, events and educational activities. What has made the partnership both strong and distinctive is our ability to unite around the importance of commemorating the General Strike without requiring complete agreement on every political interpretation of it. Our partners hold different views and come from a range of political traditions, yet this diversity has strengthened rather than weakened our collective work.

By combining the skills, experience and knowledge of major heritage and cultural institutions, such as the People’s History Museum, with creative organisations and merchandise partners like Radical Tea Towel, the partnership has brought together expertise from across the movement, enriching the project as a whole.

Over the course of the year, we have toured partner organisations, producing short films and interviews to document what they have to offer and to archive this remarkable year for our movement. We have participated in trade union events linking the struggles of 1926 with those of 2026, all under the banner that gives this publication its title: Workers Make History.

By connecting physical institutions of working-class history and culture with important online platforms such as Working Class History, we have reached audiences far beyond what any one organisation could achieve alone. Increasingly, we are now asking what the future of this national collaboration could and should become.

As we continue to celebrate, commemorate, and document this centenary through Instagram, Facebook, newsletters, and public events, we are creating a lasting record for future generations of the labour movement. We hope it will serve as something to look back on not only during the 200th anniversary of the General Strike, but also during the 300th: a testament to one of the greatest moments of mass solidarity in our history.

We will soon begin reviewing the impact of this partnership, and a clear theme is already emerging. Many people have told us that Britain needs something akin to a “National Trust” or “English Heritage” for workers’ history and culture, an organisation dedicated to preserving and promoting the history and culture created from below.

That is why we are proposing to develop this collaboration into a permanent Workers’ History Partnership. With a dedicated website, memberships, educational resources, and coordinated national events, it could become a serious resource for formal education, workers’ self-education, and public engagement alike, ensuring that the anniversaries and traditions of working-class struggle continue to be celebrated collectively for generations to come.

Wherever you may be in the UK, however long you are there, we want people to be able to quickly discover the nearest piece of workers’ history. Our aim is to make our struggles accessible and to make working-class culture central to how our movement understands and celebrates itself.

The lessons of the General Strike remain as relevant today as ever: solidarity, mass coordinated strike action, and a clear understanding of the power (and violence) of the state when workers organise collectively.

We hope you enjoy this important pamphlet as much as we have. The stories it contains, documenting workers’ struggles over the last six years by national partners Strike Map, continue the tradition of “history from below” that this partnership seeks to preserve and promote.

History is made by workers. Whether in 1926 or 2026, that truth remains unchanged.