David Torrance - The Edge of Revolution: The General Strike That Shook Britain

About

In May 1926, Britain came to a standstill. Two million workers downed tools in solidarity with the coal miners; trains stopped, foundries fell silent, newspapers vanished from the streets. For nine extraordinary days, the country hovered on the brink of something that felt to many like revolution. Some expected the collapse of the old order; others feared it. All understood that history was in motion.

In this compelling and richly atmospheric talk, David Torrance brings the General Strike to life as few have done before. Drawing on newly explored archives, diaries, letters and local accounts from across the country, he reconstructs the drama not from a single viewpoint but from the lived experience of those at every edge of the crisis: miners in South Wales, dockworkers on Tyneside, women running relief kitchens, editors trying to print newspapers in secret, Bishops pleading for calm, and Cabinet Ministers preparing for the worst.

Torrance examines how the strikes hopes and anxieties were shaped by the shadow of the Russian Revolution, still fresh in the global imagination. He shows how the events of those nine days would shape British politics for decades: the hardening of class identities, the rise of new unions and new ideologies, the Labour Partys struggle to define itself, and the enduring distrust between ordinary citizens and the state. Critics have called Torrances work absorbing, judicious and alive to human complexity, offering a reminder that Britains past is not distant it is still felt.

One hundred years on, The Edge of Revolution invites us to reconsider a moment when Britain almost became something radically different and to explore what prevents societies from tipping into upheaval, or pushes them over the line.

David Torrance is a historian, journalist and senior researcher at the House of Commons Library, specialising in political biography and modern British political history. A former columnist for The Herald and a frequent broadcaster, he has written widely on British and Scottish politics, including the acclaimed biography Salmond: Against the Odds and The Wild Men, a study of the forgotten radicals who shaped British reform movements. Known for his clear-eyed analysis and ability to make complex political history vivid and accessible, Torrance is one of the most engaging interpreters of Britains turbulent twentieth century.

A Q&A Session will follow.