The London Dockworkers Strike

Summary

Podcast Summary: It Could Happen Here – The London Dockworkers Strike

Host: Andrew Sage (with James)
Date: July 1, 2026
Main Theme:
A deep dive into the 1889 London Dockworkers Strike—its roots, course, broader impact, and what it reveals about labor organizing, worker solidarity, and the limits of strikes both historically and today.

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Episode Overview

Andrew Sage and James analyze the iconic 1889 dock strike in London, where over 100,000 workers shut down the city for a month. The conversation explores the grim working conditions that sparked the strike, its rapid escalation, the unprecedented solidarity (including key international support), and both the victories and limitations of labor movement tactics. Drawing parallels to today, they consider the evolution of worker power, the missed opportunities for wider social change, and enduring questions about organization, solidarity, and revolution.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Background: Conditions Before the Strike

• Seasonal, Unstable Work: Dock work depended on tides, weather, and trade flows, leaving most laborers in poverty due to the casual hiring system.
  • “Most of them would only get taken on for a day or just a few hours... it created a very desperate competitive environment as men would basically have to push and shove each other to get a chance at being picked for work for the day.” (Andrew Sage, 02:23)
• Precedent for Courage: The 1888 Matchgirls Strike (by young female factory workers) served as inspiration for the dockers.
• Catalyst: A key company's decision to cut efficiency bonuses triggered the walkout, led by Ben Tillet. (03:35)

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2. The Strike Spreads & Radically Reshapes London

• Organization and Demands: Despite initial disunity, the workers formed an (initially) unofficial strike committee with five core demands:
  • Wage increases
  • Overtime rates
  • Minimum work time
  • Limits on casual call-ons
  • Official union recognition (05:25)
• Other Sectors Join In: Stevedores, ropemakers, carmen, lightermen, cement workers—and then, crucially, 10,000 predominantly Jewish tailors—walked out too. By late August, 130,000 Londoners were striking, grinding the city to a halt.
  • Newspaper quote: “Dockmen, lightermen, bargemen, cement workers, Carmen ironworkers and even factory girls are coming out. If it goes on a few days longer, all London will be on holiday. The great machine by which five millions of people are fed and clothed will come to a dead stop…” (Andrew Sage quoting contemporary article, 07:17)

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3. Solidarity, Strategy, and Human Focus

• Strikers Supported Each Other: They pooled efforts for mass food distribution and coordinated logistics (e.g., food tickets), spreading organizing tips, hosting daily meetings, watching for scabs, and arranging pickets (09:11).
• Ethical Striking: Strikers broke their own picket to unload hospital ice, refusing to let the sick suffer—challenging then and now the idea that strikers want to harm innocents.
  • “The strikers raced in such numbers to help unload it without a care for whether they would be paid for the job or not. The sick... were not to suffer on account of the strike.” (Andrew Sage quoting Malatesta, 09:30)
• Rent Strike: In parallel, workers’ families simply refused to pay rent during the strike, exemplifying total community resistance. (14:18)

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4. Hardship and International Solidarity

• Starvation as Bosses’ Tactic: Employers counted on hunger to break the strike, but the workers held out (15:06).
• Australian Workers’ Lifeline: An extraordinary fundraising campaign by the Brisbane Wharf Labourers Union and people across Australia sent over £30,000 (£3.4 million today), saving the strike from collapse. Strikers shared funds—even with the separate tailors' strike.
  • “I mean, can you imagine that kind of solidarity today where that, that swell of resources can be poured in to support fellow workers in their efforts?” (Andrew Sage, 16:09)
• Contrast to Today: The hosts lament the rarity of such international labor solidarity in modern movements, noting the national limits of most current organizing.
  • “When borders dropped to capital, but not people... the greatest failure of United States unions was to fail to internationalize.” (James, 21:05)

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5. Negotiation, Victory, and Enduring Lessons

• Negotiation & Success: Negotiations brokered by London’s Lord Mayor and with help from Catholic Archbishop Manning (his involvement later influencing Church social teaching) led to full victory for the workers' demands on September 16, 1889. Both dockers and tailors inspired a massive swell in unionization—union membership would double and then triple over the next decade. (24:03)
• Limits of the Win: Though victorious, the structure of society remained unchanged—bosses stayed bosses; the state and capitalism remained intact.
  • “The first lesson of a strike... was that they reveal where the power actually comes from.” (Andrew Sage paraphrasing Malatesta, 24:57)
  • “Strikes are schools of struggle... but they don’t use that power to transform society.” (Andrew Sage, 25:31)
• Strikes as Training for Revolution?: Malatesta’s critique (echoed by Andrew) is that while strikes empower workers, achieving only wage concessions means the system persists and gains are at risk of being rolled back. This is seen again with the 1926 general strike, where leadership ultimately betrayed the workers.
  • “One battle being won does not mean the class war has been won.” (Andrew Sage, 26:58)

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6. Reflection & Modern Relevance

• Contemporary Parallels:
  • Current labor has more history to draw from but faces global capital and less radicalism.
  • Most worker solidarity is confined within national borders.
  • Unions often become systematized, losing their radical roots.
• Final Questions (Andrew Sage, paraphrasing Malatesta, 28:40):
  • Can strikes move beyond wage negotiation to challenge social structure?
  • Can the solidarity built during struggle persist afterward?
  • Can workers see themselves as able to manage society, not just workplaces?
  • What is needed for a strike to become a revolution?
• Call to Action: The episode concludes with an appeal for organizing that moves beyond concessions to transformative, collective control of society.
  • “We still have power in our refusal to work... maybe we can accomplish the social revolution that Malatesta sought more than a century ago.” (Andrew Sage, 29:13)
  • “All power to all the people. Peace.” (Andrew Sage, 29:57)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On historic bravery:
  “People were prepared to like step into that fight.” (James, 05:19)

• On violence and responsibility:
  “If you want to blame anybody, you have to blame the bosses, not the workers.” (Andrew Sage, 10:54)

• On internationalism:
  “What are the chances the dock workers in Australia or dock workers in the US would support them?” (Andrew Sage, 17:14)

• On labor’s persistent struggle:
  “These battles were fought, but the war wasn’t won. You know, the class war is yet to be won.” (Andrew Sage, 19:52)

• On solidarity’s potential:
  “All power to all the people. Peace.” (Andrew Sage, 29:57)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Origin & Deplorable Conditions: 01:11–04:01
• Spread & Scale of the Strike: 05:25–07:17
• Solidarity, Ethics, and Rent Strike: 09:11–14:18
• International Support & Funding: 15:06–17:13
• Negotiations & Victory: 22:39–24:03
• Reflection on Limits/Possibility of Strikes: 24:03–28:40
• Final Ruminations & Call to Action: 28:40–29:57

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Tone & Style

Conversational but deeply informed; historical detail with vivid anecdotes, coupled with passionate, contemporary political commentary. The hosts blend admiration for the courage of past strikers with frank critique of missed revolutionary opportunity, prompting listeners to think about the present and future of labor organizing.

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Summary Conclusion

This episode uses the 1889 London Dockworkers Strike as both a dramatic story of collective action and a springboard for broader reflection on labor’s power and its limitations. Through historical analysis, direct quotation, and contemporary analogy, Andrew Sage and James show both our inheritance from radical labor movements and the challenge still before us: moving beyond concessions to true transformation.

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

This is an iHeart podcast, guaranteed human.

[Andrew Sage]

Imagine over 100,000 strikers shutting down the city of London for an entire month. The makings of not only a general strike, but also a social revolution. Such was the case in 1889 when the dock workers in the Port of London made their voices heard and shook the city to its core. Hello and welcome to It Could Happen here. I'm Andrew sage andrewism on YouTube and I'm joined once again by James.

[James]

Glad to be back with you, Andrew.

[Andrew Sage]

Likewise, likewise. And have you heard of the great London dock strike of 1889?

[James]

I have. I went to school in a time when like they still taught a little bit of labour history.

[Andrew Sage]

Ah, okay, so I guess we'll be able to have a bit of an exchange about it then.

[James]

Yeah, but I'm interested to know more.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, I first learned about it through Erica Malatesta. He wrote briefly about it in one of his pamphlets. One of his many pamphlets.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

But I found further information and cross verification through a bunch of different articles that I'll link in the show. Notes and reference throughout. Now before we get to the strike itself, we have to look to the conditions that brought it about. The Port of London, like ports around the world in that time, had terrible working conditions and terrible pay alongside it. But despite being the fulcrum of London economy, the so called unskilled workforce that made it run was left destitute in part due to the inconsistent nature of the work itself. According to Libcom's article, a lot of trade was seasonal. You had sugar coming in from the Caribbean, timber from the north and tea and spices from the east. This was in a time when, you know, the sun never set on the British Empire. Yeah, and back then trade was also a lot more vulnerable to weather conditions. So the flow of commerce wasn't the most predictable. And since ports were not very mechanised either, it took a lot of labour to load and unload ships. But there wasn't a consistent demand for that labour week to week. Some weeks you would have hundreds of ships to load and unload and other weeks you would have mere dozens. So dark companies could get away with having a casual call on and contract system. Basically they'd have a large pool of men hanging around waiting for labour. Most of them would only get taken on for a day or just a few hours. And whether you even got work that day or not was based on luck and favour. You know, you could spend all day outside the dock waiting to get called on and end up being sent home with no pay. So it created a very desperate competitive environment as men would basically have to push and shove each other to get a chance at being picked for work for the day. These are conditions where the workers are clearly poised against each other, as is often the case under capitalism. But around that time, about a year before the strike we're talking about, according to an article by Beverly Cook for London Museum, the so called unskilled and impoverished young woman working at a match factory in the Bow quarter of London went on strike and won better working conditions and pay, which may have even inspired the dock workers boldness. However, what really kicked off the great strike was a dispute over the bonuses workers would normally get for working faster and more efficiently. One of the big dock companies, the east and West India Dock Company, decided to cut their bonus. And led by a man named Ben Tillet, on 14 August 1889, the Dock Workers began walking out and convincing their fellow workers to do the same.

[James]

This era of labour history is always super fascinating to me. There's so much at stake for labour in this time period. People's lives were genuinely miserable. Working class existence in this time period, you can read, I think Engels was writing about slightly earlier than this, but Engels has some stuff about the conditions for working class people in Manchester. But also your, your bosses and the cops can just kill you, you're on strike. You know, like there's. The stakes are so high. Not that the cops can't and don't kill people now I guess, but the desire to unionize was so natural. Right. Like it wasn't coming from people like knowing of generations of like we do now. Right. Like when we form our unions now even if we, we know we unionize. Let's say Starbucks is a place that's unionizing. Not. We can think of the generations of union workers who have come before us and the struggles and the gains that they'. But these folks, I mean they had to an extent the people's charter and these other things. Right. Like I know we've spoken about Luddites before and the idea of understanding Luddism as collective bargaining through riot. But like still these people who really like built the modern labor movement in the 19th century, they paved the way with their blood for all of us to an extent.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[James]

And I think that's always like really impressive to me that people were prepared to like step into that fight.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, yeah. I mean we take it for granted that we have a legacy to draw upon today. But you know, somebody had to be the first. Some group of workers had to be the first to, you know, come together and stand up in those industrial conditions, in those urban conditions. I'm sure there's a history of workers standing up prior to the industrial revolution. You know, you would have collective bargaining even back in antiquity. But the miserableness of the conditions really pushed them to take a stand. And even though the work itself was made so competitive, they still recognize their common cause. I'm sure that before that strike they might have had some petty rivalries, some petty grudges amongst each other, like, oh, that guy keeps taking my job, like it's like three days straight now I haven't gotten any work because he keeps on shoving me aside and. But they put all that aside for this strike. Their union was unofficial at the time, but that union would go on to form a strike committee to put forward their demands, which were an increase in wages, an overtime wage, worktime minimums, an end to the contract system and a limit on the call ons which would be fixed to specific times of day and the recognition of their union. Their strike would soon be joined by the Amalgamated Stevedores union, which were basically a higher status kind of dock worker and even more critical to the functioning of the docks. So their support lended legitimacy to the strike. The stevedores would issue a request to other workers in London, particularly connected to ship work, to stand in solidarity with the dock workers and their demands and to donate contributions to support the strikers, which is of course critical to any long term strike action. So across workshops and factories, other workers joined in the cause, Rope makers, Carmen lightermen among them. And by 27 August, an estimated 130,000 men were on strike. To quote one newspaper article from the time, Dockmen, lightermen, bargemen, cement workers, Carmen ironworkers and even factory girls are coming out. If it goes on a few days longer, all London will be on holiday. The great machine by which five millions of people are fed and clothed will come to a dead stop. And what is to be the end of it all. The proverbial small spark has kindled a great fire which threatens to envelop the whole metropolis. End quote. And according to Beverly Cook, after two weeks of the Dockers striking, 10,000 tailors in East London also went on strike. These were mostly Jewish immigrants working in the clothing industry's sweatshop. Conditions scattered across around 500 cramped workshops of mostly 10 workers or less apiece across Whitechapel. The tailors demanded fixed 12 hour working days, a mandatory one hour break outside of the workshop, increased wages and A ban on forcing workers to take home their work. They mostly spread the word of their strike through informational posters. They weren't necessarily too connected to the dock workers strike at first. They had their own demands and it seems to have been a coincidence of fate that they both rose up around the same time, perhaps one encouraged by the other. Now, during the strike, as Malatesta put it, they strove to feed a population, women and children included, of upwards of half a million people, to raise subscriptions and collections across the city, to keep up with fast correspondence by letter and telegram, to organise meetings, demonstrations and talks, to keep an eye out, put pen to paper and stay alert lest the bosses successfully trick English or foreign poor into blacklegging. To monitor all the docks entrances to see if there were people going to work and how many. All of this stunningly well done by unsolicited volunteers. There was one noteworthy incident. A shipload of ice arrived and a rumour was rife that this ice was meant for the hospitals. The strikers raced in such numbers to help unload it without a care for whether they would be paid for the job or not. The sick and especially the patients in the hospitals were not to suffer on account of the strike. End quote.

[James]

I hadn't heard that before. That's quite touching. This is especially part of the discourse in the UK at the moment. Right. Like when, when medical workers go on strike, like this always gets trotted out, like by the right wing press that, like, oh, well, they've just chosen to make their patients suffer or whatever. When in fact, like the procedures and planning that medical workers go through before they go on strike to ensure that, like, people don't die because they went on strike are many and complex. Right. But like, it's interesting to see that even back then people were like, as they were working out the best ways to take collective action, they were trying to also not harm other working people.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, I mean, also the extent of the strike and the extent of the suffering is really determined by the extent to which the bosses are holding out.

[James]

Right, yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Andrew Sage]

So if you want to blame anybody, you have to blame the bosses, not the workers.

[James]

Yeah, absolutely. It's within the power of employers to not have their employees have to go on strike in order to be treated with dignity and respect, however they consistently choose not to.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah, exactly. And I think what the workers demonstrate in strikes like that, and strikes in this, in this time period as well, is just their capacity to analyze the situation, to organize themselves, to respond effectively to problems that arise. You know, malatesta described mass meetings and pickets, daily processions to rally support. They even worked on persuading scabs to join them. Or according to some news reports, they were intimidating those scabs. Yeah, but there was another code from that libcom article I wanted to read. He said, sir, during this week I have witnessed the most open intimidation practiced by the men on strike. Howling crowds going from dock to dock and warehouse to warehouse, stopping businesses and threatening vengeance and all who do not comply with their demands. Until now there are thousands who are out who had no desire to strike but were compelled to do so. Those who dare to work for their wages are being brutally maltreated and threatened with worse if they dare attempt to work in defiance the striker's wishes. I saw several men severely injured today on Tower Hill. The blood being made to fly in all directions by gangs of strikers. What are the authorities forth not to protect peaceable citizens in earning an honest living? Signed A lover of Freedom. This was sent into the Times on the 24th of August 1889. And to me it kind of sounds like a doc boss writing in.

[James]

Yeah, right.

[Andrew Sage]

Trying to sound like, oh, an innocent bystander.

[James]

Yeah. Violence is not a thing that is absent in the labor movement. But again, to your point earlier, often the discourse does not talk about the violence which is done by forcing people to live in poverty and labor in inhumane conditions.

[Andrew Sage]

Exactly, exactly. That's where the real violence lies. To be fair, there were a couple instances of charges of assault and intimidation, but the strikes were mostly peaceful. Yeah, you know, they exercised a lot of courage and discipline and restraint. Yeah, they really showed that, that these working class people were not impossible to organize or absurdly dangerous. They had a capacity for order and collective organization that could just as easily prefigure a free society as it merely is directed towards negotiation with the powers that be. Another aspect of their resistance that I took note of was the fact that a rent strike also took place. You know, you often hear nowadays when you try and talk to people about, you know, organizing a strike, organizing a general strike, whatever, or just like a strike in the industry from people I've spoken to, you often hear that, oh, well, I have bills to pay, I have rent to make of, you know, this and that. To. In these violent and poor conditions, at risk of their lives, the families of strikers just choose not to pay rent for the duration of the strike.

[James]

That's right, yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

All of them collectively.

[James]

Yeah, a rent strike.

[Andrew Sage]

And they also would have been gathering donations and such in all of this Time as the strike is going on, to sustain, you know, their, their keep in other ways, their other basic needs.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

But unfortunately, the donations do not look like there would be enough to stave off starvation. You know, despite food tickets being distributed to cover food needs, after the direct food distribution couldn't keep up, there still wasn't enough to cover for the swelling mass of strikers and their families. And yet the strikers still held on and rationed what they had, even as the bosses waited and waited for them to give up. You know, the bosses were literally counting on the starvation of the workers to break the strike so they wouldn't have to give in to the demands.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

And it really got to a point in the beginning of September where it looked like the strike might not be able to go on. And then a miracle of international solidarity came through. The Brisbane Wharf Labourers Union in Australia sent money from citizens of all classes across Australia to support the strikers. The strikers got a first installment of £150, which I found out is worth £17,000 today.

[James]

Jeez.

[Andrew Sage]

And the dock workers received over £30,000 in total, or over £3.4 million today to sustain their strike long term and secure their victory. Obviously, with a windfall like that, they'll be able to sustain the efforts. And even though the Taylors strike was mostly separate from what the dock strikers were doing, the dock strikers made sure that the tailors got funds to support themselves, amounting to about £100 or £11,000 today.

[James]

Nice.

[Andrew Sage]

I mean, can you imagine that kind of solidarity today where that, that swell of resources can be poured in to support fellow workers in their efforts?

[James]

Yeah, fellow workers who you had so much less communication with than we do today. Right. Like, it's not like they could, it's not. They logged on to.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah.

[James]

Like Twitter and we're like, oh, yeah, well these people are on strike and let's talk to them and okay, we should support them. Like, yeah. At a time when people had less communication, they still managed to have more solidarity. And we see, like people have raised millions of dollars, for instance, to feed people in Palestine. Right. Like, like, yeah, solidarity still exists for sure, but specifically in the labor movement, it is hard to come by often.

[Andrew Sage]

And even when you do see solidarity in the labour movement, it tends to be restricted to the borders of the nation. You might see the occasional solidarity strike within the country. But how often do you see strikes crossing those, those borders?

[James]

Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

Like if, if dock workers in London were to strike today. Oh, you know, what are the chances the dock Workers in Australia or dock workers in the US would support them.

[James]

Yeah. Like, even living as I do, like, at an international border, like, issues of international solidarity will come up in union discussions. Like, there might be times when we might take a collection or something for union to the south of what is the border now and between the US And Mexico. Right. But the idea that you could raise that much money and that your solidarity could be so profound, that that is the thing that let these people get through. I think that's very hard to imagine that happening now, which is a shame. It's just so fascinating to me how, like, we have this period of the industrial revolution, right, where labor becomes even more exploitative, Right. More surplus value accrues to the people who own the means of production. To, like, be crudely Marxist about it, I guess. And the working class, which is the people creating the value but not receiving the benefits from it, has to decide how to respond to that. And around the world, they're like, fuck this. Like, we're not having that. And like, the whole genesis of labor organizing, international solidarity, like, it existed before, as you said. Of course it did. But, like, the sort of formal structures that we have today arrives pretty quickly alongside that increased level of labor exploitation. There's a moment from then till maybe the 19 teens, I mean, maybe till the Great Depression, where it really seems like that the clash between capital and labor is like a really an equal and fierce fight, you know, now, like, it almost seems like by comparison, we're sort of. Labor organizing tends to ask more nicely and be a bit less radical and a bit less international compared to how it was back then. I guess not all of it. There is still very radical labor organizing, of course, I don't want to overlook that, but this is a particularly remarkable time.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. It's not as prominent, or perhaps it's just less apparent, less recognizable, less amplified. If it does exist, it could stand to be amplified more.

[James]

Right. This was a time when bosses were really worried, like, as influenced by the lover of freedom writing. It's a newspaper. They were very concerned with this, right? Like, they. They weren't sure how long, I guess they could pull this shit off, like, how long they can make it last where they could exploit people this much.

[Andrew Sage]

Exactly. And you kind of see them biden their time today. Right. Because these battles were fought, but the war wasn't won. You know, the class war is yet to be won.

[James]

Right.

[Andrew Sage]

Or I suppose if you want to be particularly cynical about it, you could say that it has been won and the capitalists are the one inside. But you'll notice that where we have won concessions, where workers have won concessions in the past, the capitalists merely buy their time and wait for an opportunity to roll back those concessions.

[James]

Yeah, without a doubt.

[Andrew Sage]

And so we could continue to exist in this kind of cycle of fighting and stopping short of total victory by accepting concessions just for the fight to have to restart again years down the line. Or we could, you know, reach the finish line, as it were.

[James]

Yeah. The. The kindler, gentler capitalism that we were supposed to build through collective action hasn't really delivered. And all it's done is resulted in capitalism moving to places where it can more readily exploit labor. I was having this discussion with a colleague. Right. Like an older colleague. They had been industrial union person their whole lives, and they were saying that in this era of neoliberal globalization, the greatest failure of United States unions was to fail to internationalize when borders dropped to capital, but not people. Right. In the late 20th century. And money and jobs started moving from the United States to, in a lot of cases, to Mexico. Right. And unions could have responded by saying, we will go to Mexico and we will organize our siblings in the working class in Mexico. Not that Mexican people can't organize themselves and don't have a very long and proud tradition over working class organizing. They do. But like those unions that had the resources from years of struggle in the US by and large, didn't go to south and Central America and say, we are here with you. Like, we are not going to allow them to exploit you in the way that they once exploited us. And they didn't do that. Right. They kind of doubled down on protectionism. You see it now with unions under Trump a lot as well. You know, talking about tariffs and things as if they will protect jobs. Like they're sort of choosing the nation state over the working class when they do that. And that's bitten them in the ass before, but they still continue to keep doing it.

[Andrew Sage]

Yeah. The nation state is one of the greatest psyops.

[James]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

Of all time.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

So just getting back to 1889 for a moment.

[James]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

The workers, after receiving that dead windfall, managed to hold on for just a bit longer and entered negotiations with their bosses through a committee initiated by the Lord Mayor of London, whose city was obviously quite paralyzed over the past month. The strikers also received the support of the Irish Catholic Archbishop Cardinal Manning, who shared that Irish Catholic background with a lot of the workers, a lot of the dock workers. And what I found, I guess, interesting reading that was that according to the Catholic Encyclopedia's entry on Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, his involvement in the dock workers negotiations kind of foreshadowed an encyclical that was issued by the Pope at the time two years later, which directly addressed the conditions of the workers and set out a church policy that supported the right of labor to form unions, while of course rejecting socialism and affirming private property rights. So one step forward, two steps back.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

And I found it interesting that that encyclical was issued around the time that, you know, as many would have heard, the Pope of today has issued a new encyclical on the subject of AI in part in relation to labour.

[James]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sage]

So by the end of the committee negotiations, the dock workers had all their demands met and the strike was agreed to be over on 16th September 1889. The Taylors also secured the victory. And after the strike, the dock workers formed an official new General Labourers Union. And the strike inspired thousands of unskilled workers to also organize themselves. According to LibCom, union membership overall grew from 750,000 in 1888 to 1.5 million in 1892 to over 2 million in 1899. And this growth would be a swell of numbers for the existing unions as well as the establishment of new unions. Now, if we look at this strike through Malatesta's eyes, I think he provides a very useful analysis in about a strike written in 1889, likely right after the strike itself, when Malatesta was in London. While he recognized that dark wickers had won the battle, he, like I, is questioning why they didn't go ahead and win the war. You know, he questioned why a movement powerful enough to bring one of the world's largest ports to a standstill didn't go any further. The docks had been running because workers by the thousands collectively made them run. And when those workers withdrew their labour, an entire section of the economy ground to a halt. So for Malatesta, the first lesson of a strike and their value for revolution was that they reveal where the power actually comes from. Everyday life under capitalism and the state tends to hide that fact. You know, they make it seem like societies organised by governments, investors, managers, owners. But a strike makes it very clear that the people who do the work are the people who make society function. People who may have felt isolated would begin acting together, holding meetings, organising relief, feeding hundreds of thousands, managing communications in the process, gaining practical experience in self organization, demonstrating the potential to organize the city itself by themselves, for themselves. In other words, they're developing new powers which would shape their new drives and establish a new consciousness. So strikes are schools of struggle, but as Malatesta points out, they're limited. They reveal workers power, but they don't use that power to transform society. The dock strike won higher wages in better conditions, but the basic structure of society was untouched. The dock bosses were still bosses and the workers were still workers and the state was still the state, protecting property and maintaining the existing order. And this was Maltester's critique of the labour movement. They got stuck on winning concessions instead of shaking up the system. And we see through history that employers regroup and economic conditions change and the previous gains would come under pressure. So one battle being won does not mean the class war has been won. Literally, a few decades later, another strike took place in the Port of London by dock workers. In 1926. As recounted in Callum Kant and Matthew Lee's article on the making of London's general strike, the Yakman dock workers, transport workers and other labourers joined coal miners in a nationwide strike after mine owners sought wage cuts and longer hours. In that strike, dock workers once again effectively shut down key parts of the city's economy. But during this strike, state repression was especially severe. The government deployed police, volunteers and emergency powers to keep services running and break picket lines. Violent clashes occurred around the docks, where workers tried to prevent strikebreakers and the movement of goods. Also, the leadership of the trade union's congress, the uc, was quite conservative in response to this worker action. While rank and file workers demonstrated strong solidarity and willingness to continue the struggle, union leaders ultimately called off the strike after nine days without securing major guarantees for the strikers. It was a major betrayal of the movement and demonstrated the weakness of traditional unionism. Structurally and ideologically, you see the signs of unions basically being part of the system in the end, as we see today, and you see the potential of workers, as always, to act autonomously. So strikes like these leave me with questions. Can a strike develop beyond a negotiation over wages and conditions into a broader challenge to who controls society? Can the solidarity built during the strike survive after the immediate dispute ends? Can workers begin to see themselves not just as employees with demands, but as people capable of managing social life themselves? Can we assail the legal order and the property protection that stand in the way of our survival? And in all of these questions, what I'm getting at is how do you turn a general strike into a social revolution? There are still gaps to be bridged between labour struggles and the grander ambitions of such a revolution. And labour conditions have certainly changed for many. You know, I don't want to put forward the position that we just need to recreate the rugged industrial unionism of the past. Yeah, but we still have power in our refusal to work. That hasn't changed. And if we leverage that alongside organisation within and outside of the workplace to support our struggles to build and fight, to propose and oppose and push for the vision of a world beyond workers and bosses, not merely pushing demands to bosses, maybe we can accomplish the social revolution that Malatesta sought more than a century ago. Go bigger strikes, stronger Unions are not the answer. They may be steps toward workers using solidarity, confidence and organizational capacity to take direct control of all aspects of social life. As always, all power to all the people. Peace

[Podcast Host]

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