A RED FLAG ON TYNWALD HILL

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: february 2019 :: RMTnews 26 On July 4 1918 a red flag flew from Tynwald Hill. All transport stopped on the Isle of Man, the lights went out, the shops shut and the docks closed. The crew of a Steam Packet boat on its daily run from Liverpool negotiated with pickets in order to land 500 bemused holiday makers at Douglas, before agreeing not to take any return passengers and voting to join the strike themselves. At the yard of the Manx Electric Railway, a member of the office staff attempted to take-out a car but was set upon by a crowd and fled headlong across the rocks. Elsewhere, not an engine or a tram moved from its shed, and there was no-one to shovel the coal, mine the tin or stoke the gas retorts. As the day wore on, the crowds on the streets of the island’s capital grew in numbers and confidence, while farm labourers joined the strike in the north of the island and women stocking knitters came out in support in the south. The strike committee ensured that essential food supplies were delivered to the poor, the old and the hungry – negotiating the landing, prices and distribution of the catches from fishermen - while the Manx police force openly fraternised with the strikers. Often portrayed as quiescent or reactionary, the Manx people showed themselves to be anything but, during the 48- hour general strike of July 1918. Indeed, this was to become the only successful general strike waged – to date – in the British and Irish archipelagos. How had this happened? The Isle had not had a tradition of organised labour before the outbreak of the Great War and attempts to unionise the gas workers, railway employees, farm and builder’s labourers had been smashed through intimidation, the sack and the blacklist. If you don’t like it, the old Tory Captain Moughtin was fond of snarling, ‘a single ticket to England costs only six shillings’. However, the Great War had served to stratify Manx society as never before. It widened the gulf that separated the rich from the poor. Profiteers – landowners, shareholders in public companies and shopkeepers – who had secured the lucrative contracts to provision and equip the internment and prison camps on the Isle, flourished and fortunes were made. However, unskilled labourers, farm and shop workers, and many who had worked in the tourist industry – including the A RED FLAG ON TYNWALD HILL John Callow tells the story of the successful 1918 Manx general strike