STRIKING BACK ACROSS THE EMPIRE

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: march/april 2025 :: RMTnews 22 This year marks 100 years since a dispute described by one historian as the ‘first shot of the General Strike of 1926’, a landmark event in British labour history. The 1925 seafarers’ strike lasted 10 weeks, spreading worldwide to Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Tens of thousands of union members took part and scores of ships were tied up. This was a time when Britain had the world’s biggest merchant fleet, and the British Empire depended on it to move goods and people around. Striking crews brought much of that trade to a standstill. The spark for the action was a £1 monthly pay cut – a massive 10 per cent reduction. Crews went back empty- handed after 10 weeks, though there were no further wage cuts – a victory of sorts as bosses in other industries slashed pay during an economic slump. But the scale of the strike shook government ministers, shipowners and union leaders alike. The main seafaring union at the time was the National Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union (NSFU). It later became the National Union of Seamen (NUS), one of the founding unions of RMT. Strikers were angry that the NSFU’s controversial leader, Joseph Havelock Wilson, had unilaterally proposed the pay cut to shipowners. The strike therefore targeted both the union’s leadership and the employers. Wilson’s defenders said that his offer had pre-empted even STRIKING BACK ACROSS THE EMPIRE Jim Jump looks back at the global seafarers’ strike one hundred years ago 14 September 1925, Wellington, New Zealand: 86 strikers among the crew of the Arawa, who had been sentenced to six weeks behind bars after they refused to set sail for Southampton, marched to their prison along with 500 sympathisers. Their banners included the messages ‘Victims of Wilson’s treachery’ and ‘We prefer jail to starvation wages’.