PIC OF THE WEEK: The General Strike, 1926

[The Tank Museum]

 

The sight of military vehicles on civilian streets generally means one of two things: either some dictator needs to boost his ego with a parade or there’s trouble in the offing.

 

Our picture this week shows a Peerless armoured car escorting a food convoy through the streets of London during the 1926 General Strike. The strike was thought, in some quarters at least, to be the prelude to a Bolshevik revolution.

 

The strike lasted from 4-13 May, beginning with a miner’s strike against a reduction in wages and spreading to other workers, such as the dockers and the railwaymen. Attempts were made by the Conservative government under Stanley Baldwin to portray the strikers as revolutionaries and the 1920 Emergency Powers Act was invoked against what was thought to be an attempt to destabilise the country.

 

As part of the effort to safeguard supplies and to maintain public order, three companies of 3rd Bn. RTC, one with light tanks and two with Peerless armoured cars were based at Chelsea Barracks. On May 8th, a convoy escorted by the Peerless armoured cars broke the picket line at the London docks and transported food to a government depot at Hyde Park. Our photograph, taken in High Holborn, shows a convoy in progress (inset shows the location where the photograph was taken as it appears today).

 

The Peerless, developed in 1919, was based around the chassis of an American made Peerless 3 ton lorry. The armoured superstructure was produced by Austin Motors Ltd, a development of a design for the Tsarist Russian government. The armoured car retained the chain drive and spoked wooden wheels of the lorry, with a rear drivers position added to enable it to retreat out of trouble backwards, if necessary.

 

In service the Peerless was found to be reliable if somewhat slow and heavy. Its cross country performance is best described as non-existent, as was found by the Irish National Army, to which a number of the vehicles were supplied during the Civil War of 1922-3.

 

The Peerless shown in our image is of the commonest type with twin turrets mounting Hotchkiss machine guns, an example of which is preserved in the Museum collection (see this week’s TANK OF THE WEEK).

 

As regards the General Strike, far from being a precursor to revolution, it petered out. This gave rise to the expression “a Nine Day’s Wonder”. The miners persisted in their struggle but were eventually forced back to work, effectively by starvation.