2026 Ewen Green Memorial Lecture - Nine Days in May: The General Strike of 1926

For nine days in May 1926, nearly three million trade unionists struck in sympathy with nearly a million miners whose employers had locked them out because they would not accept steep pay cuts and a longer working day. This general strike practically shuttered the country. There never had been anything like it before; there never would be anything like it again. This lecture will explore what was at stake over those nine days – it was more than “bread and cheese”; and why it lasted little more than a week; and what were its consequences; and what are its enduring lessons even for today.

There will be a drinks reception after the lecture. All welcome.

Jonathan Schneer is Professor Emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Nine Days in May is his ninth book. His The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of Arab-Israeli Conflict (Random House 2010) won a National Jewish Book Award; his The Lockhart Plot (Oxford, 2020) was shortlisted for the Pushkin House Literary Prize. Currently, he is working with a co-author, Jim Cronin, on a book about critics of Thatcherism in Britain, and Reaganism in the United States. He mainly splits his time between Decatur Georgia and Williamstown Massachusetts.