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Devon and the General Strike, 19261

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

J. H. Porter
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Rural areas have generally been ignored in recent studies of the General Strike of 3–12 May 1926 on the implicit assumption that its impact in such areas would be negligible. To see if this assumption is correct this article examines the course of the strike in Devon and reaction to it. The likelihood of militant action in Devon in part depended upon the structure of the occupied population. In 1921 16 per cent of the occupied population of Devon County and the County Boroughs was in agriculture, and this rises to 25 per cent if we take the administrative county alone. In Exeter 49 per cent of the occupied population was in commerce, the professions, public administration, defence and personal service; in Plymouth the percentage for this group was 52 per cent. Consequently even the industrial areas were likely to be relatively weakly organised. Once out of the County Boroughs the industrial population, apart from a concentration of railwaymen at Newton Abbot, was so scattered as to make organisation and co-ordination difficult. There was no tradition of militancy in the county.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , December 1978 , pp. 333 - 356
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1978

References

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