STEPHEN Wainwright continues his account of the general and miners' strikes of 1926.
The General Strike ended on May 12, 1926, after 9 days of disruption.
The decision by the TUC to withdraw their support from the miners came as a great shock to the embattled, locked-out pitmen.
In St Helens there was an initial feeling of betrayal that was soon replaced by dejection.
Jack Houghton described the miners' demeanour at a meeting held two days later: "I never saw in all my life such a demoralised, hopeless and down-hearted crowd as the one of 4,000 working men in St Helens and district assembled on the Bridge Street land on Thursday morning after the strike was called off.
"The morale of the working class was broken at that moment."
The 17,000 or so miners of St Helens had been locked out of their pits since April 30 because they had refused to accept reduced wages for their highly dangerous occupation.
Figures released earlier in the year had revealed that during 1925, 1,158 men and boys had been killed in the country's coal mines.
But with strike pay available and 7,000 of their children being fed 7 days a week, money was not an immediate concern for most and so the miners were happy to be outdoors enjoying the good weather.
On May 21, 1926, the Liverpool Echo wrote: "The men are quietly enjoying the ‘holiday,’ working on their allotments, bowling, and in other similar pursuits."
However, shopkeepers had learnt lessons from previous disputes and were refusing to give miners' wives any credit.
The Prescot Guardians provided Poor Law relief for those in desperate need and soon applications from miners were flooding in.
But only wives and children were entitled to any relief money and so on June 17 thousands marched to the Whiston Institution (aka workhouse) where the guardians were based.
This is how the Daily Express described their demonstration: "Fifteen thousand miners, women, and girls, some of them wearing carnival hats, marched seven miles, from St. Helen's to the Whiston Workhouse, near Prescot, and back this afternoon to demonstrate in favour of the granting of additional relief.
"The procession was accompanied by four brass bands, which played lively airs, and many thousands of the general public followed it to Whiston.
"The guardians agreed to increase the relief, and to ask the Ministry of Health to allow them to advance ten shillings a week on loan."
On July 4, 1926, what the St Helens Newspaper described as the biggest meeting ever held in St Helens took place when 25,000 welcomed Arthur Cook, the General Secretary of the Miners Federation.
The venue was land behind St Helens Hospital and it was said the enthusiastic cheering of Cook's speech could be heard in Thatto Heath.
Although only a skeleton staff was down St Helens' coal mines undertaking safety work, their adjacent waste heaps were swarming with folk.
That was because the management of the mines had agreed to let poor people scavenge for bits of coal among the dirt.
Soup kitchens were also set up in several places but in August after a dispute, the safety men were withdrawn from the mines.
But some non-union men at Sutton Manor ignored the order and at one point 1,000 angry miners assembled outside the colliery booing and shouting.
A window was smashed in a worker's house and a number of others were followed home by a crowd loudly beating tins.
The homes of several workers were smeared with whitewash and abuse was scrawled over windowpanes, with similar events taking place at Parr collieries.
At the end of August 1926, it was claimed that 50 men were working on the Sutton Manor coalface, with nearly 100 other colliers, enginemen etc. employed elsewhere.
One report stated that they were under police protection with an "army of wrathful men, backed by crowds of excited women" waiting outside.
By October life was becoming intolerable for many strikers and there was a slow drift back to work.
Incentives being given to the indebted mineworkers to resume work were proving too great a temptation.
Miners' agent Joe Tinker said at a meeting on the 13th that the managers were offering "£1 bribes, a load of coal and back rent knocked off".
An announcement by the Prescot Guardians that they would be reducing relief by 10 per cent from October 21 was a further blow and by November the strike was over.
As so often happened, miners' principles ultimately had to be sacrificed when their family's suffering became too great.
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