1919: Britain on the Brink of Revolution

In 1919 two thousand soldiers, ordered to embark for France, mutinied, formed a ‘Soldiers Union’ and went on strike. The boats sailed empty. In 1919 the London metropolitan police went on strike, with flying pickets hundreds-strong going from police station to station forcing others to join them. In 1919 a hundred thousand workers in Glasgow struck in support of their demand for a 40-hour working week; mass pickets marched from factory to factory bringing them out. In 1919 sailors on board the patrol vessel HMS Kilbride, demanding better pay, refused to go to sea, hauled down the naval ensign, and hoisted the Red Flag. In 1919, said the man who was to become Home Office director of intelligence, ‘I do not think at any time in history since the Bristol riots we have been so near revolution.’ In 1919 prime minister Lloyd George told the trade union leaders: ‘… in our opinion we are at your mercy. This book draws on Cabinet records, many of them published here for the first time, to tell of the year Britain stood on the brink.