Legislation alone halved British strike activity and union membership within a decade.

Evidence

Even Millis had to admit that the act was a unique episode in British history, inasmuch as it “curtailed the rights of labour on both the industrial and the political fi elds” (Millis 1928, 315). Th e results were immediate. Th e average number of disputes in 1927 and 1928 fell to half of those in the years 1924 to 1925 (Mitchell 1998, Table b.3, 176). Even more impressively, as Miliband put it, “while the average number of workers involved in strikes and lockouts in each of the three years 1919– 1921 was 2,108,000, in each of the thirteen years 1927– 1939 it was 308,100— and not by any means because Labour lacked major grievances in those years, or achieved notable successes by the use of its parliamentary strength” (Miliband 1961, 148– 49). By 1930 union membership had halved with respect to 1920 (going down from 8.4 million to 4.8 million participants— see chapter 9, fi gure 9.4). — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 979

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader argument about austerity as a class weapon against organized labor, tying legal suppression to the monetary-deflation reading of the same period.