The Future in Our Past: The General Strike, 1926/2026

The Future in Our Past tells the remarkable story of Britain’s only ever General Strike on its centenary. It is an on-the-ground account of how workers brought the country to a standstill for nine extraordinary days. Callum Cant and Matthew Lee take us on a journey through a Britain living on its nerves, from the London docklands to the South Wales coalfields and the railways and warehouses of middle England. They compare the struggles of 1926 with those of workers in these same communities today. We meet a Bangladeshi courier involved in wildcat strikes on the Isle of Dogs. The great grandson of a Welsh miner facing redundancy at the blast furnaces of Port Talbot. This is social history at its most immediate and relevant.