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Title: What a strike is
Author: Pëtr Kropotkin
Date: 7th September 1889
Language: en
Topics: strike, London
Source: Retrieved on 24th April 2021 from https://anarchism.pageabode.com/?p=812
Notes: Originally published as ‘Ce que c’est qu’une gréve’, in La Révolte.

Pëtr Kropotkin

What a strike is

We search our recent memories in vain for a single strike that was as

important as the one that broke out in the docks of London and is still

on going.

There have been more numerous strikes, there have been more violent

ones. But none had the same meaning for the revolutionary socialist

idea.

Firstly, the socialist movement was born within better-paid trades and

has grouped the elite workers, the latter have always looked down on the

rough trades. Men from the Fourth-Estate like to talk about “the

unconscious masses, incapable of organising themselves, demoralised by

poverty”.

We know that we have maintained the opposite view. And now these dock

workers, who can neither go to socialist meetings nor read our

literature, but who feel oppression and hate it more sincerely than

well-read workers, come to confirm the core idea of those who know the

people and respect it.

The most complete solidarity rules amongst the dock workers. And, for

them, striking is far harder than for mechanics or carpenters.

All that was needed was that Tillet, a very young man and of weak

health, devoted himself for two years to work on the beginnings of an

organisation within the dock workers – while socialists doubted he could

ever succeed in his task – so that all thousand branches of the workers

related to the loading of ships cease work with a moving solidarity.

They knew well that for them, strike means hunger; but they didn’t

hesitate.

It’s hunger with all its horrors. It’s terrible to see haggard men,

already exhausted by lack of food, dragging their feet after a twenty

kilometre walk, to Hyde Park and back, collapsing, fainting at the doors

of cheap restaurants where the crowd was pushing to receive provision

coupons and bowls of soup.

An immense organisation, spontaneous, was born from the centre of these

rough workers, often referred to as the herd even by socialists.

Hundreds of leaflets are distributed every day. Sums of 10 to 30,000

Francs in aid – in great part pennies coming from collections – are

counted, written down, distributed. Restaurants are improvised, filled

with food, etc. And, except Tillet, Burns, Mann and Champion – already

experienced – everything is done by dock workers who quite simply came

to offer their help. Quite a vast organisation, absolutely spontaneous.

It’s the picture of a people organising itself during the Revolution,

all the better for having less leaders.

It is useless to add that if this mass of 150,000 striking men didn’t

feel that currently the Bourgeoisie is united and strong, it would walk

as a single man against the West-End wealthy. Conversations of groups on

the street state it only too well.

But the strike has also a greater impact.

It has confirmed the strength of organisation of a mass of 150,000 men

coming from every corner of England, not knowing each other, too poor to

be militant socialists. But it has also demonstrated, in a way that

produces a shiver down the back of the bourgeois, the extent a great

city is at the mercy of two or three hundred thousand workers.

All the trade of England has already been disrupted by this strike.

London Bridge, this universal trade centre, is mute. Ships coming from

the four corners of the globe, go away from it as if it were a poisoned

city and go towards other English ports. Cargoes – mountains – of fresh

meat, fruits, food of all sorts, coming each day, rot on board ships

guarded by troops. Wheat doesn’t come in to fill the shops empty each

day. And if coal merchants hadn’t hastened to grant everything that the

coal loaders were asking, London would stay without fuel for its million

daily lit homes. It would stay in the dark if the gasmen had left work,

as they had suggested, even though they had emerged victorious in a

strike that took place last month. London would stay without any means

of communication if Burns hadn’t commanded the tram drivers to stay at

their work.

The strike spread like an oil leak. A hundred factories of all sorts,

some very large, others small, no longer getting the flour, lime,

kaolin, oilseeds, etc., etc. that are delivered to them on a daily

basis, have extinguished their fires, throwing onto the streets every

day new contingents of strikers.

It was the general strike, the stopping of all life in this universal

commercial centre, imposed by the strike of three or four branches of

work that hold the key to the buffet.

There are articles in the newspapers sensing terror. Never have the

bourgeois felt how much they are the subjects of the workers. Never have

the workers felt how much they are the masters of society. We had

written it, we had said it. But the deed has more impact than the

printed word! The deed has proved this strength of the workers.

Yes, they are the masters. And the day when those anarchists who exhaust

themselves in empty discussions will do like Tillet, but with firmer and

more revolutionary ideas – the day when they will work within the

workers to prepare the stopping of work in the trades that supply all

the others, they will have done more to prepare the social, economic

Revolution, that all the writers, journalists, and orators of the

socialist party.

We have often spoken about the general strike. We now see that in order

to achieve it, it is not necessary that all workers cease work on the

same day. It is necessary to block the supply channels to the

Bourgeoisie and to its factories.