Callum Cant & Matthew Lee | The 1926 General Strike
Fri 24 Apr 2026 | 4:00pm - 5:00pm
One hundred years ago, workers brought Britain to a standstill for nine extraordinary days during the country’s only ever General Strike. In April 1926, a nation lived on its nerves: from the London docklands to the South Wales coalfields, and across the railways, warehouses and industrial towns of middle England. Churchill feared a Bolshevik-style revolution, but despite mass mobilisation this monumental standoff ended in defeat for the unions.
In The Future in Our Past: The General Strike, 1926/2026, Callum Cant and Matthew Lee tell this remarkable story with fresh urgency, travelling across Britain to compare the struggles of 1926 with those faced by workers in the same communities today. Along the way, they meet a Bangladeshi courier involved in wildcat strikes on the Isle of Dogs, and the great-grandson of a Welsh miner confronting redundancy in Port Talbot. Join the discussion as we ask: what does the General Strike still teach us in 2026 and what lessons might shape the future of work, solidarity and resistance?
Venue: Palmerston Room
Duration: 1 hour
Tickets available soon.
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Author Biographies
Callum Cant is the author of Riding for Deliveroo and coauthor of Feeding the Machine. He writes for the Guardian on strikes, the future of work and workers’ rights. He is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Essex and co-editor of Notes from Below, a journal of worker writing.
Matthew Lee is a librarian and independent researcher and co-editor of Notes from Below. He is a contributing author to the upcoming book Higher Education’s Labor Upsurge.
