Red Clydeside

Timeline of events

Stand solid and win

Every worker on strike

May 1926

Launched in 1924, the National Minority Movement was a Communist Party of Great Britain-inspired group that argued for a united front within the trades unions as an effective way of resisting attacks on working-class living standards. The task of the NMM was declared to be 'not to organise independent revolutionary trade unions or to split revolutionary elements away from existing organisations affiliated to the TUC [...] but to convert the revolutionary minority within each industry into a revolutionary majority.'

The NMM attempted to build a rank-and-file movement based around sympathetic trades union members, and to forge alliances with left-wing union leaders. The CPGB was partially succesful in affiliating some trades union branches and trades councils to the NMM, as well as a number of left-wing trades union leaders.

By the time of its third annual conference in 1926, the NMM had registered substantial growth, with 883 delegates representing over 957,000 workers, the majority of the support coming from transport, railway and engineering workers. From its inception in 1924, the influence of the NMM spread throughout the trades union movement and the Trades Union Congress began to become increasingly influenced by the initiatives of the NMM. This was brought to an abrupt halt by the defeat of the trades unions in the general strike of 1926.

Source: Glasgow Trades Council Collection, Glasgow City Archives