Nine Days in May: The General Strike of 1926 – The Ewen Green Memorial Lecture

This year's Ewen Green Memorial Lecture will take place on Thursday 30 April 2026 at 5pm in the Magdalen College Auditorium. Professor Emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Jonathan Schneer will be discussing the General Strike of 1926 – namely, its distinctive nature and legacy.

For nine days in May 1926, nearly three million trade unionists struck in sympathy with nearly a million miners whose employers had locked them out because they would not accept steep pay cuts and a longer working day. This general strike practically shuttered the country. There never had been anything like it before; there never would be anything like it again. This lecture will explore what was at stake over those nine days – it was more than 'bread and cheese'; why it lasted little more than a week; what were its consequences; and what are its enduring lessons even for today.

The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception. All are welcome.

Jonathan Schneer is Professor Emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Nine Days in May is his ninth book. His The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of Arab-Israeli Conflict (Random House 2010) won a National Jewish Book Award; his The Lockhart Plot (Oxford, 2020) was shortlisted for the Pushkin House Literary Prize. Currently, he is working with a co-author, Jim Cronin, on a book about critics of Thatcherism in Britain and Reaganism in the United States. He mainly splits his time between Decatur Georgia and Williamstown Massachusetts.