25.10.2006

Class resistance and conspiracy

David Douglass reviews Margaret Hutcherson's Let no wheels turn: the wrecking of the Flying Scotsman, 1926 TUPS Books, 2006, pp91, £6.95

Margaret Hutcherson researched and wrote this book in honour of her grandfather. Previously a miner at Wrightson pit, West Cramlington, he had become the owner of the local general store. With the advent of the General Strike, unlimited credit to his former workmates and debts that could not be repaid, he was forced to close the store and move to London.

He brought the author up with stories of the strike and the men from his village who had derailed the Flying Scotsman. He had saved newspaper cuttings, and his memories stayed fresh. She always promised to get the story into print one day. A promise she has more than fulfilled with this little book.

Many gasped in 1984 when striking miners killed a scab-herding taxi driver. Given the press fury and public outrage this produced, one can only guess at the reaction of press and parliament in 1926. Ten days into the great lockout, striking miners came close to carrying out the greatest mass killing in the history of industrial disputes anywhere in the world.

The derailment of the blackleg Flying Scotsmen with a full complement of hundreds of passengers could have gone down in history as a far more dramatic event than it turned out. Those brave Northumbrian pitmen who carried out the action could have faced mass execution, as the state took its revenge.

As it turned out, despite the total derailment of the engine and tender, which rolled right off the track and onto its side, despite the derailment of five of the 12 carriages - the first two turned over onto their side, the second pointing into the air and the others twisted across the tracks - nobody was killed. In fact the train had been proceeding very slowly, as the driver had been tipped off by track inspectors that there would be trouble further down the line. I doubt he expected this much trouble.

The loco pulling the Flying Scotsman service was the Merry Hampton, but this was not the planned target. The main bone of contention had been the occasional scab coal train breaking the strike, as well as others running scab services down the London North East rail line between Edinburgh and the capital. These trains were running through 100 miles of bitter, strike-torn Northumbria, cocking a snook at organised labour in general and the locked out, impoverished miners in particular.

Cramlington was a coal town, the main line running through its back yard. West Cramlington lodge of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain considered the continual scabbing on its patch something of an affront and decided to put a stop to it. The miners dismantled and removed a section of the track and they raided the railway huts to gather up the tools needed for the job. How many people were involved is not accurately recorded, but something approaching 40 men joined in the operation with, it seems, a great many spectators watching in broad daylight - it was hardly a secret operation.  Indeed, it was a public act of defiance, a statement of commitment to the movement, rather than some act of desperation. As luck or otherwise would have it, the first train down the line happened to be a passenger train and, not only that, the most famous one in the world.

The Flying Scotsman was no innocent victim, however. The train was operated by scabs and by middle class student volunteers acting as guards and footplatemen. The passengers too knew damn well what they were risking and that their journey would be both controversial and dangerous. Scab trains had been frequently stoned in Northumberland and Durham and doubtless right through the coal counties en route to London.

Many of the businesspersons and middle class passengers were also making a point of public defiance, against the strike and the actions of the unions. This was illustrated when after the derailment womenfolk from the pit villages rushed down to the tracks with medical aid and offers of assistance and were generally abused and insulted by the passengers, calling them "dirty pit wives" and urging them to get back to their "dirty pit villages". One survivor told the women to "wash their dirty selves and wash their dirty homes". So no love lost there then.

After the action, the village closed ranks. Nobody said anything or had seen anything of the amazing events which had taken place in their neighbourhood. Chancellor Winston Churchill and home secretary Sir William Hicks were blustering for arrests and convictions and the local constabulary were berated for their inaction. In truth the bobbies on the ground probably knew far more than they owned up to and were slow to start going through the motions of investigation.

The clamour caused infiltrators to be planted in the village to pick up information. The investigation went into overdrive and names started to emerge. Despite all the traditions of solidarity and comradeship, informers were found from among the ranks of the activists with the aid of promises of amnesty.

The first to crack had been Lyle Waugh, a striking miner with an older brother in the police, who happened to be in the squad investigating the action; he was also the nephew of the police inspector. Lyle had been involved in the derailment himself, but then, as people started to be arrested for withholding information, fear and the amnesty offer got through to him.

The list of names grew and at midnight on Saturday June 5 raids took place around the village. Nine men were rounded up and when they appeared at Newcastle Moot Hall the MFGB had not been informed and the men faced the whole majesty and might of the court without representation. They had not even been invited to remain silent and said far too much, giving away information which the prosecution had no previous knowledge of.

The jury was not 'of their peers', but actually of their class opponents. Back then jurors were not selected from the general population, but only from ratepayers - and to pay rates you had to own property, whereas most workers lived in rented or tied homes.

When the judge at length ordered that the jury must consider each case separately and assess each circumstance of evidence as it applied to each individual, it was clear the jury had already made up their minds, and took just 30 minutes to find all nine guilty. They were sentenced to between four and eight years' penal servitude.

By November, the Miners' Federation was beaten and a return to work was agreed with much bitterness. The MFGB did not, however, abandon its victimised members banged up in the jails - the most important of whom were the Cramlington men. They were heartily supported by the CPGB and the Workers' Weekly and Sunday Worker.

The latter actually signed up to a conspiracy theory that the men had been framed. Not only did the Worker blame the criminal inefficiency of the scab drivers for the derailment (it was actually true that a number of passengers had been killed in the course of the strike by just such untrained and unskilled drivers of buses, trams and trains): it claimed that the track had been removed after the derailment to implicate the miners.

The theory was probably accepted among the wider ranks of the working class simply because they knew the state was all too capable of such a frame-up. But actually we now know - and most folk in the village must have known - that this was an act of class resistance in the ongoing class war.

The book also highlights the activities of International Class War Prisoners Aid in support of the men's families and, more particularly, to keep the political campaign for their unconditional release to the fore. Over the next three years the campaign won widespread support, even among senior union officials and members of the TUC general council - who doubtless felt such support absolved them from their class treachery in sailing the miners off into the wide blue yonder to sink or swim alone.

By Christmas 1929, the campaign was successful and all the men were finally freed three and a half years into their sentences. They had become generally accepted as heroes of the left, if not the union movement in general, and their release saw mass rallies and demonstrations welcoming them, as they boarded or alighted from their homeward-bound trains.

The chapter dealing with the reflections of the 'wreckers' themselves is titled 'No regrets' and by and large that is the view of the men then, and the former mining communities today. The book attempts to retain some sense of objectivity and tell the tale of those who were involved, regardless of which side of the class line they were sitting on. There is no doubt, however, where the sympathies of Margaret Hutcherson lie.