Midnight, 30 April 1926. Mineowners lock out a million miners. In response, British workers across the country down their tools. Britain’s first General Strike has begun.

The government feared that the country was teetering on the brink of revolution. Trade union leaders thought they’d be shot by the end of the week. For nine days, trains, buses and trams stopped running. Lorries could only leave the docks protected by military convoy. In Birmingham, the police hunted down city councillors, and in London they raided trade union headquarters. And for those in the coalfields, from South Wales to Scotland, the strike would not last nine days, but nine months.

On the strike’s centenary, Edd Mustill tells the story of why millions of workers came out on strike, and why the government did all it could to quash them.