On 4 May 1926 the British people woke to a strange quiet. Trains, trams, and buses remained in their depots. The great factory chimneys that usually belched smoke into the air above the nation’s industrial towns were idle. The general strike had begun. For the next nine days, more than 2 million workers - dockers, railwaymen, bus drivers, printers, and factory workers - downed tools . They joined the country’s one million coalminers, who’d been locked out of their pits after refusing to accept