1926 General Strike
A01=Rachelle Saltzman
Author_Rachelle Saltzman
Britishness
Category=KNX
Category=NHD
Category=NHTB
class divisions
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
humour
national community
national folk symbols
postwar society
social status
socio-economic status
speech
volunteering
Product details
- ISBN 9780719079771
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 30 Apr 2012
- Publisher: Manchester University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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A lark for the sake of their country tells the tale of the upper and middle-class ‘volunteers’ in the 1926 General Strike in Great Britain. With behaviour derived from their play traditions - the larks, rags, fancy dress parties, and treasure hunts that prevailed at universities and country houses - the volunteers transformed a potential workers’ revolution into festive public display of Englishness. Decades later, collective folk memories about this event continue to define national identity. Based on correspondence and interviews with volunteers and strikers, as well as contemporary newspapers and magazines, novels, diaries, plays, and memoirs, this book recreates the context for the volunteers’ actions. It explores how the upper classes used the strike to assert their ideological right to define Britishness as well as how scholars, novelists, playwrights, diarists, museum curators, local historians, and even a theme restaurant, have continued to recycle the strike to define British identity.
Rachelle Hope Saltzman is Executive Director of the Oregon Folklife Network at the University of Oregon
