“Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day”.
Crooked Spire Press and The Fig Tree online webzine are delighted to announce a new Special Issue to commemorate 100 years since the General Strike of 1926.
The initial window for submissions is May 3rd 2026 to May 12th 2026. These are the dates of the strike in 1926. This may be extended but there’s no guarantee.
The 1926 Strike was a watershed moment in British labour relations. It wasn’t the first time that coordinated strike action hit a range of industries across the UK but it galvanised the government into creating a range of anti-Union laws in the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927. This was eventually repealed by the Attlee government in 1946 but since 1979 many of its aims have been re-legislated.
Submissions are sought for unpublished poems about the following topics:
- The General Strike of 1926
- The Union Movement – its history and benefits
- Subsequent or prior strikes
- The role of Unions in the modern world
Poems written for this project, and not published elsewhere, that are selected for inclusion in the project will be published in a special issue of the Fig Tree in a few months’ time. If there is sufficient interest, and we hope there is, Crooked Spire Press will create a printed anthology of those poems plus others from the submissions and from existing sources.
Please follow this link and read the submission rules carefully. I’m not a tyrant but breaking some of these rules may mean your poem isn’t included.
https://figtreepoetry.substack.com/p/submissions-1926-general-strike-special
Thank you and get writing!
Crooked Spire Press 