Engineers’ Strike & the Labour Movement

[p016] The Engineers’ Strike and the Labour Movement Robert Shaw NOTHING LIKE the recent engineering and shipbuilding strikes has been witnessed in Britain since 1926. This date was on the minds, if. not the lips, of everyone: workers, employers, trade union leaders and Govern- ment alike. Each section looked over its shoulder at the experiences of the General Strike and was either inspired by hope or struck with fear, depending on its place in the class struggle. In twelve short months the pattern of post-war labour relations has been disrupted. The old servility of the wage application, the long- drawn-out negotiations, the hypocrisy of arbitration and Government inquiries—none of these things can ever be the same again. If strikes were undertaken by the rebellious rank and file in the past, then Transport House would thunder and Labour MPs would solemnly warn of the danger to the economy; but the engineering and ship- building workers have changed all that. Now this old, stately class collaboration dance has been rudely in- terrupted and the trade union leaders must jig to the workers’ tune. But are not the workers, as the capitalist Press announced, better off than before? Are they not earning good money and buying television sets and expensive furniture? Have not the Fabian theorists pontificated on the falseness of Marx, on the disap- pearance of the class struggle and the gradual and inevitable betterment of society in general? Why then has the old spectre refused to be laid? How has it happened that shipyard workers and engineers have engaged in ‘old-fashioned’ battle? . The solidarity of the strikes was a shock to the employers and a portent of the future. After seventeen years of full employment and prosperity, the workers’ movement has emerged strong and fresh, invigorated 76 . by the emergence of new generations who have not known the defeats of the twenties and thirties. These battalions are determined to defend the higher living standards won from capitalism after the war. ‘Collective Bludgeoning’, wrote the Economist, calling on the engineering employers to hold fast while demanding no interference from the Government. In full-page advertisements in the Press the engineering employers declared their wide-eyed innocence at being so cruelly held to ransom. The Government was power- less to prevent a clash on a large scale; all the time- worn methods of arbitration, conciliation and inquiry were useless. What went wrong? Has the British move- ment entered a new phase of revolutionary develop- ment? Above all, the trade union militants need to analyze the retreat that was forced on the rank and file by a section of the trade union bureaucracy. How can the militant wing be strengthened and the treacherous leadership removed? What is the way forward for the British trade unions? Are we heading for another 1926? These are the questions we must answer. The developing crisis in the economy Behind the industrial struggle is the fight for profits. Though 1955 and 1956 marked a new high point for dividends there began to emerge unmistak- able signs of growing difficulties in the economy. The trade unions correctly pointed to the fourteen per cent increase in engineering profits for 1956, which made a mockery of the employers’ claim that they could not afford to give wage increases, The employers’ resistance was stiffened by the policy of the Government, which

[p017] sought to peg down wages in an attempt .o solve the financial crisis, further aggravated by the Suez adven-. ture. The attitude of the Government on wages was a logical extension of the policy it adopted as a result of the drain on the gold and dollar reserves and the threat of national insolvency. Macmillan’s action in curtailing credit and raising the Bank Rate precipitated the slump in the car industry, already operating in conditions of increasing world competition. In Birmingham and Coventry there were ominous echoes of the thirties and the return of mass unemploy- ment. During 1956 production of cars and _ lorries dropped by 37 per cent and 32 per cent respectively and this drop was shown in the sharp decline in the profits of the motor car manufacturers. In 1956 Ford’s profits dropped £5 million below the 1955 figure; the British Motor Corporation declared that no profits had been made in 1956; other motor manufacturers showed simi- lar declines. Nor were these profit falls confined only to motor car firms. As the company reports for 1956-7 are published, it becomes clear that there were big drops in net profit, and in some cases actual losses were shown. David Brown’s showed a net profit of only £108 as against £612,684 for 1955. The North British Loco Company declared a net loss of £508,083 as against a profit of £101,510 in 1955. Although these figures are not the general pattern they are signs of the growing difficulties faced by sections of British capitalism in the world market. Many firms have invested large amounts of capital in expensive automatic machinery, in modernization and in extensions of factory equipment. All this is capital which demands employment. Lower profits in one sector of the economy eventually worsens the situation for the whole and threatens the rate of profit. No wonder, therefore, that the engineering bosses get tough; their rate of profit is at stake. What has now emerged is the pattern of a con- spiracy between the Government and the employers to hold down wages. Macmillan stated when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer that ‘another round of wage increases such as there had been in the past two years could be disastrous.’ (May 25, 1956). The en- gineering and shipbuilding employers could readily subscribe to these words; they understand that a drop in profits would be a disaster. They aimed to sweat out of labour the last ounce of. expanded profit. It was to be a fight, and the weakest would go to the wall. For the employers the fight began in 1956 at Standard Motors, Norton’s and the B.M.C., where the issué of redundancy and. unemployment was fought out at the factory gate, on the picket line. wo The trade union movement Both the weakness and the strength of the trade union movement were demonstrated in the car indus- try strikes of 1956. What was at stake was the defence of the basic principle of ‘no sackings’. The workers understood that they must defend their right to em- ployment, in answer to the intentions of the employers and the Government to create a pool of unemployed. The car workers demonstrated the fighting spirit of the rank and file when given adequate leadership (as de- monstrated at Norton’s) and, awoke to the strength of the trade union movement if only the top leadership could be forced to fight. There also emerged the new. 77 pattern of betrayals at the hands of the trade union leaders. At Norton’s the local leaders stood firm by the principle of ‘no sackings’, and for 28 weeks defied at- tacks from employers and the Press and resisted the insidious pressure from the trade union bureaucrats. This heroic struggle stood in violent contrast to the treachery at Standards’ and the B.M.C. In these strikes the Right-wing bureaucrats were aided and abetted by the conciliatory policy of the British communist lead- ers, transmitted through the strong Communist Party organizations in both firms. This is a feature we shall certainly meet again in the further development of the workers’ struggles. In their own way the Right-wing trade union lead- ers understood the lessons of the B.M.C. and Standards’ and drew conclusions which, of course, fitted in with their own interests. It is as well for us to understand what these interests are. The British trade unions were formed and grew in the period of capitalist expansion and their role was that of obtaining concessions from the employers when times were ‘good’ and defending their members’ inter- ests as best they could when times were ‘bad’. Unions conducted in this way were ‘tolerated’ by the capital- ists, who also tried to get into the leadership of the unions pliable men, men who would act ‘reasonably’, i.e. in the general interests of capitalism. The growth of monopoly capitalism and the beginning of the de- cline of Britain in the world economy disrupted this relationship. The ruling class increasingly demanded that the trade union leaders serve the ‘interests of the nation’, by which of course they meant the interests of big business. They also perfected methods for get- ting a stranglehold on the rank and file. Gradually their function became one of acting as the policemen for monopoly capitalism, until in the nineteen twenties the trade union leaders in general not only sold out to the employers but also crushed the militant opposition to their rule and imposed a rigid control of the union apparatus. _ The growing crisis of British capitalism again brings before us the part played by reformist-led trade unions. Today the leaders are faced in every dispute with a solid wall of employers backed by State.power. ‘Nowadays the State increasingly throws off the pre- tence-of impartiality (just as it did in 1926) and holds over the workers’ heads a club with the warning ~ ‘Submit!’ Hence the need for the trade unions—in so far as they remain reformist (i.c. adapt themselves to pri- vate property) to adapt themselves to the capitalist State and to contend with the employers for its -co- operation. In the eyes of the reformist leaders the chief task is to ‘free’ the State from the embrace of capital- ism, to weaken its dependence on the great capitalist combines, to pull it over to their side. an But in the epoch of imperialism the State becomes more and more the diréct agency of monopoly capital- ism. In Britain today, behind the Parliamentary facade, the Macmillan Government acts in the wage dispute only in the interests of the engineering employers; it is not and cannot be impartial. Of course, the Labour leaders hasten forward with their fig-leaf to hide this fact from the working class. Otherwise the Labour Parliamentarians themselves would be exposed.

[p018] In the Stock Exchange Gazette of March 22, 1957, a writer pointed out that when the trade union leaders threaten “to disrupt the country’, they do so only to justify their own existence, since failure to obtain wage increases would lose them their power and their jobs. This is of course a vulgarization of the truth, con- veniently over-simplified for class-conscious members of the Stock Exchange. When the bourgeois writers state that the trade union bureaucrats are afraid of their members they state only half the truth, for the bureaucrats fear the monopoly capitalists much more and so hasten to sell out the workers in the interests of the monopolists. But, it may be asked, did not these same people recently initiate mass strikes and, beating their breasts, threaten the engineering employers? Certainly—though some did so reluctantly and because they felt them- selves between the devil and the deep blue sea. In the past the bureaucrats were able to balance the workers’ pressure against the needs of big capital, but with the growing economic crisis and the changing social rela- tions impelling the two classes into violent conflict the juggling act of the bureaucrats is disrupted. Does this mean that the trade union. leaders have become new men? Must the trade union movement take as genuine coin their ‘new’ words? Only the naive would do so. If these leaders hasten to knuckle under to the employers when three thousand workers are to be sacked, and if, when a wage battle is in danger of be- ing won, these leaders are divided because some stand for outright capitulation, is it not clear that the leaders at the very top of the trade union apparatus, cushioned from the chill wind of class conflict and more than bourgeois in their outlook, will never lead the workers in any decisive battles except for the specific purpose -of betraying them and teaching.them a lesson? It would,- -hewever, be foolish for us to assume that the reformist leadership will automatically be dis- credited and replaced by the rank and file, for they are not unaware of the rank-and-file pressures on them and they adjust themselves accordingly. Moreover they are _ hot homogeneous but represent many different layers, some of which are much closer to the rank and file, subject to closer scrutiny from the workers and there- fore less ready to sell them out. But the influence and big votes are in the hands of the most centralized and undemocratic unions, whose leaders are among the most servile. Even here, however, sections of the bureaucracy were forced in 1956 to change their tactics and to lead mass strikes as part of their strategy. Some of the local trade union leaders in Birmingham even found themselves, much to their embarrassment, giv- ing a hand on the picket line. In the present engineering dispute William Carron can be said to represent the extreme Right-wing group. Even so some of Carron’s supporters among the Catho- lic Irish (e.g. Byrne of Glasgow) were obliged to speak critically of the open sell-out perpetrated by the Con- federation majority. To the Left there are Ted Hill and the Communist Party trade union leaders, with Frank Cousins voting with this group. The Communist Party spokesmen are not always to be found on the Left; their réle is a special one. Having failed to pursue an independent policy throughout the strike, the Com- munist Party supported the least compromised wing of the bureaucracy. In Frank Cousins, in particular, are expressed all the contradictions of the bureaucracy en- gaging in militant actions, actions which some of his predecessors would look upon as dangerous heresy. But Ernest Bevin also played a Left tune in his time and during 1926 was given the task of drawing up the plan for the General Strike. Cousins said little during the engineering dispute, was dithery about the strike action, but voted for its continuation. It may be asked how Ted Hill comes into this category of trade union bureaucrats. Hill represents one of the smaller craft unions. He often makes ‘Left’ statements and has hinted in his union journal at the use of industrial action to bring down the Tory Gov- ernment. He claims to be a Marxist. But his handling of the dispute on the Clyde in November 1956 was cri- tically received by the rank and file, and in the recent dispute he was content to shelter behind the discipline imposed. by the Confederation majority. Ted Hill re- presents a Centrist tendency within the trade union leadership, a tendency which is now beginning to emerge and to exercise greater influence. These Centrists are feeling their way towards lead- ership and beginning to challenge the old Right wing. In the past they tailed behind Stalinist or Left-reform- ist ideas, with no clearly thought out programme of their own. Cousins flirts with the Centrists while form- ally remaining in the same Right-wing camp. At the 1956 Trades Union Congress he was put up by the Right wing in an attempt to head off the drift to the Left. The changing situation and the growth of mili- tancy among the rank and file push forward this pro- cess of adaptation by the leadership. Rank-and-file militancy is, of course, the promise of revolutionary events; but there is yet no )_ revolutionary wing in the General Council. The mass strikes Small local strikes are accepted by the bourgeoisie and by the trade union bureaucracy. Both can under- stand the logic of such strikes and they can adopt tra- ditional attitudes to deal with them: return to work, negotiations, a few concessions, a sell-out. There are few repercussions. It is qualitatively different when millions of work- ers are involved. In such times the movement begins to learn. The new militant talk of the leaders, the strength of the challenge to the employers, the lessons of the ‘defeat: all combine to produce within the movement a growing awareness of class relationships, a growing consciousness of the aims of the Labour movement and a feeling that something should be done. For the capitalist a small strike is safe, something he understands, something controllable by trade union officialdom. But given the interaction of those factors which stimulate the conscious feeling of the workers for struggle, the factors generated in the trade unions by the employers’ resistance and the factors which impose upon the trade union leaders themselves the necessity of a clash, then the strike movement can grow from small beginnings into mass proportions, bringing into the struggle more and more workers, at different levels of trade union and political consciousness. The strike movement develops according to a logic of its own. For this very reason the mass strike becomes a risky under- taking for the leading trade union officials, and serves -to underline their dilemma.

[p019] At the outset of the recent strike the engineering and shipbuilding unions were confronted by a blank refusal to raise wages by one penny, and this refusal was obviously endorsed by the Government. In this situation the trade union leaders were forced to take desperate measures. By declaring a strike they set in motion forces they were not sure they could control. Their hesitancy is indicated by the lengthy notice of strike action given to the employers, by the ‘snowball’ tactics adopted in the engineering strike (the Centrist wing voting for an immediate national stoppage). This was the first major nation-wide stoppage since the war; the response is indicative of the fighting mood of the working class. From the very beginning of the strike the active militants began to take the lead. Here was something they could get their teeth into. Reports tell of insistent demands from the rank and file to the dis- trict committees for action against scabs and against ‘black’ work. In some cases the officials were confronted with impatient demands and were sought out in their committee rooms and prodded into action. The work- ers organized their own strike committees where offi- cial committees did not exist, and in the remotest corners of industrial life the strike was strongly felt and discussed. Preparations were made to mobilize support. Mass movements always draw into action sections of workers who have never previously engaged in strug- gle. The militancy penetrates the thinking of the hither- to most backward sections, and the whole class leaps forward in class consciousness. In the later stages of the strike the workers were becoming impatient with the dilatory ‘do-nothing’ attitude of the leaders and mass demonstrations were organized. Clashes with scabs and police began to take place and the mood of the strikers stiffened. Most significant of all, here and there workers were beginning to ask pertinent questions on the political implications of the strike— on the conspiracy of the employers with the Tories and on the need to direct the main fire against the Tory Government. Naturally the capitulation of the Right-wing bureaucrats to the employers and to the Government acted as a setback. But it was not a crushing defeat. The strike had remained united and unbroken and the workers retreated in good order, defending their ranks from victimization. The strength of the mass movement prevented the retreat from becoming a rout. The bureaucracy had opened the gates to the enemy with- out caring how the workers would defend their posi- tions. This was the same sort of treachery as that of the General Council in 1926. The political ferment . The explosion which is now maturing threatens to be even more violent than 1926. Not only have the working class enjoyed what is for capitalism an un- usually long period of full employment, but the poli- tical climate since the war has taught them many les- sons. The experiences of the Labour governments from 1945 to 1951, with all the hopes and disappointments they engendered, the attacks of the Tories on standards of living, the Suez crisis and the growing difficulties of the economy: all these make the workers think deeply about their experiences. Moreover there have been a number of revolutions since the war, particularly the 79. Chinese revolution, all of which expose the decay of capitalism and its predatory nature. They show who are the agents of capitalism and who will do its dirty work. These factors combine to expose the intensity of capitalist exploitation and the burdens of class society. Effects of all these factors are to be seen in Britain, adding up to a growing feeling for the launching of mass action against the employers and the Tory Gov- ernment. The Suez crisis taught the British Labour movement many lessons. The great Trafalgar Square demonstration and many smaller ones showed support for the Arab struggle for liberation from imperialism. In a different way the Hungarian revolution drove home many valuable lessons in spite of the attempts made by the Right wing and the bourgeois Press to exploit it to their own advantage. The rank and file do not separate widely indus- trial struggle and politics. True, there is a tradition that politics are not the concern of the trade unions, but this ‘law’ is honoured more in the breach than in the observance. Most Labour Party members are trade unionists and the active ones attend both their party and trade union branches. The workers air their polli- tical complaints in the trade union branch and take their industrial troubles to the Labour Party ward. It is part of a common experience and the division is never absolute. When we survey the world of the Labour leaders we find a different state of affairs. Here political life and trade union life are completely separated. Each department has different spokesmen, carries out different actions, works in different spheres and pro- pagates different policies. Interrelation is recognized only formally. The trade union leaders concern them- selves only with obtaining concessions from the em- ployers for their members and the Labour Party leaders delicately decline to step outside the strictly limited sphere of Parliamentary reforms. As the trade union movement embarked on the. engineering strike, there developed a clear contradic- tion between the strength of the mass movement, its vitality and determination—and the weak, vacillating policy of Parliamentary reformism, which advances the ideas of compromise and conciliation. Gaitskell scolded the Tory Government for failing to remain impartial and Bevan invited the employers to use a conciliatory formula as a solution to the crisis. The workers have seen how the mass movement strikes fear into the- heart of the Government and their lackeys. The movement is found to grow in stature and confidence and to think in terms of turning the strike weapon to political ends—and this before any slump has arrived! The further development of this mass movement must take on the form of a movement to end the rule of the Tory Government. Some form of alli- ance between the engineers and railwaymen in the re- cent strike was only averted by the Government- inspired concession to the railwaymen of a five per cent rise. The Government hopes thus to buy time. But now the whole future of the capitalist system is being ques- tioned. It is no longer a simple question of a five per cent wage increase. There is also the question of shorter hours and the rational fear that depression will follow booni. The workers will raise the demand for a sliding scale of hours and the right to work or full maintenance. The capitalists’ attack on wage levels on the one hand and the rise of unemployment on the other set

[p020] before the workers the question of taking control to defend their class interests. Already the militants are raising in the trade unions fresh demands for nationali- zation and for the operation of a plan to ensure full employment. To operate this programme successfully the trade union movement needs to build a militant leadership from among rank-and-file workers; but in the engineering strike this is what the main political tendencies sought to prevent. The réle of the Communist Party During the strike the Communist Party leaders maintained a significant silence on the part played by the trade union bureaucracy. The events of 1926, when mentioned at all, were recalled only in the vaguest terms. No statements were made by the leading Com- munist Party trade union officials. No articles appeared in the Daily Worker from Joe Scott, Frank Foulkes, Frank Haxell or Arthur Horner. During the whole strike these people were strangely silent; if we had not known otherwise we could fairly have assumed that no important trade union posts were occupied by members of the Communist Party. True, the party was for the strike and it called for support for the fight for the full ten per cent. (To retain any of its dwindling member- ship it could hardly do otherwise. The Stalinist leaders, too, are in a dilemma.) But Communist Party propa- ganda carefully refrained from linking the wage move- ment to the political question of removing the Tory Government. No special. pamphlets or leaflets were issued, and the party trod on tiptoe, anxious not to draw attention to its presence. Moreover during the strike the Right-wing officials were given a build-up in the Daily Worker, lengthy articles being published in the form of interviews with Carron, Brotherton and Hill. No word of criticism accompanied these syco- phantic articles. Harry Pollitt was featured on March 19 as an old boilermaker. The furthest he allowed himself to go was in urging the General Council to ‘inspire the whole movement with a new united fighting spirit which can sweep every obstacle standing in the way of better conditions ruthlessly aside’. Pollitt might just as well have asked Genghis Khan to lead a movement against capital punishment. He writes as though the General Council’s 1926 betrayal had never taken place! Thus does Stalinism set out to ‘educate’ young militant workers. It teaches them to rely on ‘appeals’ to... the General Council. Not once did the Communist Party officially point to the need for the working class to re- move the Tories by strike action. This is a measure of its betrayal of socialist principles. The Communist rank-and-file militant who fights the boss on the shop floor or on the picket line may find this criticism un- pleasant to believe. But the truth stares out from the pages of the Daily Worker and from the silence of the communist trade union leaders. There is no need to embellish the facts; they speak for themselves. As in 1926, when the working class mounted a massive assault on capitalism but one which was still based on the groundwork of purely trade union de- mands, the task of the revolutionary wing now is to assist the militant vanguard to learn many lessons from betrayal and retreat. The 1926 strike was not a revolu- tion and, in the given situation, could not have been— if only because there was no party able to give the lead 80 for the overthrow of capitalism. But it was a gigantic blow against capitalism from which the movement could learn a great deal. In 1926, instead of applying itself to the task of exposing the Right wing, who were bound to betray the struggle, the Communist Party, in pursuance of the Comintern line of support for the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee, pulled its punches. The trade union leaders eventually betrayed the General Strike and delivered the movement into the hands of the Government. But a magnificent oppor- tunity to teach the lesson of social-democratic subservi- ence to capitalism had been nullified by the communist leaders’ previous antics. Today these leaders play the same rdle as in 1926, and with equally deadly effect. The rank-and-file com- munist militant vaguely senses that something went ‘wrong’ in the Standards and B.M.C. strikes—and may- be in Briggs too. But now, he believes, the Party is fighting on the picket line; it is wholeheartedly behind the strike; there is no betrayal. But betrayal can occur in more ways than one and not simply in the manner of Jimmy Thomas. Pollitt’s stirring appeals to the TUC General Council and Arthur Horner’s diplomatic silence can be traced directly to Moscow, and its latest euphe- mism for the betrayal of the Left: ‘peaceful co-exist- ence’, Tasks of the Marxist movement Today the task of Marxists is to prepare for the next round of industrial battles and for the mounting of a political offensive against capitalism. At this stage, the mass movement needs to turn its hand to ousting the Tory Government and placing a Labour Govern- ment in its place. A Labour Government would greatly accelerate the present slowly developing radicalization of the workers. During the twenties the Communist Party started along this road. It built (though it later smashed) the Minority Movement, fought against the Black Circular and opened the way for the emergence of a revolutionary wing in the trade unions. Rank-and-file communists today sometimes argue that if we were now to call for the turning of the mass strike into an attack on the Government, we would. be exposing the strike to attacks from the bourgeois Press. The shop stewards would be singled out as communists and ‘agitators’ and the movement would be split. Basing itself on this honest, but confused, view, the Daily Worker, in its editorial of April 4, called for unity of the ranks ‘at all levels’, at the same time calling on the militant rank and file to carry their views into the trade ‘anion branches for the purpose of deciding union policy. The Daily Worker, however, does not tell us how to clean up the unions and fight for rank-and-file demands while maintaining unity with Carron, Brotherton and Williamson. Thus the very call for unity becomes in the Daily Worker a slogan of confusion. Naturally the militant worker feels the need for a united movement to increase his strength in overcoming the employers’ resistance. But King Street’s opportun- ism besmirches this honest but limited slogan and trans- forms it into a means of chaining the rank and file to the trade union bureaucracy. No observer who has stu- died the Communist Party attitude during the 1955 dockers’ strike and its condemnation of the ‘Blue’ move- ment (a determined rank-and-file attempt to smash the reactionary leadership of the Transport and General

[p021] Workers’ Union) can doubt this. There the treacherous policy was given classical form. The British workers should learn this lesson thoroughly. British Stalinism accepts the political leadership of the Moscow bureaucrats, bases its strategy on the peaceful evolution to socialism through Parliament and its trade union tactics on the gaining and maintenance by various means (not all of them healthy) of official positions and ‘prestige’, at the cost of socialist princi- ples. It can intervene in the mass struggle only by acting as the ‘Left’ shield for the trade union bureaucrats. Present-day Communist Party trade union policy aims at containing mass discontent within traditional chan- nels, seeking to head off the emergence of a genuine revolutionary Marxist trend, which will put paid to King Street’s domination over militant trends in the Labour movement. The proletariat now needs to organize strikes on a massive scale, yet Stalinism supported the ‘snowball’ tactic during the engineering strike. The workers need to launch an offensive against the Tory Government. Stalinism sidetracks this issue. The workers need to break away from the Right-wing bureaucracy. Stalinism _ calls for unity with these bureaucrats. Socialists need to — level the most merciless criticism of every act of be- trayal. Stalinism—for very obvious reasons—trefuses to embark on such an analysis. The socialist movement needs to lead the workers to break away from reform- ism and begin to build revolutionary trade unions. But it is now clear to all that this can be accomplished only by breaking with Stalinism as well as with reformism. The road to power All the contradictions within the British economy are going to become very much sharper. Already the economic basis for reforms has been undermined. The ruling class will of necessity call to its aid the State power in undermining the workers’ gains. But the workers will resist and will therefore come into colli- sion with the interests of monopoly capitalism and its State and of the trade union bureaucracy. The British working class is even now entering a stormy phase of struggle, surpassing that of 1926 and raising the ques- tion of workers’ power. Three years after 1926 the