Unprepared for such resistance, the Cabinet, which had fiercely backed the coal-owners, hastily met and the Prime Minister (Baldwin) summoned the leaders of miners and owners to Downing Street. On the morning of Friday July 31st, the Government announced the granting of a subsidy to the coal industry amounting to about £25,000,000 and extending over nine months. The wage cuts and other demands of the owners were postponed until April 1926, July 31st, 1925 became known as "Red Friday."

INTERLUDE IN BATTLE

It was obvious to all that the nine months' grace were merely a time preparation for ruling class and this thought was expressed in the report of the Special Committee of the T.U.C. "It felt that its task had not been completed, and with the consent of the General Council proposed to remain in being, and to apply itself to the task of devising ways and means of consolidating the resistance of the trade union movement should the attack be renewed."

Alas! Little, if any, preparation for the inevitable struggle was made by the T.U.C. or the affiliated unions. Not so the Government. Speaking of Red Friday, Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, said, "We therefore decided to postpone the crisis in the hope of averting it, or, if not of averting it, of coping effectually with it when the time comes."

A strike breaking organization known as O.M.S. (Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies) was created. Blacklegs were trained to drive locomotives in the private railways of large factories at week-ends and potential scabs instructed in the operation of telephones and telegraphy. The country was placed on a war footing by dividing it into ten areas, each under a Civil Commissioner, and a civil service organization was set up in each of these areas. Great numbers of special constables were enrolled and mobile squads of police organized. Every possible