Editing Strike action (section)

=== During and after the Industrial Revolution ===
[[File:"Der Streik" von Robert Koehler.jpg|thumb|Agitated workers face the factory owner in ''The Strike''. Painted by [[Robert Koehler]] in 1886.]]
The strike action only became a feature of the political landscape with the onset of the [[Industrial Revolution]]. For the first time in history, large numbers of people were members of the industrial working class; they lived in towns and cities, exchanging their labor for payment. By the 1830s, when the [[Chartist movement]] was at its peak in Britain, a true and widespread 'workers consciousness' was awakening. In 1838, a [[Statistical Society of London]] committee "used the first written questionnaire… The committee prepared and printed a list of questions 'designed to elicit the complete and impartial history of strikes.'"<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Gault |first1=Robert |title=A History of the Questionnaire Method of Research in Psychology |journal=The Pedagogical Seminary |date=1907 |volume=14 |issue=3 |pages=366–383 |doi=10.1080/08919402.1907.10532551 |url=https://zenodo.org/record/1430588}}</ref>

In 1842 the demands for fairer wages and conditions across many different industries finally exploded into the first modern [[1842 General Strike|general strike]]. After the second [[Chartism#1842|Chartist Petition]] was presented to Parliament in April 1842 and rejected, the strike began in the coal mines of [[Staffordshire]], [[England]], and soon spread through Britain affecting [[factories]], [[cotton mills]] in Lancashire and [[coal mine]]s from [[Dundee]] to [[South Wales]] and [[Cornwall]].<ref name="Plug Plot">{{cite book |chapter=The General Strike of 1842: A Study in Leadership, Organisation and the Threat of Revolution during the Plug Plot Disturbance|first1=F.C. |last1=Mather|publisher=George Allen & Unwin Ltd|title=Popular Protest and Public Order: Six Studies in British History, 1790–1920|year=1974|editor1-first=R.|editor1-last= Quinault|editor2-first= J.|editor2-last= Stevenson|isbn=978-1-003-18689-2|doi=10.4324/9781003186892-3|pages=115–140|s2cid=242636272 }}</ref> Instead of being a spontaneous uprising of the mutinous masses, the strike was politically motivated and was driven by an agenda to win concessions. As much as half of the then industrial work force were on strike at its peak{{snd}}over 500,000 men.<ref>{{Cite web |title=British workers strike for better wages and political reform ("The Plug Plot Riots"), 1842 {{!}} Global Nonviolent Action Database |url=https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/british-workers-strike-better-wages-and-political-reform-plug-plot-riots-1842 |access-date=2023-05-15 |website=nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu}}</ref> The local leadership marshaled a growing working class tradition to politically organize their followers to mount an articulate challenge to the capitalist, political establishment. [[Friedrich Engels]], an observer in [[London]] at the time, wrote:

<blockquote>''by its numbers, this class has become the most powerful in England, and woe betide the wealthy Englishmen when it becomes conscious of this fact … The English proletarian is only just becoming aware of his power, and the fruits of this awareness were the disturbances of last summer.''<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/camatte/origin.htm|title=Camatte: Origin and Function of the Party Form|website=marxists.org}}</ref></blockquote>

[[File:Suurlakko Tampereella.jpg|thumb|A general strike on 5 November 1905 in [[Tampere]], [[Finland]]]]
As the 19th century progressed, strikes became a fixture of industrial relations across the industrialized world, as workers organized themselves to [[collectively bargain]] for better wages and standards with their employers. [[Karl Marx]] condemned the theory of [[Pierre-Joseph Proudhon]] criminalizing strike action in his work ''[[The Poverty of Philosophy]]''.<ref>[[The Poverty of Philosophy]], Part II, Section 5</ref>