The 1926 General Strike and Miners Lockout Book Launch.

Dave Chapple is a Clevedonian who has lived in Bridgwater since 1987.He was a school cleaner and NUPE shop steward in North Somerset schools for ten years.For 38 years he was a delivery postman and, at Bridgwater's Royal Mail Sorting and Delivery Office, a socialist union rep for a very militant workforce that specialised in successful wildcat strikes.Dave has been an activist in the trades' union councils' movement since 1977.

He is the secretary of Bridgwater TUC, of Mendip TUC, of the Somerset Association of Trades Councils, and is the South West TUCs Trades Councils' Rep.Dave is a member of the Communication Workers' Union, of the Unite the Union's Somerset Community Branch, and the Writers' Guild.He has written and published ten books of working-class history, biography and autobiography: "Resistance and Resilience" is his latest.

Resistance and resilience: the 1926 General Strike and Lockout in the Somerset Coalfield.

On 4th May 1926 5,000 members of the Somerset Miners' Association from 20 local collieries answered the TUCs General Strike call.They came out to a man, in solidarity with their comrades in other coalfields, despite the fact that no lockout notices had been posted in Somerset, and no proposals had been received to lower wages or lengthen hours.Dave's talk will cover the 'Nine Days' and the seven month's lockout that followed, and will include such hitherto forgotten events as the faked 'guss and crook' photo; the Radstock Middle Pit Bomb Plot, and a Radstock miners' rally that was nearly the death of AJ Cook.

"Dave's book is the first trade-union based Somerset Coalfield history, and is the first published result of three years' research in the wonderful Somerset Miners' Association archive at the Bristol University Special Collections."

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