The strikes of early May, involving hundreds of thousands of workers in defiance of the official trade union leadership, were unprecedented. The government’s response was to arrest the leading shop stewards under pre-emptive Defence of the Realm powers.33 In January the Independent Labour Party had cheered Wilson’s ‘peace without victory’ speech, and in the summer their conference in Leeds passed resolutions supporting a negotiated peace on the basis of the Petrograd formula, by a majority of two to one.
