On 15 April 1921 Downing Street called out army and navy units to face down the last and most dramatic threat of a Triple Alliance strike.18 Eleven battalions of infantry and three cavalry regiments, backed up by tanks, were readied for use in London.19 But with the solidarity between the three most powerful unions disintegrating, the strike wave was broken. In 1922, with unemployment still close to 20 per cent, barely more than half a million workers were involved in industrial action, 80 per cent less than in 1919.
