It was on account of the [General] Strike that I first came to know Douglas and Margaret. I had been reading some socialist theory as well as economi… - Hugh Gaitskell

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It was on account of the [General] Strike that I first came to know Douglas and Margaret. I had been reading some socialist theory as well as economics—Tawney, the Webbs, Marx (about half of volume i of Das Kapital), J. A. Hobson, Hugh Dalton, but I did not at that time follow day-to-day politics at all closely. Thus for me, as I think for many others, the impact of the Strike was sharp and sudden, a little like a war, in that everybody's lives were suddenly affected by a new unprecedented situation, which forced us to abandon plans for pleasure, to change our values and adjust our priorities. Above all we had to make a choice. And how we chose was a clear test of our political outlook. The vast majority of undergraduates [at Oxford University] went off to unload ships and drive trams or lorries. For me this was out of the question. All my sympathies were instinctively on the side of the miners, the unions, the Labour Party, and the Left generally. It was their cause I wanted to help.