Two hundred and fitfty years ago this month the use of the word “strike” to describe a form of collective work stoppage entered the English language. It first appeared during the London Strikes of 1768 led by coal-heavers and sailors. The word originates in the action of “striking,” or removing the topsails of ships, rendering them motionless. Since then, “strike!” has been the iconic word heralding workers’ struggles from the London docks in 1768 to the West Virginia capitol in 2018.

Of course, this was not the first time workers collectively withdrew their labor in protest.

Indeed, prior to the London Strikes of 1768, keelmen (who worked the “keels,” or boats that carried coal from shore to ship) of the Tyne and Wear in northeast England had so effectively used collective agitation since the mid-seventeenth century that they were, as John Stevenson notes, regarded as “among the first trade to be organized in a primitive form of trade union.” In northwest England in December 1762, sailors in Liverpool stopped work to demand a wage increase. And in 1765, coal miners across the north of England engaged in a prolonged stoppage. In April 1768, sailors in Sunderland prevented ships from leaving port by lowering down the yards (thus “striking” their sails). As a result, the owners and masters of the ships agreed to the sailors’ demands for pay rises. Sailors on the Thames would repeat these actions in May. News of the tactics in the northeast reached London’s coal-heavers, and a word, along with a movement, was born.