In the event the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, stopped the Home Office closing two of the newspapers involved - Lansbury's Labour Weekly, which was edited by George Lansbury, a future leader of the Labour party, and the Workers' Weekly, a Communist party paper.
The police also pressed for the London correspondent of the French newspaper L'Humanité, Camille David, to be thrown out of the country for writing inflammatory reports.
The Home Office refused their request on the grounds that it was unsurprising that David was critical given that he was writing for the official organ of the French Communist party.
The file released yesterday at the national archives details the emergency powers orders obtained by the home secretary, William Joynson-Hicks, to use against newspapers which preached sedition, mutiny or disaffection in the army.
The Daily Herald, which was then run by the Trades Union Congress, was the chief target and once the emergency order was obtained the City of London police were sent to raid its printers to seize its next issue.
Lieutenant Colonel Turnball of the City of London police reported to the home secretary: "The office was lit up and work was going on, and therefore the commissioner of the city police caused his men to enter the premises to see whether the Daily Herald was being printed.
"They found that they were printing not the Daily Herald but an eight-page paper called the British Worker: Official strike news bulletin by the general council of the TUC."
"This paper was found to be quite innocuous in the view of the police officer and accordingly the police did not interfere with the printing presses."
He added: "Our men remained on the premises to make a full search for anything that may contravene the regulations."
The Herald was renamed the Sun in the 1960s.
During the nine days of the general strike the Times, Telegraph and Daily Mail produced emergency editions and Winston Churchill brought out a government newspaper, the British Gazette, using newsprint requisitioned from the Times.
Action was also taken against the Workers Daily but the police raid on the Communist party's London headquarters at 16 King Street was equally unsuccessful: "King St was almost empty - probably activities transferred elsewhere. The press was shut up - all out on strike," the police reported to the Home Office.
The demand from the police commissioner to regard Camille David as "person fit for deportation" gives a flavour of the time. They complained that his articles, "which are traced to the inspiration of Trotsky", alleged that the government was forming a fascist army of special constables because they could no longer rely on the regular army.
He claimed that it was impossible to buy a slice of bacon where he lived but lorries full of food were daily leaving the docks for the wealthy West End, and with all transport paralysed, city magnates were refusing lifts to working girls. He also taunted his French working-class readers for allowing the strikebreaking Daily Mail to be printed in Paris.
The Home Office told the police there was no need to deport him because special branch had informed them that he was about to be withdrawn by the French communists because he was too expensive and did not file often enough.
