Comrade or Brother?

Mary Davis

Description

Critical and iconoclastic, Comrade or Brother? traces the history of the British Labour Movement from its beginnings at the onset of industrialisation through its development within a capitalist society, up to the end of the twentieth-century.



Written by a leading activist in the labour movement, the book redresses the balance in much labour history writing. It examines the place of women and the influence of racism and sexism as well as providing a critical analysis of the rival ideologies which played a role in the uneven development of the labour movement.
Introduction

Part 1: The Industrial Revolution

1. Economic and Political Background 1780 - 1850

2. The Impact of the French Revolution 1789 - 1815

3. 1815 - 1836 Post War Radicalism

4. The Age of Chartism

Part 2: 1850 - 1920 The Workshop of the World and Beyond

5. Economic and Political Background 1850 - 1918

6. Trade Unions, Politics and the labour Aristocracy 1850 - 1880

7. The Rise of a Mass Labour Movement - Trade Unionism, 1880s - 1914

8. The Rise of a Mass Labour Movement - Socialist Politics, 1880s - 1914

9. Labour, the Shop Stewards; Movement and the First World War

Part 3: Re-Adjustment

10. Economic and Political Background 1920 - 1951

11. Labour Governments and Unemployment 1920 - 1931

12. Trade Unions, the General Strike and the Aftermath

13. The Labour Movement, Fascism and anti-Fascism and War

14. War and peace 1940 - 1951

15. The Workers the Labour Movement Forgot - Women and Black People 1926 - 1951

16. 1951 - 1979 Consensus Politics?

Conclusion

Notes

Index

Sujets

• Political Advocacy
• Political Process
• Political Ideologies
• Political Science
• Movimiento sindical
• Reino Unido
• Advocacy group
• Communism
• General officer
• United Kingdom
• Trade union
• Great Britain
• LAW
• General
• Communisme
• Labor
• Royaume-Uni

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 février 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783716708
• Langue: English

Extrait

Comrade or Brother?
Comrade or Brother?
A History of the British Labour Movement
Second Edition
MARY DAVIS
First published 1993
Second edition published 2009 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Mary Davis 1993, 2009
The right of Mary Davis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN   978 0 7453 2577 4   hardback ISBN   978 0 7453 2576 7   paperback ISBN   978 1 7837 1670 8   ePub ISBN   978 1 7837 1671 5   Mobi
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. The paper may contain up to 70% post consumer waste.
10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by
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Printed and bound in the European Union by
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To my mother, Celia Davis ( née Yampolsky), for the past and the present, and for the rich heritage bequeathed to me by the once large Yampolsky family – Jewish immigrants to Bethnal Green from Tsarist Russia.
To my children, Joseph and Esther, and my grandchildren, Callum, Leah, Luis, Charlie, Ella and Hannah, for the joy of the present and the hope of the future.
CONTENTS
Introduction
PART 1    THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
   1
Economic and Political Background, 1780–1850
   2
The Impact of the French Revolution, 1789–1815
   3
Postwar Radicalism, 1815–1836
   4
The Age of Chartism
PART 2    THE WORKSHOP OF THE WORLD AND BEYOND, 1850–1920
   5
Economic and Political Background, 1850–1918
   6
Trade Unions, Politics and the Labour Aristocracy, 1850–1880
   7
The Rise of a Mass Labour Movement – Trade Unionism, 1880s–1914
   8
The Rise of a Mass Labour Movement – Socialist Politics, 1880s–1914
   9
Labour, the Shop Stewards’ Movement and the First World War
PART 3    READJUSTMENT
10
Economic and Political Background, 1920–1951
11
Labour Governments and Unemployment, 1920–1931
12
Trade Unions, the General Strike and the Aftermath
13
The Labour Movement, Fascism and anti-Fascism, and War
14
War and Peace, 1940–1951
15
The Workers the Labour Movement Forgot – Women and Black People, 1926–1951
16
1951–1979 – Consensus Politics?
In Conclusion
Index
INTRODUCTION
This is the second edition of a book that has been a long time in the making, although the practical possibility of actually writing it is comparatively recent. Why a second edition? Partly because the first one sold out and there have been many requests for it, but also because I wanted to add material and emphases that I thought lacking in the first edition. In addition, the publisher was keen for me to go beyond 1951. I am not a fan of ‘contemporary history’ (surely a contradiction in terms) because, as all trained historians know, state papers, and especially Home Office papers, are very useful primary sources and the 30-year rule is still extant. Of course, these are not the only sources and I don’t rely on them in a work of this kind. However, it is already clear that recently published reputable secondary sources dealing with, for example, post-Second World War governments up to the mid 1970s have benefited greatly from a close inspection of cabinet and other state papers such as to encourage a revision of the traditionally accepted consensus view of British politics which was assumed to exist until Margaret Thatcher disrupted it.
Anyway, I still feel that the kind of study of the labour movement attempted within these pages is long overdue – a strange statement perhaps given the huge growth of labour history as an academic discipline over the last 30 or so years. The literature on this subject is, by now, immense, so can another general history, especially in light of the trend towards increasing specialisation, be sustained? The reader will obviously be the final judge, but it would seem appropriate here to explain my aim in making this attempt and in so doing perhaps substantiate the claim for yet another book. However, before explaining my original purpose as outlined in the first edition, from which I have not departed, there is another pressing reason of a more ideological nature in wanting to reissue this book. It concerns the nature of labour history itself, which like all other branches of history has undergone immense changes reflecting the fundamental issue underlying all working-class history; that is, as Savage and Miles 1 put it, the question of ‘agency’, or why and how workers become politically active. The historiography they outline relates such agency to the fortunes of the British labour movement, which is in itself linked to an understanding of class and class relations. Unsurprisingly, they chart the steady decline of interest in the subject of class from the supposedly influential ‘golden age’ of the labour movement in the 1940s and 1950s to its alleged decline in the 1980s and beyond – a decline that has led to an historicist questioning of the role of working-class agency in general. Such a turning away from the concept of class has had an inevitable impact on the interest in writing its history and organisation. However, because I don’t share this negative view of class, I am more determined than ever to ensure that labour history remains alive and accessible to its inheritors.
So, my purpose in writing this book is threefold.
The vast majority of the work on the history of the British labour movement has been written by and for academics. This is certainly not a criticism – much pioneering work has been accomplished and our knowledge of the subject has deepened beyond ‘the great events’ and the ‘great leaders’. Nonetheless, the more painstaking the search to reconstruct historical reality, the less accessible the fruit of that research has often proved to be. Maybe this should not matter too much. After all, does good history writing need to be accessible to an audience beyond the dreaming spires of academia? Serious scholarship is one thing, popular historical chronicling quite another. However, this somewhat artificial distinction is much less easy to make when dealing with the subject of labour history. There are two main reasons for this. First, the inheritors of that history are very much alive and well in the active labour movement in Britain today. Second, as anyone who, like me, has been involved in trade union education will know, the history of the movement is altogether lacking in the otherwise excellent courses provided by the TUC and affiliated unions. The main focus in these ‘student-centred’ courses is the workplace and the building of effective trade union organisation. The courses are concerned with current realities and acquiring the skills to deal with them. Learning about, let alone reflecting on, the origins and historical development of the movement is not part of the scheme of things. And yet shop stewards and activists at all levels frequently express a desire to acquire this kind of knowledge, the evidence for which is shown in the popularity of the relatively few courses run for trade unionists (usually in the evening) on this subject.
Having taught one such course for the past 30 years and witnessed the tremendous and unflagging enthusiasm of the students, I can give personal testimony to this observation. It is hardly surprising that labour history should be such a popular subject for labour movement activists. All oppressed and exploited groups have the right to reclaim their past – none more so than the working class itself. The inheritors of the struggle for working-class rights and trade union freedoms are predisposed to want to know something of their past – if the labour movement itself fails to impart such information, then it will either filter through in a distorted form or remain unknown. Indeed, it remains a criticism of the British labour movement that it neglects its own history save for the occasional celebratory or commemorative foray. Hence my first purpose: an accessible history for today’s activists.
Having perceived the necessity for workers to know something of their own history and organisation, the problem raised earlier about accessible secondary source material is at once apparent. However, accessibility is not the only criterion. A general historical account of the labour movement written as a narrative, sympathetic or otherwise, would not fit the bill. What is required is something which would, within the framework of an account of the development of the labour movement, provide a stimulus for assessing certain key themes and issues, many of which have relevance for the activists of today. In other words, what is needed is something analytical, which stimulates thought and discussion, but is at the same time partisan from a working-class standpoint. Why partisan? Because most people are, historians included. We all have opinions and outlooks which shape our view of the world, and in the case of historians this influences their view of the past no matter how objective their work appears to be. Such a process is overt or covert depending on whether the ‘outlook’ of the writer conforms to the predominant norm of his or her own society – the further away from the norm the more overtly biased or partisan the writer is said to be. To the extent that the prevailing outlook in our society i