A timely overview of two centuries of British labour history carries
hope for the future as well as insights on the past.
The broad thrust of this impressive overview of 200 years of British
labour history concerns the dichotomy between a rich radical
socialist tradition and an equally influential reformist current. The
latter tendency was perhaps best exemplified by the Labour leader
Keir Hardie, who at the beginning of the 20th century identified his
and the Labour Party's politics as 'labourism': a 'theory and
practice which accepted the possibility of social change within the
existing framework of society'.
A syndicalist pamphlet of 1912, The Miners' Next Step, presents an
entirely different conception of working-class politics: 'an
industrial vote will affect the lives and happiness of workmen far
more than a political vote ... hence it should be more sought after
and its privileges more jealously guarded.' In view of the 25th
anniversary of the era-defining miners' strike of 1984-85, this
revised edition is a timely release.
Davis's survey begins in the early part of the 19th century, when
early union leaders realised, well before Marx, that 'political
power, being based on economic wealth, could only be dislodged by
workers at the point of production'. The scope for an effective mass
movement was limited by divisions of skill and organisational
capability, as the organised, skilled sectors pulled away from the
unskilled masses, first undercutting support for Chartism and, as the
years went by, forming a seemingly exclusive class of their own.
Book: Comrade or Brother? A History of the British Labour Movement
(by Mary Davis, Pluto Press)
<http://www.redpepper.org.uk/Comrade-or-brother>Link
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Posted By johannes to
<http://www.monochrom.at/english/2009/05/comrade-or-brother-history-of-british.htm>monochrom
at 5/01/2009 04:36:00 PM
