 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Workers
of all countries?: Syndicalism, internationalism
and the lost world of A.A. PurcellThe British trade unionist and Labour MP A.A. Purcell (1872-1935) once enjoyed international notoriety. An outspoken champion of Soviet Russia, he nevertheless performed the highest labour movement responsibilities and was a leading figure on the TUC General Council. Purcell was a member of the earliest British labour delegations to Russia and his presidency of the International Federation of Trade Unions coincided with the TUC’s energetic promotion of the cause of Anglo-Russian trade union unity, culminating in the publication of a glowing TUC report on the Soviets in 1925. However, as a leading TUC ‘left’ his credibility was badly dented by the failure of the General Strike in 1926, and the following year he lost his position with the IFTU. He ended his career in the relative obscurity of the Manchester and Salford Trades Council.
The third volume of Bolshevism and the British Left provides, in part, an extended biographical treatment of a sort that working-class militants like Purcell so rarely receive. However, it also approaches his life as a way of exploring the disparate cultural and political fields in which he was involved and trying to make sense of the transitions and connections between them. At different times in his life Purcell was a marxist local councillor, a syndicalist, a trade union officer, a communist, a guild socialist and a Labour MP. He was part of a tradition of indiscriminate militancy which looked on Bolshevism as merely its boldest manifestation. Critics of Purcell such as Friedrich Adler and Emma Goldman also figure prominently in the book; and through the articulate anti-communism of TUC secretary Walter Citrine, a final chapter traces the hardening during the 1930s of a more familiar line of cleavage centring on the issue of communism.
Contents: 1. A.A. Purcell as lacuna; 2. Syndicalism, internationalism and the dilemmas of a trade union organiser; 3. Roads to freedom in the 1920s; 4. British Labour’s Russian delegations; 5. The other future: the British left and Americanism; 6. A proletarian distemper run its course? The General Strike and after; 7. Democracy or dictatorship? British Labour and Russia in the 1930s and 1940s; Conclusion to Bolshevism and the British Left
Workers of all countries? is the final book in a three-volume series, Bolshevism and the British Left, which examines attitudes to Soviet Russia as a way of opening up broader questions about the character of the British left between the 1890s and the 1940s.
Kevin Morgan is Professor of Politics and Contemporary History at the University of Manchester. He is the author of Harry Pollitt and co-author of Communists in British Society 1920-1991.