A Book of Warnings
BERNARD BERGONZI Hobsbawm himself sketches the evolution from traditional wage scales to ca' canny wage-bargain- .41,g; Co-operat Sidney Pollard traces the development of _Changes in economic climate which shaped the ■ :ourse and character of the Labour movement. follows workers as a self-conscious 'class.' There which provides an essential framework for the Other contributions by pinpointing the successive THESE essays, dedicated to the memory of mediocrity which has dogged the working-class Consecutive Labour defeats. The scene is set by oj the 4848 in Labour History. Edited by Ma Briggs atmosphere the byways; but even these build up the "iinosnhere by underscoring the element of Movement. When you reach the end, you have a Pretty accurate whiff of its ingredients during shePast 120 years; you are also nearer to under- Asa Briggs with a tidy account of the emergence
nding why the story has ended, to date, in three
n. R. Cole, grow on you. A fair proportion
a brilliant analysis by Eric Hobsbawm ive movement from Owenite
see to worship of the `divi'; elsewhere we c'ee the emergence of the 'tall hats and frock b°ats,' the staid officials 'whose main aim was to d LIP stable and disciplined organisations,' and
of the power of the shop stewards. Before the end we are more than halfway towards 'the highly bureaucratised post-1945 era'—perhaps a neces- sary but certainly a fatal evolution.
Fatal, because so far removed from 'the strand of Socialist faith which runs unbroken' through the history of the British Labour movement. Cole, as David Worswick points out in his appreciative essay, never forgot it; a new generation of Labour historians too often does. How mistakenly, E. P. Thompson reveals in his lively account of the great Manningham strike of 1890-91 and the origins of. the ILP in Bradford and the heavy woollen district. This is an essay of which Cole, so critical of the bloodlessness of recent social history, would have approved. Like his hero, Tom Maguire, Mr. Thompson carries us to the heart of the matter. 'It is of the people,' said Maguire, when the ILP saw the light: 'such will be the secret of its success.' If the same could be said today, the prospects for Labour might be happier.
GEOFFREY BARRACLOUGI4
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