Book Review: James Heartfield, British Workers & the US Civil War: How Karl Marx and the Lancashire Weavers Joined Abraham Lincoln’s Fight against Slavery 150 Years Ago

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Book Review: James Heartfield, British Workers & the US Civil War: How Karl Marx and the Lancashire Weavers Joined Abraham Lincoln's Fight against Slavery 150 Years Ago. London: Reverspective, Ltd., 2012. ISBN: 978-0956806123 (Paperback). 40 Pages. £5[Article copies available for fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2013 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]You may have caught late night classics-in-the-making such as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter or Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies. Well, I have one for you that happens to be true according to historian James Heartfield. What do Abraham Lincoln, weavers in Lancashire, Britain, Karl Marx, and the US Republican Party have in common? They all collaborated in the fight against the Confederacy and the regime of slavery that it represented.In his fascinating albeit abbreviated work, Heartfield, British journalist and former member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, weaves story of cross-Atlantic solidarity and social movement building while laying bare uncomfortable truths. He shows us that Britain was in position to determine the balance of the US Civil War for number of years until 1963. However, the British government and elites displayed contradiction that uncovered the dark nature of power in the classical manner that Chomsky lays bare as the nature of American Imperialism. Britain publically disdained slavery, going so far as to search its merchant ships on the high seas under suspicion of slave activity. Logically, then, one would expect that had Britain intervened in the Civil War, it would be on the side of the Union lead by Lincoln. According to the established myth, British workers would side with the Confederacy knowing they would be hurt by the famine through lost jobs and reduced work hours. This is because significant portion of Britain's industrial activity depended on stable supply of raw cotton from the South. When the North blockaded Southern ports it resulted in drop of cotton exports, thus the cotton famine.History proved otherwise, as Heartfield demonstrates in his work. British politicians and elites actively agitated their workers to enter the war on the side of the South for couple of reasons. One, Lincoln represented then radical Republican ideals opposed by British elites. Rather, it was the elite's natural instinct to oppose notions of freedom should those expand into greater demands by white workers. Second, British industrialists needed the South' s raw cotton for their mills and economic activity. The Northern blockade of Southern ports interfered with the free cotton trade. Third, Britain was resentful if not fearful of former colony becoming stronger competitor under consolidated Union.Marx, who was living in Britain at the time, and many other intellectuals, activists, journalists, etc., recognizing the specter of sanctioned slavery across the globe, agitated against support for the Confederacy. Marx himself corresponded with Lincoln, the first Republican President, in genuine show of support and solidarity. More importantly, as Heartfield underscores here, British workers demonstrated instinctive solidarity with the plight of the US slaves even though it was against their own immediate economic self-interest. As important, the North sent shipments of supplies to striking British workers in show of solidarity.Southern elites, in collaboration with most British elites, newspapers, and pseudo-pro-labor, and anti-slavery organizations, engaged in fierce propaganda to persuade British workers to support the Confederacy and accept British military intervention on their behalf. For example, the leader of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), with official government ties, stated Lincoln's Proclamation was a measure of hostility to the whites, and designed to produce slave insurrection (p. …