Histoire du Mouvement Ouvrier Chrétien en Belgique ed. by Emmanuel Gerard and Paul Wynants

Abstract

Histoire du Mouvement Ouvrier Chretien en Belgique. Edited by Emmanuel Gerard and Paul Wynants. 2 vols. KADOC-Studies 16. (Leuven: Leuven University Press. 1994. Pp. 399; 645. 2400 FB.) This is a very impressive work. First published in Flemish in 1991, this edition represents a slightly revised and updated French translation. Its various chapters--six for Volume I and nine for Volume II--were prepared by separate authors. All contain copious illustrations, statistical and other tables, biographical vignettes, and extensive bibliographies. Volume I is essentially one of synthesis, dealing with the Belgian Christian Workers' Movement in general, while Volume II is concerned with the history of the constituent elements of that movement. Each volume, and indeed each chapter of both volumes, can be read independently of one another. Together they constitute a most up-to-date and reliable guide for an understanding of a movement which to this day constitutes a major socio-political force in the public life of the Belgian people. This reality began to take place only after the end of World War II. For the previous one hundred yeas or so the precursors of the present-day Christian Workers' Movement led a tenuous existence, not only in terms of their evident minority status vis-a-vis a rapidly growing socialist movement, but also in view of the opposition of numerous Catholic leaders from the political, the business, and ecclesiastical milieus. It was not until the very end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries that an increasingly autonomous and assertive workers' movement began to be able to win recognition by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. By that time, too, the basis had been laid for the establishment of a plethora of organizations, including mutual-aid societies, cooperatives, women's, youth, and family groups, and especially trade unions, all presenting themselves as various facets of a single movement, that of the Belgian Christian Workers. A uniquely Belgian reality had also to be taken into account arising from the existence of two separate ethnic entities, namely, the Flemish and the Walloon. It is clear from a study of these two volumes that for the Christian Workers' Movement, the Flemish component was by far the more important, so that for most of its history its development coincided with and was largely the result of initiatives that sought to obtain recognition and equality of treatment for that element of the population which had historically been ignored, if not indeed discriminated against by its wealthier and better educated French-speaking compatriots. Another reason for the ascendancy of the Flemish-speaking Christian workers in the overall movement was the fact that the Walloon area was the heartland of the industrial revolution in Belgium because of its mineral wealth, especially that of coal. Not too surprisingly, therefore, it was there that the socialist movement had acquired a headstart that Christian workers were hard put to compete with. By the time that Christian initiatives began there too, the phenomenon of dechristianization had begun to make itself felt: there were fewer workers there to whom an appeal based on a Christian vision of life was meaningful. Yet, be it in the Flemish or French-speaking areas, the original inspiration for the developing movement was explicitly couched in an antisocialist outlook, socialism being considered as inherently vitiated by its materialistic and atheistic attributes. Not too surprising, also, was the influence wielded in the early years by members of the clergy, such as the Reverend Antoine Pottier in the south and Father Georges Rutten, a Dominican priest, in the north. …