Three Anglo-American Radicals, and the Dilemmas of Syndicalism and Social Democracy

Abstract

These three books are part of a welcome new series of short, pithy biographies of leading figures in the European and American socialist and labour movements, written by scholars who have been drawn from both sides of the Atlantic. There are some methodological differences between them. 'Big Bill' Haywood is a lively synthesis written by a senior scholar which draws only on previously published work. Paul Davies' AJ. Cook is based on the author's PhD thesis, and on other original documents. Anthony Wright's R.H. Tawney is the work of a political scientist who reevaluates Tawney's intellectual contributions to the English ? as opposed to the German, or continental ? version of social democracy. All three provide excellent introductions to their subjects for college students, as well as for the general reader who wishes to know more about the historical development of the Anglo-American labour movement. Using biography as a medium, the books focus on the rise of the Labour Party in Britain and the Socialist Party of America between the turn of the century and the 1920s; on the differing forms of apolitical syndicalism that developed in both countries; and on the tensions that grew up within and between these two strands of socialist endeavor. They also illuminate the divergent paths which the British and American labour movements took after World War I. They show us how, on the one hand, the Red Scare which accompanied this upheaval fragmented the US Left, effectively neutralizing it until the 1930s; and how, on the other hand, the social crisis created by the war breathed fresh life into the British Labour Party, helping to bring it to power as the First Labour Government of 1924. World War I also represented a turning point in the lives of the three men being considered. For the young Tawney, who served as a sergeant on the Western Front,