Reviews e:\documents (e)\rj\type\red\rj red.docx -- : PM RUSSELL AND ANTI-WAR POLITICS IN WORKING-CLASSWALES Andrew G. Bone Bertrand Russell Research Centre Hamilton, on, Canada l8s 4l6 bone@mcmaster.ca Aled Eirug. The Opposition to the GreatWar inWales, –. Cardiff: U. of Wales P., . Pp. xxx, . £. (pb). isbn: -. n the middle of World War I, Russell was politically inspired by young socialists and pacifists from the South Wales valleys who flocked to hear him speak against the war. In later years, for private rather than public reasons, he was captivated by the rugged natural beauty of the country’s North, where he died in February —at Plas Penrhyn, the cottage in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merionethshire, where he lived for the last fifteen years of his long life. He was born years previously at Ravenscroft, his parents’ “very lonely” country house on the RiverWye in the border county of Monmouthshire (Auto. : ). It is sometimes easy to forget how large Wales looms in Russell’s biography, far more so than it is to overlook his lifelong commitment to international peace. Anti-war politics in a Welsh historical setting is the subject of Aled Eirug’s fine study. Observers of Russell’s cardinal political preoccupation would likely agree with this author that an understanding of World War I “is incomplete without an appreciation of the diversity of responses to it, I Reviews e:\documents (e)\rj\type\red\rj red.docx -- : PM including the opposition to the war” (p. xv).This last dimension as it affected wartimeWales is probed in depth by Eirug, whose project gestated for decades as he pursued a career in journalism that included a long stint as head of News and Current Affairs for bbc Wales. But it has been well worth the wait. Eirug has produced not only a valuable addition to the monograph series of which his book is a part (“Studies inWelsh History”), but also to the historiography of the British Home Front as a whole. In four lengthy chapters, Eirug addresses, first, the religious objections to the war of Welsh Nonconformists, some of whom became c.o.s but whose churches—aside from a few tiny millenarian sects—remained solidly pro-war. The support and leadership of the British war effort of Russell’s political nemesis , David Lloyd George—a national hero in Wales and an embodiment of the historic but loosening bond between Nonconformity and Welsh Liberalism —was crucial in the latter regard. Eirug turns next to the peace politics of the Independent Labour Party (ilp) in Wales and the syndicalist wing of the South West Miners’ Federation. In so doing he also presents case studies of two strongholds of anti-war sentiment: Briton Ferry and MerthyrTydfil, both of which were visited by Russell on his July speaking tour of SouthWales. The former town, a centre of tinplate production, “became a magnet for antiwar speakers from other parts of Britain” and was unflatteringly tagged “little Germany” (p. ). The term “Merthyrism”, meanwhile, was coined in The Times (possibly by the same febrile correspondent later taken to task by Russell in Merthyr’s thriving ilp weekly: see n. below) to denote a threatening conjunction of anti-war protest with industrial strife (p. ). From a metropolitan perspective, this combustible political mix appeared unusually prevalent in this steel town in the heart of the Welsh coalfield—“cradle of the industrial revolution and the birthplace of democratic politics inWales” (p. ), where ilp founder Keir Hardie sat as a Labour mp from until his death in .1 Chapter is devoted to the organizational work of the two main anticonscription bodies inWales—the No-Conscription Fellowship (ncf) and the National Council for Civil Liberties2 (whoseWelsh wing enjoyed considerable success in bridge-building to the labour movement). Finally, Eirug details the diverse experiences of the or so Welsh c.o.s, the vast majority of whom 1 In the ensuing by-election, however, the ideological fault-line cut by the war through working-class Wales was glaringly revealed. The ilp dissenter who was Labour’s of- ficial candidate was defeated by the fervently pro-war miners’ agent (i.e. trade union official) who...
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Jun 12, 2024
Dimitra Ntzani 
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