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Popular Bases of the International Labor Movement in the United States and Britain, 1939–1949

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2009

Victor Silverman
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This paper examines the working class in the United States and Britain in order to find a new perspective on the origins and break-up of the World Federation of Trade Unions. While most previous works have focused on the roles of institutions and leaders, this research uncovers the important role played by the thoughts, actions, and inactions of average workers in international affairs. American and British workers, as key constituents of two of the most important organizations making up the WFTU, were not passive observers of world events. Rather, they were critical not only of how the world union movement functioned, but also of the process which came to be termed the Cold War.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , December 1993 , pp. 301 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1993

References

1 Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers (ASW), Monthly Journals 81 (March 1940), MSS. 78/ASW/4/1/20, Modern Records Center, University of Warwick, Coventry (hereafter MRC).

2 Relationship of the World Federation of Trade Unions to the United Nations: Transcript of Meeting of Deputation to the Prime Minister from the Trades Union Congress, April 1, 1946”, LAB 13/599–130373, p. 2, Public Record Office, Kew, (hereafter PRO).

3 Carew, Anthony, “The Schism within the World Federation of Trade Unions”, International Review of Social History 29 (1984), p. 335CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacShane, Denis, International Labour and the Origins of the Cold War, (Oxford, 1992)Google Scholar; Weiler, Peter, British Labour and the Cold War, (Stanford, 1988)Google Scholar; Lademacher, Horst, Heβ, Jürgen C., Langveld, Herman J., and Reitsma, Henk, “Der Weltgewerkschaftsbund im Spannungsfeld des Ost-West Konflikts”, Archiv filr Sozialgeschichte 18 (1978): 119–216Google Scholar; Michel, Jean-Francois, “La Scission de la Fédération Syndicale Mondiale”, Mouvement Social (France) 117 (1981), pp. 33–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carew, Anthony, Labour Under the Marshall Plan (Manchester, 1987)Google Scholar; Silverman, Victor, “Stillbirth of World Order: Trade Union Internationalism from War to Cold War in the United States and Britain, 1939–1949” (unpublished PhD, dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1990)Google Scholar.

4 Within the WFTU nationalism, how to deal with trade unions in the Third World was the one significant issue before the Marshall plan which caused internal conflict. Ironically, French Communists and British Labourites found common ground in opposing the creation of the WFTU's colonial department and insisted that colonial trade unions could be effectively represented by trade union centers in the imperial homeland. For more on this issue see: interview of Adolph F. Germer by Jack W. Skeels, 11/22/60 Oral History Transcripts, Walter Reuther Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit (hereafter Wayne State); Lademacher et al., “Weltgewerkschaftsbund”, pp. 176–178; Weiler, Labour and the Cold War, p. 79.

5 This may come as a surprise to many readers since the bulk of the literature has focused on the AFL and its anti-Communist efforts. Yet in the mid-forties the AFL swam against the political tide. Despite some strong allies it was less powerful than the CIO for a time. See Silverman, “Stillbirth of a World Order”, pp. 274–310.

6 For a discussion of contrasting survey techniques see: Strauss, A. and Corbin, J., Basics of Qualitative Research (London, 1990)Google Scholar.

7 For indications of middle-class ideological flexibility at two key moments in which both Communists and Non-Communists went through ideological flip-flops, see: Office of War Information (OWI), Division of Surveys, “Women and the War”, 8/6/42, RG 44, Box 1798 E162, No File; idem, “Special Memorandum No. 85, Attitudes toward International Problems”, 8/31/43, RG 44, Box 1803 E164, No File, National Storage Center, National Archives and Records Service, Suitland, Maryland (hereafter NARS-Suitland); Survey Research Center, “Public Attitudes toward Russia and United States-Russian Relations; Part II: Attitudes and Beliefs about Russia”, (unpublished paper, Survey Research Center 4/47), Institute for Social Research (ISR) Report #220, Institute for Social Research Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, (hereafter ISR Library), p. 32; Office of Public Affairs, Division of Public Studies, Department of State, “Special Report on American Opinion: Opinion of American Labor Organizations on International Questions, January 1, 1948 – March 21, 1948”, 3/24/49, RG 59, Box 19 File: “Curr. Attitudes of Am. Labor”, Washington National Records Center National Archives and Records Service, Washington, DC (hereafter NARS), p. 14; Mass-Observation, “Feelings About Russia”, Mass Observation Bulletin (23 March 1943), FR 1634, Mass-Observation Archive, University of Sussex, Brighton (hereafter M-O Archive), p. 10; Calder, Angus, The People's War: Britain – 1939–1945 (New York, 1969), p. 75Google Scholar; Jones, Bill, The Russia Complex: The British Labour Party and the Soviet Union, (Manchester, 1977), pp. 33–54Google Scholar.

8 Survey Research Center, “Public Attitudes toward Russia and United States-Russian Relations. Part I: Attitudes Toward United States-Russian Relations” (unpublished paper, Survey Research Center, 3/47), ISR Report #219, ISR Library, p. ii.

9 Ibid., pp. 13, 21.

10 On this issue see: Chomsky, Noam, American Power and the New Mandarins (New York, 1967), pp. 309–320, 323–359Google Scholar; Mills, C. Wright, White Collar: The American Middle Classes, (New York, 1951), pp. 324–354Google Scholar.

11 Levering, Ralph, American Opinion and the Russian Alliance, 1939–1945 (Chapel Hill, 1976), p. 35Google Scholar.

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13 Hadley Cantril, “America Faces the War: The Reaction of Public Opinion'”, 12/16/40, RG 44, Box 1796 File: [none], NARS-Suitland, p. 10.

14 OWI, Division of Surveys, “Women and the War”, 8/6/42, RG 44, Box 1798 E162, No File, NARS-Suitland, tables 14a-b, 16a-b; idem., “America Views the Post War World; Division of Surveys Report Number 14”, 5/28/42, RG 44; Box 1784A; File: “America Views the Post-War World,” table 14, OWI, NARS-Suitland; idem., “Special Memorandum No. 85, Attitudes toward International Problems,” 8/31/43, RG 44, Box 1803 E164, No File, NARS-Suitland, p. 9. See also: Small, Melvin, “How We Learned to Love the Russians: American Media and the Soviet Union during World War II”, Historian 36 (05 1974), pp. 455–478CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Archibald, Katherine, Wartime Shipyard: A Study in Social Disunity (Berkeley, 1947), p. 208Google Scholar.

16 Ibid., p. 200.

17 O.G. Overcash to James Carey, 6/13/43, ACC. 185, Box 132 File “Report on Labor Conditions in Bolivia, 1943”, CIO Secretary Treasurers Collection (hereafter CIOST), Walter Reuther Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit (hereafter Wayne State).

18 OWI, Division of Surveys, “Report Number 25: Conceptions of the Role of America in World Affairs: Part I”, 9/29/42, RG 44, Box 1786, No File, NARS-Suitland, p. i.

19 Paul Cressey, Intensive Interview # 4-T19, [nd, 12/7/42], RG 44, Box 1823 E168, File: “Paul Cressey Field Reports”, NARS-Suitland, p. 4.

20 For a survey of wartime conflicts see: Lichtenstein, Nelson, Labor's War at Home: The CIO in World War II (Cambridge, 1982)Google Scholar.

21 Irving Salert to James Carey, [nd, 5/44], Acc. 185, Box 3 File: “Correspondence, Salert, Irving”, CIOST, Wayne State.

22 OWI, “The Role of America in World Affairs: Part I”, p. iii.

23 OWI, “America Views the Post War World”, p. 3.

24 Archibald, Wartime Shipyard, p. 191.

25 Schwartz, Harvey, “A Union Combats Racism: The ILWU's Japanese-American “Stockton Incident” of 1945”, Southern California Quarterly 62 (Summer 1980). pp. 161–176CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dower, John, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York, 1986), pp. 315, 33–73Google Scholar.

26 OWI, Division of Surveys, “Anti-British Attitudes of Negroes”, 10/3/42, RG 44; Box 1784; File: “Survey's Special Reports # 24”, NARS-Suitland, p. 4.

27 Revisions of these ideas can be found in Schatz, Ronald, “American Labor and the Catholic Church, 1919–1950”, International Labor and Working Class History (Fall 1981), pp. 46–53Google Scholar; Rosswurm, Steve, “The Catholic Church and the Left-Led Unions”, in Rosswurm, Steve, ed., The CIO's Left-Led Unions (New Brunswick, NJ, 1992)Google Scholar.

28 David J. O'Brien found substantial divisions and resistance to political leadership by the Church. , O'Brien, America Catholics and Social Reform: The New Deal Years (New York, 1968), pp. 89, 248nGoogle Scholar.

29 Halpern, Martin, UAW Politics in the Cold War Era (Albany, NY, 1988), pp. 129–130Google Scholar.

30 Seaton, Douglass, Catholics and Radicals (Lewisburg, PA, 1981), pp. 57–58Google Scholar.

31 Glazier, Nathan, Social Bases of American Communism (New York, 1961), pp. 42, 130–133Google Scholar.

32 Friedlander, Peter, Emergence of A UAW Local, 1936–1939: A Study in Class and Culture (Pittsburgh, 1975), p. 125Google Scholar.

33 See Gregory, James N., American Exodus: The Dustbowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (New York, 1989), pp. 150–171Google Scholar; Glazier, Social Basis of American Communism, pp. 130–131.

54 Two good works on the internal history of Polish-American communities are: Nowak, Margaret, Two Who Were There: A Biography of Stanley Nowak (Detroit, 1989)Google Scholar; Bukowczyk, John, “And My Children Did Not Know Me”: A History of the Polish Americans, (Bloomington, IN, 1987)Google Scholar.

35 Seaton, Catholics and Radicals, p. 226; Schatz, Ronald, The Electrical Workers: A History of Labor at General Electric and Westinghouse, 1923–1960 (Urbana, IL, 1983), pp. 198–199Google Scholar.

36 Survey Research Center, “Public Attitudes toward American Foreign Policy; Part I: Patterns of Attitudes toward American Foreign Policy” (unpublished paper, Survey Research Center, 5/47), ISR Report #222, ISR Library, p. iii.

37 Survey Research Center, “Public Attitudes toward Russia and United States-Russian Relations; Part I”, p. ii, 13, 21.

38 89 percent of college-educated though this as opposed to 70 percent of the elementary-educated. Survey Research Center, “Public Attitudes toward Russia and United States – Russian Relations; Part II: Attitudes and Beliefs about Russia” (unpublished paper, Survey Research Center 4/47), ISR Report #220 ISR, p. 32.

39 Office of Public Affairs, Division of Public Studies, Department of State, “Special Report on American Opinion: Opinion of American Labor Organizations on International Questions, January 1, 1948-March 21,1948”, 3/24/49, RG 59 Box 19 File: “Curr. Attitudes of Am. Labor”, NARS, p. 14.

40 Memorandum of conversation, 2/11/47, RG 59; 841.504-WFTU/2–1147, NARS.

41 There is substantial dispute about whether or not the cultural and political unity created by the labor version of Americanism and the working class version of mass culture empowered the working class. See: Lichtenstein, Nelson, “The Making of the Postwar Working Class: Cultural Pluralism and Social Structure in World War II”. Historian 51 (11 1988): 42–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, Lizabeth, Making A New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (New York, 1990)Google Scholar; Gobel, Thomas, “Becoming American: Ethnic Workers and the Rise of the CIO”, Labor History 29 (Spring 1988), pp. 173–198CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gerstle, Gary, Working-Class Americanism (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar; Lasch, Christopher, The Agony of the American Left (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; Susman, Warren, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the 20th Century (New York, 1984)Google Scholar; Davis, MikePrisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the US Working Class (London, 1986)Google Scholar.

42 Tomlinson, G. A. W., Coal-Miner (London, n.d. [1937]), pp. 92ffGoogle Scholar.

43 The most recent work on British working-class patriotism underplays the importance of international issues though it does comprehend the ability of the working class to develop its own synthesis of patriotic and socialist ideas. Field, Geoffrey, “Social Patriotism and the British Working Class: Appearance and Disappearance of a Tradition”, International Labor and Working Class History 42 (Fall 1992), pp. 20–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Samuel, Raphael, ed., Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British Identity, 3 vols. (London, 1989)Google Scholar; Lee, Alan J., “Conservatism, Traditionalism and the British Working Class”, in Martin, David E. and Rubinstein, David eds., Ideology and the Labour Movement (London, 1979)Google Scholar; Cunningham, Hugh, “The Conservative Party and Patriotism” in Colls, Robert and Dodd, Philip, eds., Englishness: Politics and Culture, 1880–1920 (London, 1986), pp. 283–307Google Scholar.

44 Mass-Observation, “Feelings About Russia”, Mass-Observation Bulletin, 23 March 1943, FR 1634, M-O Archive, p. 10.

45 J.H., “Feelings about Russia”, 20 November 1942, FR 1492, M-O Archive. (In Mass-Observation file reports (FR) and topic collections (TC), the authors and interviewers are often only cited by initials.)

46 Railway Review, 5 September 1941.

47 On this issue see: Smith, Harold L., ed., War and Social Change (Manchester, 1983)Google Scholar; Pelling, Henry, Britain and the Second World War (London, 1970)Google Scholar; Calder, Angus, The Myth of the Blitz (London: 1991)Google Scholar.

48 Ministry of Information (MOI), “Home Intelligence Weekly Reports, #50”, 17 September 1941; Ministry of Information, “Home Intelligence Weekly Reports, #52”, 1 October 1941, INFI/292, PRO.

49 [A. R. Rollin], “With the Soviet Trade Union Delegation; Description of Visit” [nd, 1942], A. R. Rollin Papers, MSS.240/T/3/22, MRC.

50 The following sections is based on Zubrzycki, Jerzy, Polish Immigrants in Britain (The Hague, 1956)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which remains the standard work on the Polish presence in the UK. See also Tannahil, J.A., European Volunteer Workers in Britain (Manchester, 1958)Google Scholar.

31 MOI, “Home Intelligence Weekly Reports: No. 164”, 25 November 1943, INF1/292, PRO.

32 Zubrzycki, Polish Immigrants, p. 170; Tannahil, Volunteer Workers, pp. 57–65.

33 Zubrzycki, Polish Immigrants, p. 208.

54 MOI, “Home Intelligence Weekly Reports, # 134”, 24 April 1943, INF1/292, PRO.

55 Mass-Observation, Mass-Observation Bulletin, 10 May 1943, FR1676, M-O Archive, p.16.

56 Ibid.

57 Lunn, Ken, “Race Relations or Industrial Relations? Race and Labour in Britain, 1880–1950”, Immigrants and Minorities 4 (07 1985), p. 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar; The best surveys are Tabili, Laura, “Black Workers in Imperial Britain” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Rutgers University, 1985)Google Scholar; Watson, J.L., ed., Between Two Cultures: Migrants and Minorities in Britain, (Oxford University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Holmes, C., John Bull's Island: Immigration and British Society (London, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar;

58 Bloom, Leonard, Introduction to Negroes in Britain by Little, Kenneth (London, 1948, 2nd revised edition, 1972), p. 4Google Scholar.

59 Examples can be found in: Banton, Michael, The Coloured Quarter: Negro Immigrants in an English City (London, 1955), p. 189Google Scholar; MOI, “Home Intelligence Special Report: No. 34, Hondurasian [sic] Lumbermen in Scotland”, 3 December 1942, INF1/293, PRO.

60 Sherwood, Marika, Many Struggles: West Indian Workers and Service Personnel in Britain, 1939–1945 (London, 1984), p. 74Google Scholar.

61 For instance see: MOI, “Home Intelligence Weekly Report: No. 41. Special Report on the Merseyside and Clydeside”, 16 July 1941, INF1/292, PRO. The ports had a checkered history. See for instance, May, Roy and Cohen, Robin, “The Interaction of Race and Colonialism: A Case Study of the Liverpool Race Riots of 1919”, Race and Class 16 (10 1974), pp. 111–126CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Evans, Neil, “The South Wales Race Riots of 1919”, Llafur 3 (1983), pp. 76–87Google Scholar.

62 National Union of Seamen, Executive Council Minutes, 24 October 1947, MSS. 175/1/1/10, MRC.

63 Croucher, Richard, Engineers at War (London, 1982), p. 201Google Scholar. For examples of reactions: WAL, Extracts From Diary 10/9/41 – 26/1/41, 10 September 1941, TC75/7/A, M-O Archive.

64 Banton, Coloured Quarter, p. 145. Banton, Coloured Quarter, p. 145.

65 Little Negroes in Britain, p. 190; Jordan, Winthrop, White Over Black (New York, 1977), pp. 87–88Google Scholar.

66 Kushner, Tony, The Persistence of Prejudice: Antisemitism in British Society during the Second World War (Manchester, 1989)Google Scholar.

67 See, for instance: Gupta, P., Imperialism and the British Labour Movement (London, 1972)Google Scholar; Moore, R. J., The Crisis of Indian Unity (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar; Gallagher, J. A., The Decline, Revival and Fall of the British Empire (Cambridge, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 Quoted in Morgan, Kenneth O., Labour in Power, 1945–1951 (Oxford, 1984, paper ed. 1985), p. 193Google Scholar. Bevin's attitude toward the British Empire is more positively portrayed in Bullock, Alan, Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary (London, 1983), pp. 30–36Google Scholar. However, even Bullock admits that Labour believed that maintaining Britain as a world power required some form of imperial reach.

69 Morgan, Labour in Power, pp. 190–192.

70 Left and right unions endorsed immediate Indian independence in 1944–1945. NUR, “Proceedings and Reports for the Year 1944”, February Special Executive Meeting, MSS. 127/NU/1/1/35, MRC; ASW, Monthly Journals 83 (September 1942) MSS. 78/ASW/4/22, MRC, p. 375; idem, Monthly Journals, December 1944, MSS. 78/ASW/4/23, MRC; Idem, Monthly Journals 86 (March 1945) p. 104; TGWU, “Minutes and Record of the Proceedings of the Eleventh Biennial Delegate Conference” (London, [n.d., 1947]), MSS. 126/T& G/l/4/11, MRC.

71 Little, Negroes in Britain, p. 255.

72 Harrison, Tom [and Willcock, H.D.], “British Opinion Moves toward a New Synthesis”, Public Opinion Quarterly 11 (Fall 1947): 330CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 Ibid., p. 339; On mass culture see: Tiratsoo, Nick, “Popular Politics, Affluence and the Labour Party in the 1950s', in Gorst, A. et al. , eds., Contemporary British History, 1931–1961 (London, 1991)Google Scholar; Bechofer, Frank, Goldthorpe, J., Lockwood, D., and Platt, Jennifer, The Affluent Worker: Political Attitudes and Behavior (London, 1968)Google Scholar; and idem, The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure (Cambridge, 1969).

74 Quoted in , Harrison, Trade Unions and the Labour Party since 1940 (London, 1960), p. 123nGoogle Scholar. from Dennis, N., Henriques, F., and Slaughter, C., Coal is Our Life (London, 1956), pp. 166–167Google Scholar.

75 Citrine detailed his position to the AFL in 1942. Excerpt from AFL Executive Council Minutes, 20 May 1942, Box 6 File 3, Philip Taft Papers, Labor Management Documentation Center, M. P. Catherwood Library, Cornell University, Ithaca. See also: Weiler, British Labour and the Cold War, pp. 55–61.