Description
Book SynopsisThe British trade unionist and Labour MP A. A. Purcell (1872-1935) once enjoyed international notoriety. An outspoken champion of Soviet Russia, he nevertheless performed the highest labour movement responsibilities and was a leading figure on the TUC General Council. Purcell was a member of the earliest British labour delegations to Russia and his presidency of the International Federation of Trade Unions coincided with the TUC's energetic promotion of the cause of Anglo-Russian trade union unity, culminating in the publication of a glowing TUC report on the Soviets in 1925. However, as a leading TUC 'left' his credibility was badly dented by the failure of the General Strike in 1926, and the following year he lost his position with the IFTU. He ended his career in the relative obscurity of the Manchester and Salford Trades Council.
Table of Contents1 Around a life 2 Syndicalism, internationalism and the furnishing trades 2.1 Syndicalists without syndicalism? 2.2 Socialist and syndicalist 2.3 Syndicalism and the Furnishing Trades 2.4 'An international class' 2.5 War, revolution 3 Roads to freedom in the 1920s 3.1 The swing of the pendulum 3.2 Non-party communist 3.3 Guild socialist 3.4 Parliamentary socialist 3.5 The persistency of syndicalism 4 Labour's Russian delegations 4.1 Insular internationalists 4.2 Russia 1920 4.3 'Getting together' 4.4 Russia 1924 4.5 Social anti-imperialism 5 'Swimming against a flood': Emma Goldman in London 5.1 A habit of truth-telling 5.2 That damn fake Purcelle 5.3 Anarchism and the English psychology 5.4 A nation of shopkeepers 5.5 The Russian superstition 6 The other future? 6.1 The future in America? 6.2 Fordism and the left 6.3 Workers vs robots 6.4 Cultural critique 6.5 Purcell in America 7 The General Strike 7.1 The strike as social myth 7.2 The dynamics of solidarity 7.3 Strike discussions 7.4 The nine days 7.5 A melancholy comparison 8 Democracy or dictatorship? 8.1 The 'Congress of Reckoning' 8.2 Citrine as new exemplar Epilogue: A claim-making performer
