Them and Us: Fighting the Class War 1910-1939
by John Newsinger
(Bookmarks Publications, £7.99)

DRAWING lessons from history in an attempt to inform present-day struggles against war, cuts and austerity, this book is a lively, partisan but ultimately flawed account.

Focusing largely on the working-class resistance expressed through workplace action, the sections on the often ignored industrial unrest and syndicalism prior to WW1, the shop stewards committees a few years later and the General Strike of 1926 are particularly strong.

The book’s author John Newsinger has an eye for detail, knows how to bring history to life and, as an introduction to the insurrectionary politics of those years, the book is certainly more valuable than the umpteen mainstream texts currently available.

It’s a joy to read history that very often tells it as it was and doesn’t shy away from holding individuals to account.

Winston Churchill is shown to be a shameless bigot and complete reactionary and Ramsay McDonald to be not only a class traitor but — shades of New Labour? — a politician who couldn’t wait to ingratiate himself with the ruling class.

The chief goal of railway workers’ leader JH Thomas, other than fawning over the royal family, appears to have been containing and stopping disputes rather than fighting to win — again modern-day equivalents come to mind.

So, why the reservations? The relative brevity of Newsinger’s book makes one wonder whether he attempts to cover too much too quickly and there are a number of glaring omissions.

There’s little on the opposition to war and conscription and the development of an explicitly anti-capitalist and anti-militarist culture that gave rise to the growth of bodies like the No Conscription Fellowship or the movement for conscientious objection. The struggle for women’s suffrage hardly gets a look in while the momentous events of Easter 1916, something which inspired revolutionaries worldwide, gets barely a mention.

Newsinger’s anti-communism — unsurprising, as he’s a member of the Socialist Workers Party — is relatively restrained in the earlier chapters, where he often pays testimony to the commitment and heroism of many party members.

All too quickly, though, the gloves come off. Apparently, the National Minority Movement was fundamentally wrong in campaigning for a leftwards shift in the TUC. The National Unemployed Workers’ Movement was the only thing that kept the party going during what was otherwise a period of sectarian madness.

Communists only fought the Blackshirts in spite of party policy, the Popular Front was a class collaborationist sell-out and the idealistic International Brigaders all to quickly became Stalin’s henchmen.

Ultimately, according to Newsinger, the Communist Party was just a tool for “Russia’s” foreign policy — yes, it is Russia here, rather than the Soviet Union — and whatever progressive and anti-fascist credentials that country had effectively came to an all-time end with the signing of the nazi-Soviet pact.

Forget the growing strength of the party in Britain, numerically, organisationally and electorally or its emerging role within the labour and trade union movement. Forget its immense contribution to arts, science and culture or the gains it made in everything from housing to the fight for access to the countryside. And forget too not only the instrumental role it had in challenging the far right but also in combatting racism and imperialism.

Newsinger is no doubt interested in fighting the class war. The fact that he spends so much time attacking those who were very much to the forefront of this war does both his politics and his ability to conduct historical debate a great disservice.

Review by Steven Andrew