Comrade or Brother?

A History of the British Labour Movement

By (author) Mary Davis

Publication date:

20 February 2009

Length of book:

304 pages

Publisher

Pluto Press

ISBN-13: 9781849643153

Critical and iconoclastic, Comrade or Brother? traces the history of the British Labour Movement from its beginnings at the onset of industrialisation through its development within a capitalist society, up to the end of the twentieth-century.

Written by a leading activist in the labour movement, the book redresses the balance in much labour history writing. It examines the place of women and the influence of racism and sexism as well as providing a critical analysis of the rival ideologies which played a role in the uneven development of the labour movement.

Introduction
Part 1: The Industrial Revolution
1. Economic and Political Background 1780 - 1850
2. The Impact of the French Revolution 1789 - 1815
3. 1815 - 1836 Post War Radicalism
4. The Age of Chartism
Part 2: 1850 - 1920 The Workshop of the World and Beyond
5. Economic and Political Background 1850 - 1918
6. Trade Unions, Politics and the labour Aristocracy 1850 - 1880
7. The Rise of a Mass Labour Movement - Trade Unionism, 1880s - 1914
8. The Rise of a Mass Labour Movement - Socialist Politics, 1880s - 1914
9. Labour, the Shop Stewards; Movement and the First World War
Part 3: Re-Adjustment
10. Economic and Political Background 1920 - 1951
11. Labour Governments and Unemployment 1920 - 1931
12. Trade Unions, the General Strike and the Aftermath
13. The Labour Movement, Fascism and anti-Fascism and War
14. War and peace 1940 - 1951
15. The Workers the Labour Movement Forgot - Women and Black People 1926 - 1951
16. 1951 - 1979 Consensus Politics?
Conclusion
Notes
Index

'Stands in comparison with A. L. Morton's People's History and G. D. H. Cole's Common People. But it is more than just this. It is in a real sense a history for our own times'