Book Description

This is the first major study of the role of industrial unions in the launch of the Cold War in the 1940s. Using unpublished archival material from Europe and America, Denis MacShane challenges existing interpretations of international labour's role in the Cold War, arguing that European traditions and political differences were more important than American interventions in determining labour's attitudes to international problems after 1945. Existing interpretations which focus on national confederations such as the TUC in Britain or the AFL in America treat the question of labour and the Cold War as a political and diplomatic quarrel. Dr. MacShane revises the view that the TUC shaped post-war trade union structures in West Germany, or that any TUC blueprint existed for German industrial trade unionism after 1945. In particular he examines trade unions in the engineering, steel, car, and metal industries who were at the peak of their power, size, and influence in 1945. Their productionist philosophy, which was powerfully tapped by the Marshall Plan, is examined to show why Leninist and Stalinist forms of trade union organization were rejected after 1945. This book blends archival research, contemporary accounts, and interviews from Britain, the United States, France, Germany, and Switzerland to present a fascinating narrative of labour internationalism in the first half of the twentieth century, as well as a challenging thesis which will alter existing historical perceptions of the role of labour in the politically-charged years between 1945 and 1948 when the Cold War got under way.