RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
Politically corrupt and morally bankrupt
HELEN MERCER welcomes an account of how US labour leadership collaborated with the state and betrayed their membership
FAUSTIAN PACT: AFL-CIO President George Meany, left, and US President Richard Nixon at the signing of Executive Order 11491- regulating labour-management relations in the Federal service, October 1969
[Robert L Knudsen/CC]
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
Blue Collar Empire: the untold story of US labour’s global anti-communist crusade
Jeff Schuhrke
Verso, £25
JEFF SCHUHRKE’s book is a history of the collaboration between trade union leaders and the US state through the Cold War up until the 2000s.
It provides a detailed account of the dealings of key figures in the leadership of the American Federation of Labour (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO) with the US political establishment and the CIA, earning the name “AFL-CIA.”
Schuhrke exposes the labyrinth of personal contacts, committees, and associations through which the US government channelled funds and shaped labour organisations across the world.
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