ANGUS REID urges us to understand the persecution of Jason Arday from a political and historical perspective, and to see the victim in human terms
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]
Re-releases of the classics Gypsy Rhumba and Buena Vista Social Club, and a stunning album by Palestinian artist Faris Ishaq
Nothing, says ANDY HEDGECOCK, can rescue this undistinguished amalgam of ponderous melodrama and shallow philosophical speculation
JAMIE BRITTON invites readers to visit 3,500 locals as part of a marathon artistic pub crawl
JOHN GREEN welcomes a valuable and incisive analysis of a world become hyperpolitical but without the mass movement institutions to represent it
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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