Jim Phillips
Pluto Press, London, 1995, £12.99
To study the relationship between the Labour government and the trade unions in the ’45-’51 government, Phillips provides the first detailed examination of which I am aware of the various dock strikes during the period. Phillips concludes that the various charges of ‘communist conspiracy’ made by members of the government and senior trade union officials were spurious, and probably known to be spurious at the time.(1) The one oddity about Phillips’ otherwise convincing thesis is that while he refers to the White Paper (Cmd. 7851) published by the government in late 1949, giving such as evidence as it had for its communist conspiracy thesis, he does not discuss its contents. Wonder why not?
Notes
1 This subject was touched on in my ‘Moscow gold: the “Communist threat” in post-war Britain’ in Lobster 25, and again in the special issue, advertised in this issue.