Peter Jones
I.B. Tauris, London, 1997, £39.50 hb
This is a dull run through the conventional post-war history of the Labour Party in relation to the USA. Jones takes as a given that the Labour Party in the post-war years should be pro-American, and therefore does not think it worth explaining how this came about and how it has been sustained. There is, therefore, no reference to US labour attachés (Joe Godson et al), Atlanticist propaganda, (the Labour Committee on Transatlantic Understanding, British Atlantic Committee, BAP et al); no reference to State Department or Labor Department-sponsored visits; no reference to the RIIA, Bilderberg, Congress for Cultural Freedom, Encounter, or CIA; no Angleton, no smear campaigns. Most remarkably, Anthony Carew’s essential Labour Under the Marshall Plan is not cited.
To call it ‘incomplete’ would be kind.