Transnational Radicalism and the Connected Lives of Tom Mann and Robert Samuel Ross by Neville Kirk (review)

Melanie Nolan

Labour / Le Travail, Issue 83, Spring 2019, pp. 285-287 (Review)

Published by The Canadian Committee on Labour History DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/llt.2019.0023

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/722996

Access provided at 10 Jul 2019 16:37 GMT from ProQuest Information & Learning reviews / comptes rendus / 285 understanding the First International, and Britain and Australia from 1900, charting out promising, new research Labour and the Politics of the Empire trajectories for the next decades. (2011). This instalment is the most recent Thierry Drapeau a series of work, then, around the issues Université du Québec en Outaouais and debates over transnational labour history by a historian long experienced in this field. Indeed, the first chapter on Neville Kirk, Transnational Radicalism the “strengths, weaknesses, promise and and the Connected Lives of Tom Mann pitfalls” (36) of the turn to transnational and Robert Samuel Ross (Liverpool: history, and concomitant comparative Liverpool University Press 2017) and global worlds is a strength of this book and will be essential reading for his- Another book on transnational la- torians working in the area. bour history? Another book by Neville The book is formally divided into three Kirk on transnational labour history? parts: the transnational context; social- Yes, as Kirk makes clear, he has had an ism; and women, whiteness, and war. The enduring interest in transnational and title is more indicative of its bifurcation: cross-national comparative labour his- the nature and implications of Mann’s tory. He was trained as a transnational and Ross’s connected activism on the labour historian: first as one of a group one hand and the wider contexts of their of talented ma students at Warwick transnational radical world on the other. I University’s newly-founded Centre of the think that Kirk’s major contribution is in Study of Social History in 1968 and 1969 regard to the latter aspect than to the for- who were taught by lifelong friends, David mer, which might be surprising given the Montgomery and Edward Thompson work concentrates on an investigation of who specialized in US and British la- the connected lives of British-born glob- bour history respectively. Montgomery al-hopping Tom Mann (1856–1941) and in particular explored “labour migra- Australian-born Robert Samuel “Bob” tion, connections, networks, exchanges Ross (1873–1931), who also spent time in and mutual influences” (57) between the New Zealand. Kirk focuses on the par- two nations (and beyond) and Kirk fol- ticular period between September 1901 lowed him back to Pittsburgh to do his when Mann arrived in Melbourne from doctorate. Montgomery, a Communist New Zealand, and Ross’ return from New Party activist in a pre-academic work- Zealand in April 1913. When Kirk was ing life, became the Farman Professor considering radical transnational figures of History at Yale University, leading la- in Australasia to study, Stuart Macintyre bour historian and editor of the journal, suggested Mann and Ross would “make a International Labor and Working-Class good pair of connected socialists” (vii) and History. In turn, Kirk taught British and so it has proven. These two radical social- US history at Manchester Metropolitan ists have attracted much study individu- University for many years. His corpus of ally but they have rarely been considered labour history publications includes two together. They were friends who shared volumes comparing British and US work socialist beliefs. They worked together and workers from 1780 to 1939, Labour in Australasia between 1902 and 1913. and Society (1994), comparative USA, UK After that, and most importantly, they and Australia labour history from 1880s stayed in touch, corresponded, and wrote to 1914, Comrades and Cousins (2003) for each other’s publications. As with all 286 / labour/le travail 83 his work, Kirk sets out to place their ex- socialist subaltern counterpublic culture perience within the broadest economic at the same time as they sought political and political contexts, using this example revolution. Similarly it was never a sim- of paired connected socialists to develop ple choice between industrial militancy a “network approach to transnational- or political action as some accounts sug- ism,” considering their shared cultural gests: they prioritized direct action over field as well as the “relevant wider and politics but both were on the agenda. Kirk more impersonal processes and struc- examines radicalism in a transnational tures.” (51) He is able to do this because context in which socialists were loyal to of the richness of the archives which he socialist principles but whose politics was has researched meticulously. The records not fixed or permanent; it could and did sustains a consideration of their social- vary according to their changing geo- ism rather than their interiority; that is graphical and historical context. Here their transnational radical views in re- he cites Eric Hobsbawm: “If it is wrong gard to politics generally and specifically to assume that workers have no country, on three issues: womanhood, whiteness, it is equally misleading to assume that and war. Mann and Ross shared unwav- they have only one” and that their iden- ering hopes for gender equality, albeit tification is “eternal and unchanging.” emphasizing differing particular reform- (Hobsbawm, Worlds of Labour [London: ist policies at the same time as being male Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984], 49) breadwinners in their own marriages. Always Mann and Ross are forefront- Similarly Kirk challenges the “globally ed: Kirk argues that they played an im- monolithic, unchanging and consensual” portant role in the development of labour racism of whiteness that “abounds in the and socialism in Australasia, especially historiography” (201) to argue that they in regard to the Victorian Socialist Party, and others held complex views on White and Mann upon New Zealand that histo- Australia which developed and changed rians have neglected. Secondly these two over time. Finally while Ross was consis- friends allow Kirk to consider the wider tent over militarism Mann stepped back radical transnational world which he ar- from anti-war agitation for the duration. gues historians have neglected too. Of More generally Mann and Ross were course others have made the same points loyal to their historical materialist be- that Kirk has made about the role of radi- liefs, adopting the same political strate- cal socialism in Australasia between the gies up to 1909, but their politics diverged 1890s and World War I: indeed he notes thereafter. This allows Kirk to posit at one point that “to argue in these ways wider points about the range of trans- is to endorse the somewhat unfashion- national consciousness and contingent able view of Verity Burgmann, Lloyd views within the radical transnational Churchward and others that the influ- Anglophone world. For instance, he ar- ence of Marxist and syndicalist ideas on gues Mann’s and Ross’ socialism defies Australian socialism has been underesti- the notion of a fixed and dichotomous mated by labour historians of this peri- relationship between reform and revolu- od.” (117) Similarly, Erik Olssen’s The Red tion. The two were linked as Mann and Feds: Revolutionary Industrial Unionism Ross sought to transform labour’s lim- and the New Zealand Federation of ited, sectional, and reformist conscious- Labour 1908–1913 (New York: Oxford ness into revolutionary social ideas and University Press, 1988) does likewise for practice. Voluntarism was central to New Zealand. Good points bear repeat- their activism: they set about creating a ing using new evidence. reviews / comptes rendus / 287

Above all, Kirk’s book is a clarion call Bridget Kenny, Retail Worker Politics, for more research. While Mann’s and Race and Consumption in South Africa: Ross’ positions are elucidated in detail Shelved in the Service Economy (Cham, they could bear with more contextual- Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan 2018) ization within their radical transnational fellow travellers. Kirk himself suggests Why have retail worker labour poli- that Elsie Mann “fully and urgently tics endured, how have they changed, and merits a biography in her own right.” to what effect? Bridget Kenny examines (12) But more specifically his work sug- these important questions in the context gesting the potential of challenging the of retail work in greater Johannesburg, national by adopting the network ap- pre-and post-apartheid, from the 1930s proach to transnationalism should be ap- to 2013. Kenny’s impressive historical plied. Further research for Australia and ethnography is the result of 20 years of New Zealand might include best friends, fieldwork research that included focus Josiah Cocking (1867–1960) and Harry groups and interviews with retail work- Holland (1868–1933). They were both ers, industry experts, retail managers, “Salvationist Socialists” or militant revo- and retail union officials and shop stew- lutionary socialists who corresponded ards. Weaving together rich accounts of when Holland left Newcastle where they retail worker experiences, Kenny analyz- worked together, later for New Zealand. es the labour relationship of retailing as Cocking had been the mainstay contribu- a site of political terrain that constitutes tor to the International Socialist Review the political subject of “workers” – abase- for Australasia from 1907 to 1912, which benzi. The book details how retail worker Holland edited. Cocking kept diaries and politics have been shaped by three con- common books, which the University of nected dynamics: retail as a space that Newcastle has digitized. Wider transna- constructs the nation and belonging; tional networks might also help to ad- labour law and its part in creating the dress the argument only really implicit subject of the “employee” and construct- in this book: Kirk does not accept the ing the boundaries within which workers conventional wisdom that “socialism in resist; and the ways in which abasebenzi the Antipodes derived much, but not all, goes beyond being solely a worker iden- of its character from the movement in tity and reflects a complex articulation of the ‘mother country.’” (114) More work race, class, and gender relations. beyond the 1901 to 1913 period and be- The story begins by examining women’s yond Mann’s and Ross’ Australasian retail labour in Johannesburg from the circle, adopting Kirk’s network approach 1930s to the 1970s. In Chapter 2, Kenny to transnationalism, might establish how illuminates how white, working-class fe- the Anglophone world and beyond de- male shop assistants participated in com- rived ideas from the socialism developing plex retail relations that simultaneously in the Antipodes. challenged and re-constituted gender, Melanie Nolan race, and class relations. Working for pay Australian National University at a time when white women were dis- couraged from doing so, the shop assis- tants serviced other white customers and contributed to the development of a city which symbolized modernity, belonging, and racial exclusivity through a develop- ing consumer culture. Represented by the Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.