ANEURIN BEVAN AND PAUL ROBE SON: SOCIALISM, CLASS AND IDENTITY

Daniel G. Williams National Eisteddfod Lecture, Ebbw Vale 2010 The Institute of Welsh Affairs exists to promote quality research and informed ANEURIN BEVAN debate affecting the cultural, social, political and economic well-being of Wales. IWA is an independent organisation owing no allegiance to any political or AND PAUL ROBE SON: economic interest group. Our only interest is in seeing Wales flourish as a country in which to work and live. We are funded by a range of organisations and SOCIALISM, CLASS AND IDENTITY individuals. For more information about the Institute, its publications, and how to join, either as an individual or corporate supporter, contact:

IWA - Institute of Welsh Affairs 4 Cathedral Road, Cardiff CF11 9LJ Daniel G. Williams tel: 029 2066 0820 fax: 029 2023 3741 National Eisteddfod Lecture email: [email protected] web: www.iwa.org.uk | www.clickonwales.org Ebbw Vale 2010

Published with the support of CREW (Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales), Swansea University.

The Author Daniel G. Williams is Senior Lecturer in English and Director of the Centre for Research into the English Published in Wales by the Institute of Welsh Affairs. Literature and Language of Wales (CREW), Swansea 4 Cathedral Road, Cardiff CF11 9LJ University. He is Editor of several volumes including a collection of Raymond Williams’s writings on Wales Who First Impression August 2010 Speaks for Wales? Nation, Culture, Identity (University of Wales Press, 2003) and Slanderous Tongues: Essays on © Institute of Welsh Affairs / Daniel G. Williams Welsh Poetry in English (Seren, 2010); and author of Ethnicity and Cultural Authority: From Matthew Arnold to All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, W. E. B. Du Bois (Edinburgh University Press, 2006). He stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any also plays saxophone with the jazz-folk band ‘Burum’. means without the prior permission of the publishers. Cover ISBN: 978 1 904773 53 5 Paul Robeson and Aneurin Bevan photographed at the Ebbw Vale National Eisteddfod in 1958. Contents Intr oduction

3 Introduction Aneurin Bevan was preoccupied with communication in August 1958. In Tribune , the weekly paper of the democratic Left, he discussed the relationship between China and 7 Bevan: Class and Socialism the United States in the following terms:

12 Robeson: Identity and Socialism Communication is the very essence of civilised ways of living. It is a most monstrous offence against this principle that the most populous nation on 15 Class and Identity earth should be cut off from communication with so many nations merely because the vision of the leaders of the United States falls so lamentably 20 Conclusion short of the material power they command. 1

21 References He had expressed similar thoughts a week earlier at the ‘Gymanfa Ganu’ [Congregational Singing Festival] of the National Eisteddfod in Ebbw Vale. ‘The whole lesson of Eisteddfodau is communication’ he stated ‘and unless the people can freely communicate with each other there is no chance for civilisation’. 2 Sitting in the audience with his wife Bessie was the African American singer and activist Paul Robeson who, following Bevan’s introduction, would rise to sing ‘John Brown’s Body’, ‘Water Boy’ and ‘We are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder’. 3 In 1950 Robeson’s passport had been taken from him and he was confined to the United States as the madness of Senator Joe McCarthy’s campaign against alleged Communists dominated the political and cultural life of his country. Robeson had just had his passport returned when he visited Ebbw Vale in 1958, and Bevan proceeded to criticize the US government for denying Robeson his right to travel and expressed his hope that the ban would never be reinstated. To obstruct communication between individuals and countries was a threat to world peace, stated Bevan, and while he had heard of the United States’s ambitions to ‘encircle the moon’, ‘they might start off at first by encircling China’. 4 If Bevan had one eye on the world, his thoughts on communication also engaged with the Welsh context. In order for Bevan to introduce Paul Robeson, the Gymanfa Ganu was moved from the last Sunday of the Eisteddfod to the first. The Eisteddfod had not been officially opened, and there was therefore no need to adhere to the ‘rheol Gymraeg’ (the Welsh language only rule), that was introduced in 1950 and would be in operation for the rest of the week:

2 | Aneurin Bevan and Paul Robeson: Socialism, Class and Identity National Eisteddfod Lecture 2010 | 3 I must have my say about the Eisteddfod this evening for I shall be inarticulate York. And following the return of his passport in 1958, he was introduced by Aneurin during the rest of the week... I want to say how much we in Ebbw Vale Bevan at the Ebbw Vale Eisteddfod. It is fitting that the Eisteddfod has returned to Ebbw welcome the Eisteddfod and the visit of the people of Wales, together with Vale fifty years after Bevan’s death and it’s particularly appropriate that Swansea our friends from overseas, to Ebbw Vale. You will find the true qualities of the University and the Welsh Assembly Government have made it possible for Paul Welsh people here in Monmouthshire, even though you may not always hear Robeson’s granddaughter Susan to be with us this week. 8 their sentiments expressed in the language of heaven. 5 Several commentators have used the relationship between Robeson and Wales to support their readings of Welsh history. For some, like Hywel Francis and Dai Having struggled during his career to overcome a stammer, and to give voice to the Smith, Robeson’s connections with the Welsh working class underline the progressive aspirations of his people, Bevan would have noted the strange irony of the fact that, for socialist internationalism of the labour movement, and reflect the diverse and tolerant the remainder of the week, he would be rendered inarticulate in his own constituency. communities of the coalfield. Dai Smith, echoing Aneurin Bevan’s emphasis on His message was clear enough for those willing to listen. 6 communication, states: According to the Merthyr Express , there were in fact over 9000 people packed into the Pavilion on August 3rd 1958 to listen to Bevan and Robeson and to participate South Wales, at its provocative best, contradicted the curtailers of human in the Gymanfa. Paul Robeson understood the nature of the event and, although he was interaction anywhere and everywhere it could. The ideal was, perhaps, often linked to the Communist Party, expressed his pleasure at being able to contribute to a merely, though movingly, emblematic as when south Wales miners arranged religious service: a transatlantic radio link so that Paul Robeson, deprived of his civil liberties and his passport in the USA, could sing at their Eisteddfod; or when Nye Bevan … You may not know it but I was brought up in traditions very similar to yours. welcomed Robeson to the National Eisteddfod in Ebbw Vale in 1958. 9 My father was a Wesleyan minister, my brother is one, and almost every Sunday I have taken part in similar hymn-singings to those you are enjoying It is revealing to compare this reading with T. J. Davies’s description of the Gymanfa tonight. I bring you greetings from my own people, who will appreciate, I Ganu in his Welsh language biography of Paul Robeson. T. J. Davies draws on Robeson’s know, the kind of welcome I have received here. 7 1935 comment that ‘Negroes the world over have an inferiority complex because they imitate whatever culture they are in contact with instead of harking back to their own Robeson had of course already been the recipient of Welsh hospitality. In 1928 he tradition’, to argue that the African American singer touched a: impulsively joined a group of marching Welsh miners singing in London’s West End. The next ten years saw him donating money to, and visiting, Talygarn Miners’ Rest …gwythien ddofn ynom. Ninnau fel y Negroaid wedi cefnu, i fesur, ar ein Home, appearing in many concerts across Wales including an appearance at the diwylliant brodorol a mabwysiadu un Seisnig; eto, ym mêr ein hesgyrn yn Caernarvon Pavilion the night after an explosion had claimed 266 lives at the Gresford gwybod bod ynddo rin a gwerth, a phan ddeuai Paul Robeson i’n mysg, yn Pit near Wrecsam, and, most famously, a visit to Mountain Ash in 1938 for the ‘Welsh lladmerydd huawdl i ddiwylliant dirmygedig, caem ynddo un a roddai lais i gri National Memorial Meeting to the Men of the International Brigade from Wales who a foddwyd yn ein hisymwybyddiaeth….Bid siwr, y mae elfen o dristwch yn y gave their lives in defence of Democracy in Spain’. The 1930s also saw Robeson sefyllfa, y miloedd ym mhabell yr Eisteddfod yng Nglyn Ebwy yn ei establishing connections with the multi-ethnic community in Cardiff’s Butetown, which gymeradwyo am eu bod yn cael boddhad mawr yng nghanu g wˆr a gyflwynai was also home to the political activist and Pan-Africanist native of Philadelphia, Aaron ei ddiwylliant ei hun heb ymddiheuro; eto, yr un rhai, er yn gweld yr hyn a Mosell, an uncle by marriage to Robeson. 1939 saw Robeson playing the role of David wnâi Paul Robeson ac yn falch o’i genhadaeth, yn methu cymryd y cam Goliath, an African American seaman who settles in a mining village, in one of the few gwleidyddol i roi i’w cenedl hwy yr urddas y credent y dylai’r Negro ei gael. movies which he did not later disown, Proud Valley . Hounded during the McCarthy era for his Communist sympathies, Robeson had his passport confiscated from 1950 to [… a deep vein within us. Like the Negroes, we have turned our backs, to a 1958. The persistent invitations made throughout the 1950s for Robeson to appear at degree, on our indigenous culture and adopted an English culture; yet, in the the Miners’ Eisteddfod in Porthcawl, led to the ‘Transatlantic Exchange’ of 1957 which marrow of our bones we are aware of its worth and value, and when Paul allowed the Eisteddfod audience to hear Robeson’s voice via a telephonic link from New Robeson came to us, an eloquent spokesman for a derided culture, we found

4 | Aneurin Bevan and Paul Robeson: Socialism, Class and Identity National Eisteddfod Lecture 2010 | 5 a voice for a cry that had been submerged in our subconsciousness …. There is certainly an element of sadness in the scene; the thousands in the Eisteddfod pavilion in Ebbw Vale applauding and enjoying the singing of a man who presented his own culture without apology; yet, those same Bevan: thousands, despite seeing what Paul Robeson was doing and welcoming his Class and So cialism message, were unable to take the political step that would give their nation the status that they believed should be granted to the Negro.] 10

I'll return to some of the controversial assumptions informing this passage, but wish to For many Welsh linguistic nationalists Aneurin Bevan is associated with the rejection emphasise here the fundamental difference between T. J. Davies’s reading in Welsh, of the ‘indigenous culture’ evoked by T. J. Davies in his description of the Welsh and Dai Smith’s account in English. ‘Robeson’ features as a cross-roads at which the audience’s response to Robeson above. In his popular history Aros Mae , for instance, cultural narratives of y ‘Gymry Gymraeg’ (Welsh-speaking Wales) and ‘South Wales’ Plaid Cymru president Gwynfor Evans used the example of Bevan’s family to illustrate meet; those very narratives that the critic Raymond Williams referred to as the ‘two the Anglicisation of Monmouthshire. Before noting that Aneurin’s father, David, was a truths’ that continue to influence and inform our ways of describing the Welsh member of the Cymmrodorion, a faithful chapel goer and a Welsh language poet of experience. 11 Rather than considering the historical meeting between Robeson and some renown, Gwynfor Evans suggests that the ‘situation in Monmouthshire’ could be Bevan as a means of reinforcing a particular historical narrative, my intention is to illuminated with reference to the: examine some of the tensions and contradictions in their political and cultural thought, before going on to discuss the possible implications of their ideas for contemporary …amgylchiadau cartref crwtyn bach a ddechreuodd fynd y pryd hyn i ysgol political debate. It is not my intention to offer advice to any particular political party, but Sirhywi gyda’i chwiorydd, Myfanwy a Blodwen; byddai Arianwen a Iorwerth I aim rather to utilise the meeting between Robeson and Bevan as a basis for exploring yn ymuno ag ef yno eto.[...]Ymhen ychydig flynyddoedd byddai’r Sistem wedi some of the intellectual strains within progressive thought in Wales. difa iaith a diwylliant cenhedlaeth tad Aneurin Bevan yn llwyr yn y fro honno. 12

…domestic circumstances of a little boy who started going to Sirhowy school during this period with his sisters, Myfanwy and Blodwen; Arianwen and Iorwerth would join him there later.[...] Within a few years in that area the System would have completely destroyed the language and culture of the generation to which Aneurin Bevan’s father belonged.

In Gwynfor Evans’s nationalist history Aneurin Bevan is not the founder of the National Health Service, nor is he the hero of Welsh socialists. Rather, he is a representative of how Labour proved to be an Anglicising force in Welsh culture, contributing to society’s abandonment of the Welsh language and its culture. Bevan’s subtle attack on the Eisteddfod ‘Welsh rule’ at the Gymanfa Ganu of 1958 could be used to reinforce this interpretation. Few Welsh nationalists would disagree with Angharad Tomos that Bevan ‘more than anyone else, prevented the idea of self- government, and he legitimised opposition in Labour’s ranks to any measure of constitutional status for Wales’. 13 This is not entirely true, for Bevan’s support was key to ensuring that the establishment of a Secretary of State for Wales appeared as a policy in the Labour Party’s manifesto for the general elections of 1959. The Tories won that election, but the policy stayed in place, leading to the establishment of Jim Griffiths in that post when

6 | Aneurin Bevan and Paul Robeson: Socialism, Class and Identity National Eisteddfod Lecture 2010 | 7 Labour came back to power in 1964. Bevan’s support for the policy of a Secretary of essential pre-condition to comprehending his politics’. 20 The challenge faced by the State surprised, and continues to surprise, many. 14 Bevan had previously been cultural historian is to describe the defining characteristics of that culture. Writing consistent in his opposition to any political embodiment of Welsh identity. At the first against English historians of the Labour Party, who tend to see Bevan’s ‘Welsh’ day dedicated to ‘Welsh Questions’ in Parliament in 1944 Bevan admitted that he background as a constraint frustrating his abilities to extend the relevance of his politics didn’t know the difference between ‘a Welsh sheep, Westmoreland sheep and a beyond ‘narrow’ working class interests, Smith states: Scottish sheep’. 15 He objected to the idea of creating a Secretary of State for Wales in 1946 on linguistic grounds, fearing that the incumbent would have to speak Welsh. The whole direction of Bevan’s life, and especially because of the experiences Unconsciously evoking the language of the 1847 Blue Books, he stated that, ‘Our he underwent within the variegated culture of south Wales, was away from nationalist friends are making an enclave and the vast majority of Welshmen would be the bathos of nostalgia and the pathos of sentiment...If it is the values of the denied participation in the government of their own country’. 16 He believed that the south Wales of his youth that marked Bevan then those values were people of Monmouthshire would be oppressed by Welsh speakers from Cardiganshire, increasingly offensive not defensive. 21 and regretted that Welsh culture tended to be connected to the language. Before rejecting such ideas, it is worth remembering that south Wales And one aspect of the ‘offensive’ nature of that new culture was its desire to reject the represented a cultureless space - the ground lost to Wales – by many linguistic culture of the past. While this was something to regret for Gwynfor Evans, it is nationalists. T. J Davies’s description of the Ebbw Vale audience having ‘abandoned’ something to celebrate for Dai Smith. their ‘indigenous culture’ is a case in point. ‘Yma bu unwaith Gymru’ [‘Here once was Wales’] was Saunders Lewis’ dismissive verdict as he viewed industrial Merthyr in his Aneurin attended two chapels as a boy; he left both after too close a apocalyptic poem ‘Y Dilyw 1939’ [The Deluge 1939]. In a letter to Kate Roberts, he disquisition of Darwinain evolutionism for the taste of the ministers. He was expressed his exasperation at the audience of ‘anwariaid syml’ [‘simple barbarians’] never baptized. He spoke no Welsh. And in all this he was typifying who had turned out to listen to him in Blaen Dulais [Seven Sisters] and claimed that individually the self-confident progressive world of south Wales. 22 he’d kill himself if forced to spend a day in their company. 17 More recently, when Christine James won the crown in 2005, Arch-Druid Selwyn Griffith claimed that her ‘Progressive’ may not be the most appropriate adjective for this social time as a student in Aberystwyth had made Christine ‘yn Gymraes’ / Welsh. But given process, but it seems that Smith’s ‘South Wales’ is defined as much by what it is not that she comes from Porth, in the Rhondda, what was she before that? And perhaps than by what it is. I don’t have time to discuss the implications of this here, but it is our culture minister in the assembly, Alun Ffred Jones, will excuse me for quoting his interesting to note that when it became a matter of defining Welsh culture Aneurin views on English speaking Wales in 1999: Bevan tended to turn to traditional practices. While he warned against linking Welshness with the Welsh language, his grounds for arguing strongly for ‘the re- [I] genhedlaeth sydd wedi ymwrthod a’r syniad o genedl at beth allan nhw unification of Monmouthshire and Wales’ in Ebbw Vale was that the ‘characteristics of droi? Does dim o’r nodweddion amlwg – yn gerddorol, yn grefyddol nac yn Monmouthshire were essentially Welsh’, her ‘legends were Welsh’. 23 A decade earlier, ddiwylliannol – sydd gan y Gwyddel Saesneg i droi atynt am gysur. 18 he made the following case in a Tribune editorial on ‘The Claim of Wales’:

[What can a generation who have rejected the idea of nationhood turn to? People from other parts of the country are surprised when they visit Wales to They have none of the obvious characteristics – either musically, religiously find how many Welsh people still speak Welsh, and how strong and even or culturally – that the Anglo-Irish can turn to for comfort.] passionate is the love of the Welsh for their country, their culture and their unique institutions. Bevan was speaking against such views when he highlighted the essential Welshnes of Ebbw Vale in his speech at the 1958 Gymanfa, and there is no doubt that the In all this there is nothing to deplore. On the contrary, it is very much to the contributions of Hywel Teifi Edwards from one direction, and Dai Smith from another, good that distinctive cultures, values, and institutions should flourish so as to have been crucial in the ongoing process of describing and mapping the distinctive counteract the appalling tendency of the times towards standardisation, cultures of the south Wales valleys. 19 Dai Smith’s fundamental point in his Aneurin regimentation and universal greyness [...]. In so far as Wales is different from Bevan and the World of South Wales is that ‘imagining Aneurin Bevan’s culture is an England, it is the difference, and not the similarity, which requires special

8 | Aneurin Bevan and Paul Robeson: Socialism, Class and Identity National Eisteddfod Lecture 2010 | 9 recognition and a special constitutional medium of expression. Wales is Bevan would never forget the suffering of the valleys. But the way to ensure the suffering different, not in the fact that she possesses coal and steel, docks and would never return was for socialists to control the levers of the British economy. harbours, factories and an intricate web of economic activities. These are part If the concept of the ‘nation’ was a part of Aneurin Bevan’s political world of the common life of the United Kingdom. She is different in that she has a view, his politics was fundamentally grounded in the working class struggle against language of her own, and an art and a culture, and an educational system and economic inequality. His political vision evolved form a Marxist tradition of thought - an excitement for things of the mind and spirit, which are wholly different ‘Insofar as I can be said to have had a political training at all, it has been in Marxism’ - from England and English ways. It is in the commonality of this difference that and the tendency is to view that tradition as being opposed to cultural difference due Wales has a claim for special recognition and where she should seek new to its emphasis on the class struggle as the only legitimate vehicle for the creation of a forms of national life. 24 classless society in which differences of status and opportunity are eradicated. 27 This opposition to cultural difference can be traced back to the work of Marx himself. While Bevan was clearly making a distinction between the political and the cultural spheres. being critical of British imperialism, Marx believed that the barbarism of the villagers of Wales for Bevan was essentially a cultural entity. That cultural distinctiveness was not Hindustan was reflected in the fact that they worshiped nature. For Marx, the British the basis for an independent nation state, nor did it imply that the cultural nation Empire was a necessary historical force in civilising and developing a society which needed its own form of political expression. The reference above to a ‘special would otherwise be worshipping Hamhuan the monkey and Sabala the cow. 28 Such Constitutional medium of expression’ is ambiguous, especially as he specifically argues cultural intolerance is generally absent from Bevan’s writings, and unlike some of his against the establishment of a Secretary of State in the same piece. For Bevan, the constituency’s future representatives, he respected the concept of Wales as a cultural problems of coal, steel and agriculture should clearly be addressed at the British level. entity manifested in its linguistic difference, its stories and legends. He also supported Britain is clearly the sphere of economics and politics. Wales is the sphere of culture. Indian independence and was a friend of the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal It is noticeable, however, that Bevan does not use the terms ‘province’, or Nehru. 29 But fundamentally, Bevan’s politics were rooted in class. For him, cultural ‘region’ or ‘Principality’ in describing Wales. Bevan’s Wales is a ‘nation’, and it’s worth distinctiveness should never be a constraint on the struggle of the working class and noting that he was not opposed on principle to nationalism and, in some contexts, could the poor for economic and social equality. The desire to preserve distinctive cultures - see the benefits of dressing the socialist struggle in national costume. In his speech to as embodied primarily in the language movement in Wales – should never hinder a the ‘Chinese People’s Consultative Conference’ in 1954 for example, he noted: people’s ability to communicate with each other and with others.

...the struggles which you have waged are at the same time a struggle for national independence against imperialism. This has the effect of supercharging the social struggle with the emotion derived from national self-consciousness and the yearning for liberation. You are therefore possessed of an emotional dynamic which is not present with us. 25

Bevan was not opposed in principle to struggles for national independence. But, to the frustration of Welsh nationalists, he did not see his native Wales in those terms. The nationalist poet Harri Webb responded colourfully to Bevan’s speech in China on the pages of The Welsh Republican :

Mr Bevan comes from the Tops of the Valleys. It is hard to believe that even in China he can have forgotten the difference between the exploitation of the English worker and the wholesale rape and ruin of that region where the epic desolation of Dowlais, the generation of despair that engulfed Blaina and Brynmawr, seal the utter damnation before God and man of the gentlemen of England. 26

10 | Aneurin Bevan and Paul Robeson: Socialism, Class and Identity National Eisteddfod Lecture 2010 | 11 However, Robeson was certainly interested in the Welsh language. He owned a Welsh language grammar, and when asked to suggest an appropriate gift to mark his visit to the 1958 Eisteddfod, he requested a Welsh hymnbook, presented to him by the leading Robeson: modernist Welsh language poet T. H. Parry-Williams. 34 Id enti ty and Socialism The nationalist strain in Robeson’s thought is something that is often ignored in Wales, and our tendency to see nationalism and socialism as opposed political forces in the nation’s history leads to a misunderstanding of Robeson’s life and thought. For There is no doubt that Paul Robeson, like his friend Aneurin Bevan, was a socialist. But Robeson’s concert performances, from the mid 1930s onwards, offered a creative he came to his socialism from a different direction, and represents a different tradition expression for the fusion of ethnic particularism and socialist universalism that informed within socialist thought. When he described the ‘hymn-singings’ of his youth deriving his responses to other people and places. His interest in the Soviet Union derived from an from ‘traditions very similar to yours’ at the Ebbw Vale ‘Gymanfa’, and proceeded to earlier interest in minorities. He first visited the USSR as a result of his interest in Africa, offer greetings from ‘my people’, he was drawing attention to his background in the and went with the intention of studying ‘the Soviet national minority policy as it operates African American Church, and to the distinctiveness of the African American people. among the people of Central Asia’. 35 During the fifties, when he was not entitled to travel, Robeson belonged to a tradition of Black Nationalist thought with its roots in the he referred back to his first visits to the Soviet Union in the following terms: nineteenth century. His careful biographer Martin Duberman noted that Robeson admired ‘the ethnic insistence of the Welsh’, and perhaps it takes an American to I saw for myself when I visited the Soviet Union how the Yakuts and the appreciate this aspect of his relationship with Wales. 30 Robeson, like many Welsh Uzbeks and all the other formerly oppressed nations were leaping ahead from nationalists, adhered at times to the romantic notion that language lay at the root of tribalism to modern industrial economy, from illiteracy to the heights of national cultures. According to his close friend, the journalist Marie Seton, this sense of knowledge. Their ancient cultures blossoming in new and greater splendour. linguistic identity derived largely from his family background in the western areas of Their young men and women mastering the sciences and arts. 36 North and South Carolina where the Gullah language is spoken – a Creole language based on English but containing many words borrowed from African languages. In her Robeson’s increasing adherence to Marxism from the mid thirties onwards did not lead to biography Paul Robeson (1958), Seton refers to this linguistic background while a rejection of nationalism, but rather led to an attempted combination of the Marxist discussing the relationship between Robeson and Wales: notion that individual experiences are determined by social class, with a nationalist view that identity is rooted in language or race. This was reflected in his concert programmes [The Welsh] took him into their homes, fed him and wrapped him around tight where, from the early 1930s onwards Robeson expanded his repertoire beyond the and close in the intimacy of warmth and humour, and in the aspirations of a people spirituals to embrace the folk songs of other peoples. The programme of his 25 March in whom a national spirit had never died. The Welsh spoke Welsh to show they concert in Wrexham testifies to his inclusion of the Russian ‘O Ivan , You Ivan’, the English were themselves, just as Robeson’s relatives in the Carolinas spoke the Gullah ‘O, No, John! No!’ and the Welsh ‘David of the White Rock’ in his repertoire, and Martin dialect because they, too, wanted to be themselves. Paul felt he was home. 31 Duberman notes that Robeson included performances of Russian songs arranged by Gretchaninov, the Scottish ‘Turn Yet to Me’ and the Mexican ‘Encantadora Maria’ in his It seems that for Seton, language forms the basis of identity, and there’s evidence that British concerts of that year. 37 Robeson argued that he could interpret folk songs from Robeson also thought of the relationship between language and identity in these terms. around the world because of the fact that he ‘came from a working-class people’. 38 This He was an excellent linguist and in 1951 recalled learning languages in order to sing the fusion of ‘folk’ and ‘class’ results in a view of class identity which is not the product of folk-songs of ‘the African, the Welsh, the Scotch Hebridean, the Russian, Spanish, historical forces, of social position or of active engagement in common cultural practices, Chinese, the Yiddish, Hebrew and others’. 32 There’s actually no evidence that he ever did but is rather a factor determined by race. Robeson argued that he failed learn Welsh. ‘Dafydd y Garreg Wen’ is listed as ‘David of the White Rock’ in his programmes and presumably sung in English; and the final line ‘Ar Hyd y Nos’ is the only to see how a Negro can really feel the sentiments of an Italian or a German, or Welsh heard in his performances of the Welsh tune ‘All Through the Night’. ‘The Welsh a Frenchman, for instance….I believe that one should confine oneself to the art language’ stated Robeson at the Ebbw Vale Eisteddfod in 1958 ‘is a language not to be for which one is qualified. One can only be qualified by understanding, and this trifled with and unless I could be perfect at it I would not attempt to sing in Welsh’ .33 is born in one, not bred. 39

12 | Aneurin Bevan and Paul Robeson: Socialism, Class and Identity National Eisteddfod Lecture 2010 | 13 Nature (‘born in one’) it seems is more significant than nurture (‘bred’) in the making of a cultural sensibility, a view that Robeson reiterated unequivocally in 1934.

I would rather sing Russian folk-songs than German grand-opera – not because it is necessarily better music, but because it is more instinctive and Cla ss and Identity less reasoned music. It is in my blood. 40

The key constituents of character and culture seem to be pre-determined ‘in my blood’. In an interview of 1958, recorded a few months before his visit to the Eisteddfod, What I wish to suggest, at the most general level, is that Aneurin Bevan and Paul Robeson suggested that his particular fusion of class and ethnic identity emerged as a Robeson belong to two different traditions within socialist thought. As I’ve noted, there result of his experiences in Wales: is a cultural awareness of national difference within Bevan’s thought, and the concept of class is important for Robeson. But Bevan’s main emphasis is on fighting economic And I went down into the mines with the workers, and they explained to me, that inequality by means of a class-based politics. Robesons’s primary emphasis is on ‘Paul, you may be successful here in England, but your people suffer like ours. We combating racism by securing rights by means of an identity-based politics. Class is of are poor people, and you belong to us. You don’t belong to the bigwigs here in this most importance for Bevan. Identity is of most importance for Robeson. country.’ And so today I feel as much at home in the Welsh valley as I would in In thinking about these figures in these terms we may generalize by stating my own Negro section in any city in the United States. I just did a broadcast by that the intellectual tradition to which Robeson belongs has dominated literary and transatlantic cable to the Welsh valley, a few weeks ago, and here was the first cultural analysis in the last twenty years. With the growth of post-colonial theory, understanding that the struggle of the Negro people, or of any people, cannot be feminist theory and so on, the Left’s traditional emphasis on the redistribution of power by itself – that is, the human struggle. So I was attracted by and met many and capital has been replaced by the growing demand for recognition of minority rights members of the Labour Party, and my politics embraced also the common and respect for differences based on race, gender, sexuality and language. This shift struggle of all oppressed people, including especially the working masses – from the redistribution of capital to the respect for identities has been described by specifically the laboring people of all the world. That defines my philosophy. It’s a Nancy Fraser as a shift ‘from redistribution to recognition’. 43 joining one. We are a working people, a laboring people – the Negro people. 41 This shift can be traced in the political and cultural criticism of another son of south east Wales, the critic Raymond Williams. Williams’s career making volume This passage is striking due to the apparent tension between the declaration of ethnic Culture and Society appeared, conveniently enough for this lecture’s purposes, in 1958. particularity – ‘the Negro people’ – and an internationalist, universalist commitment to ‘the The study was conceived as an analysis of the changing relationship between culture human struggle’. It is not clear, however, that Robeson would see this as a tension at all. and society since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and is informed throughout He was deeply inspired by early Bolshevik policy and by Stalin’s The National and Colonial by the author’s awareness of the working class’s struggle to create a common Question . In spite of later attempts to curb internal, minority nationalist impulses in the democratic culture available to everyone by means of an equitable and just education Soviet Union, the earlier policies inspired by Lenin and Stalin laid the groundwork for a system. Unlike a seat in the House of Lords, one cannot inherit this ‘common culture’, flourishing of national culture that was not stopped by the repeal of cultural support. It was, for it must be created and reinforced by society itself. Williams had hoped to see the according to Kate Baldwin, the ‘transnational formations of a Leninist tradition’ that creation of a society ‘whose values are at once commonly created and criticised, and Robeson strove to foster in his performances of national folk songs. 42 where the discussions and exclusions of class may be replaced by the reality of What occurs from the 1930s onwards, then, is that Robeson attempted to common and equal membership’. 44 His emphasis was on social class within a British fuse his early commitment to African American cultural distinctiveness with his context, and Williams admitted in 1979 that he wasn’t particularly conscious of his increasing awareness of the importance of class consciousness. This fusion of ‘race’ and Welsh background when writing Culture and Society . Britain is his focus, and he argued ‘class’ allowed the son of a slave who had become bourgeois through the success of his in favour of a common culture based on the co-operative social values of the working concert performances to identify with working people, due to his membership of an class, which could be contrasted with the individualistic values of the upper classes in oppressed race. That is, even if you are middle class yourself, you can claim to be society. From the seventies onwards, however, Williams became increasingly aware of working class because you come from ‘a working class people’. the cultural and linguistic diversity of Britain, and became more self-consciously aware

14 | Aneurin Bevan and Paul Robeson: Socialism, Class and Identity National Eisteddfod Lecture 2010 | 15 of his Welshness. 45 In a 1971 review of Ned Thomas’s The Welsh Extremist , Williams In general, the purpose of a movement based on a minority identity is to placed the campaigns of the Welsh Language Society within the context of Black maintain and respect difference. The purpose of a movement based on the interests of Power, feminism, and campaigns for civil rights in Northern Ireland. 46 He argued in the working class is to eradicate difference. 1983 that the challenge for the Left would be to unite the feminist, environmental, And this, I suggest, is what explains Aneurin Bevan’s attitudes towards minority nationalist, and peace movements. 47 The question that arises is to what nationalism and towards Wales. The common nationalist dismissals of Bevan are extent are these movements compatible with one another? To what extent is a politics oversimplified: he did not suffer from an inferiority complex regarding his Welshness, based on working class consciousness compatible with a struggle for gay rights, or the nor was he an ‘Uncle Tom’ when it came to the Welsh language and its culture. He was rights of minority language speakers? Are these movements compatible with one not an uncritical admirer of Englishness or Britishness. Bevan was a politician from the another, or are they incompatible movements drawing upon competing solidarities? 48 Marxist tradition, his political views infused by the values of the working class The trend today is to think of ‘class’ as an ‘identity’, compatible with other community in which he was bred. At the root of his politics was a desire to eliminate identities based on ethnicity, gender and language. ‘Gender, class and race’ are terms differences, to eliminate inequality, to eliminate the barriers to open communication that appear in the titles of hundreds of academic books and articles. However, class is and to the development of a truly democratic society. His attitudes towards not an identity. Rather, it is a way of describing an individual’s position within the nationalism and towards minority languages derived from this world view, and were economic structure of capitalism. The political logic of a movement based on class is consistent with his wider perspectives. fundamentally different to the logic of a political movement based on identity. If his emphasis on the elimination of inequality explains Bevan’s attitude The whole point of a class based politics is to eliminate economic and social towards nationalism, it also sheds light on the reason why many minority nationalists divides, leading eventually to the elimination of the very class that gave rise to the adopted conservative positions and located themselves on the political Right. For movement in the first place. The whole point of a politics based on identity is to Saunders Lewis, as for W. B. Yeats before him in Ireland, the desire to protect and encourage society to respect difference, to foster cultural distinctions and to establish maintain cultural traditions went hand in hand with a desire to maintain and protect rights for the minority or group in question based on its particular needs. the social structures that sustained those cultures. From the viewpoint of Saunders Today, where an emphasis on respecting cultural distinctiveness has Lewis’s medievalism, it was desirable that hierarchical social structures should be replaced an emphasis on redistributing wealth, we tend to think of fairness in terms of preserved. As Richard Wyn Jones has noted, Lewis defined nationalism in social rights: the rights of citizens to avoid discrimination based on language or race or ‘contradistinction to socialism, and in opposition to it’. 50 According to Saunders Lewis, gender. This is to some extent an American influence on our political discourse, and ‘The National Party of Wales has a political philosophy which is based on the has resulted in a great deal of innovative work and important social developments. But historical traditions of Wales and is wholly at odds with the philosophies of English this emphasis on identity has resulted in the marginalisation of class as a means of Socialism, and of the Socialism of Marx’. 51 More recently, this is broadly the position understanding social structures. The political logic of a movement based on ‘class’ is adopted by Simon Brooks in his engaging collection of essays Yr Hawl i Oroesi [The very different to that of a movement based on the struggle for identity. Right to Survive], where the former editor of the journal Barn argues that Welsh For example, a class based politics does not generally ask us to respect the socialist governments are inevitably weak and ineffectual in relation to the Welsh poor, to tolerate their cultural difference, to recognise their difference, or to celebrate language. 52 ‘In a healthy country’ argues Brooks ‘Conservatism would be supportive their culture. We do not tend to wish that the children of the poor remain poor of the language - because it is in favour of keeping things, and because it believes that themselves. While people deserve the same respect regardless of background, I doubt some values (such as the language or soul of a nation) are timeless... Unlike Socialism whether we believe poverty deserves the same respect as wealth in the way that the with its prejudice against all such abstractions’. 53 From this viewpoint, the essence of speakers of Welsh deserve the same respect as speakers of English, or that an African socialism is to eliminate differences, whereas conservatism aims to ‘keep for the American deserves the same respect as an Irish-American. A politics of identity is generations to come the purity that used to be’. Aneurin Bevan would have agreed. based on the belief that I'm not inferior or subordinate because I am a Welshman, or a But he would have argued the opposite position, believing that the elimination of Jew or an African American. But inferiority and subordination are the basis of poverty, economic injustices was far more important than trying to defend some unclear and the awareness that a whole social class is being exploited by others and therefore abstractions existing in the minds of conservative nationalists. kept inferior and subordinated forms the basis of class politics. The poor are Does it therefore follow that cultural nationalists should abandon the Left? subordinate within an economic structure. The goal of class politics is not to eliminate For Paul Robeson, as I have previously noted, there was no necessary hostility between the perception that the poor are inferior, but to eliminate poverty itself. 49 minority nationalism and socialism. Robeson believed that the African American

16 | Aneurin Bevan and Paul Robeson: Socialism, Class and Identity National Eisteddfod Lecture 2010 | 17 struggle for civil rights would have a very limited impact if it did not progress and following her death he suffers a surrealist nightmare in which ‘Len’s heart thrilled. simultaneously with a struggle for economic equality. If racial discrimination has to be He laughed happily and pressed the face of his sister to his lips. The short stiff hair on maintained by law, economic discrimination needs no legal support, for it can be it hurt him. He looked again and found he had been kissing Evan the Overman’s son’. 56 sustained by the market. Indeed, capitalism encourages us to discriminate on the basis In a discussion of nationalism in literature the critic Marc Shell draws attention to the of wealth. I promised my daughter Lowri that I’d refer to the American cartoon The ubiquity of incest as a theme. The fear of contamination and of mixing blood lines Simpsons at some point during this lecture, and perhaps some of you have seen the which can be seen to lie within the nationalist unconsciousness manifests itself in episode when the mother, Marge, goes to ‘the rich people’s mall’ where the narratives of incest within novels which purport to depict the ‘national family’. 57 advertisement reads ‘our prices discriminate because we can’t’. If a campaign against Keeping things in the family is a sure way of keeping the blood line pure. It racism leads to a situation where the state can no longer discriminate on the basis of seems to me that Shell’s analysis can be adapted for narratives of class. Lewis Jones’s race, then as long as the majority of African Americans remain poor the market can Cwmardy is not haunted by a fear of national contamination, but of the contamination discriminate instead. It is therefore clear that there are times when it is imperative that and weakening of a class. The concept of class has become an identity, functioning the struggle for economic equality coincides with the struggle for minority rights. The similarly to national identity; it must be protected and kept pure. Class consciousness problem in Paul Robeson’s political thought is that ethnic identity and class is transformed into class identity. In Cwmardy and We Live , Lewis Jones seems consciousness become fused. These are two categories, as I've already argued, which unconsciously to have exposed the factors within Communist ideology which led to the follow divergent political logics. The result of the merger between the economic category atrocities of Stalin and Pol Pot. The ideal of a classless world can be transformed easily of class and the cultural category of identity, is that ‘class’ becomes an ‘identity’ . into an ideal of a world that requires the destruction of other classes. The goal ceases We can turn to the novels of the Rhondda Communist, Lewis Jones, Cwmardy to be the assimilation of all into a classless utopia, but the elimination of those of other and We Live , to see the dangerous implications of this merger of ‘class’ and ‘identity’. classes. At its worst, the fusion of class and identity leads to a situation where there’s Jones’s novels document the making of the Welsh working class, and tend to be treated no real difference between ethnic cleansing and class cleansing. I would not wish to as semi realistic reflections of Welsh industrial history and a celebration of the working argue that Communism inevitably leads to such atrocities, any more than I would argue class struggle. But under the surface of these novels’ fairly conventional realism, lies a that nationalism inevitably leads to ethnic cleansing. But the historical record suggests dark and troubling political subconscious. In Cwmardy and We Live , the workers have no that Robeson’s desired fusion of class and identity is problematic. choice but to stay true to the aspirations of their class, and those who deviate from the Union line are likely to be punished. Will Smallbear is forced to join the Federation, and the response to his question ‘do the federashon mean that workman have got to fight against workman?’ is ‘Yes, when a few stubborn workmen go against what is good for the majority’. 54 There is no room for individualism in this world, and in fact no room for anyone who fails to espouse the Federation’s ideals. The shopkeeper ‘Evans Cardi’ is a middle class character whose son, Ron, turns his back on his family, renounces his Christian faith, and joins the Communist Party. In a stomach churning scene Evans Cardi responds by taking a razor to his wife’s neck before proceeding to hang himself. 55 If poverty is largely responsible for his suicide, there is also the suggestion that the petit-bourgeoisie’s time is running out. And indeed there is little future for any character who leaves the confines of the working class community. Towards the beginning of Cwmardy , Jane, the sister of the main character Len, embarks on a relationship with Evan, the son of the mine’s overman. She becomes pregnant, but there’s no future for this product of two classes for mother and child die during childbirth. This incident sparks Len’s sense of injustice and fires his desire to become a Communist leader who ultimately loses his life fighting Franco’s fascist soldiers in Spain. Jane’s death is made particularly harrowing by the closeness of her relationship with Len, which borders on incest. Len snuggles up to his sister’s body in early scenes,

18 | Aneurin Bevan and Paul Robeson: Socialism, Class and Identity National Eisteddfod Lecture 2010 | 19 Conclusio n References

So where does that leave us? The tendency in mainstream contemporary political 1 Tribune , 15 August. Quoted in Michael Foot, 84 – 89, and the same author’s Prif Weinidog Aneurin Bevan 1945-1960 (London: Davis- Answyddogol Cymru: Cofiant Huw T. Edwards discourse is to think of class and identity as categories that belong to the past. We’ve Poyntner, 1973) 608. (Talybont: Y Lolfa, 2007) chapters 7 and 8. moved beyond the divisive politics of class and the exclusionary politics of identity in 2 Western Mail , 4 August 1958, 6. 15 R. Merfyn Jones and Ioan Rhys Jones, ‘Labour and the slick, civic Wales of today. But the Brazilian thinker Roberto Unger suggests that the 3 Merthyr Express , Saturday, August 9, 1958, 6. the Nation’ in D. Tanner, C. Williams a D. Hopkin contemporary Left should ‘not only respond to the universal aspiration of the ordinary 4 Western Mail , 4 August 1958, 6. eds, The Labour Party in Wales (Cardiff: University working man and woman for more opportunity by which to raise him and herself up’, 5 Merthyr Express , Saturday, August 9, 1958, 6. of Wales Press, 2000) 258. Robert Griffiths, ‘The 6 For a fascinating analysis of stuttering see Other Aneurin Bevan’ in Janet Davies ed., Compass but should also ‘turn democratic polities, market economies and free civil societies into Marc Shell, Stutter (Cambridge MA; Harvard Points: The First 100 Issues of Planet (Cardiff: 58 machines for developing distinct and novel forms of life’. That is, the general University Press, 2005). University of Wales Press, 1993) 127 – 132. aspirations for social equality, and for a distinctive identity, should underpin any 7 Merthyr Express , Saturday, August 9, 1958, 6. 16 R. Merfyn Jones and Ioan Rhys Jones, 258. progressive movement on the Left today. In this respect Bevan and Robeson continue 8 See the chapters by Gwenno Ffrancon and 17 Saunders Lewis, Cerddi , ed. R. Geraint Gruffydd to speak to our moment. I would like to suggest in closing that Aneurin Bevan and Paul myself in Daniel G. Williams ed. Canu Caeth: (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1992), p. 10. Y Cymry a’r Affro-Americaniaid (Llandysul: Translated by Gwyn Thomas in Jones and Robeson both took right steps, but in the wrong directions. 59 Gomer, 2010). Also my forthcoming Thomas, eds. Presenting Saunders Lewis (Cardiff: Bevan was right to separate his national identity from the politics of class. But Transatlantic Exchange: African Americans and the University of Wales Press, 1973) 177. Saunders he was wrong to then devalue the struggles for the continued existence of Welsh Welsh (University of Wales Press). Lewis a Kate Roberts, Annwyl Kate, Annwyl distinctiveness as manifested in the spheres of language and culture. Robeson was 9 Dai Smith, Aneurin Bevan and the World of South Saunders , ed. Dafydd Ifans (Aberystwyth: right to place his people’s culture and their civil rights at the heart of his socialist vision, Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1993) National Library of Wales, 1992)16. 10. See also Dai Smith, ‘In Place of Wales: A 18 Alun Ffred Jones, Y Cyfryngau Wedi’r Cynulliad but was wrong to fuse ‘class’ with ‘identity’. Class and identity do not follow the same Coda’ in Wales: A Question for History (Talybont: Lolfa, 1999) 16. My translation. political logic and it is therefore crucial, at a conceptual level, that they be kept apart. (Penybont: Seren, 1999) 191 – 205. 19 See the series of volumes edited by Hywel Teifi The challenge for the Left in Wales is therefore to fight two specific battles 10 T.J. Davies, Paul Robeson (Abertawe: Edwards, Cyfres y Cymoedd (Gomer). simultaneously: Bevan’s battle for economic justice, and Robeson’s struggle for the Christopher Davies, 1981) 194 – 95. 20 Dai Smith, Aneurin Bevan and the World of South rights of minorities. My translation. Wales , 258. 11 Raymond Williams, ‘Community’ in Who Speaks 21 Ibid. 189 for Wales: Nation, Culture, Identity , ed. Daniel 22 Ibid. 197 Williams (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 23 Merthyr Express , Saturday, August 9, 1958, 6. 2003) 27 – 33. 24 Aneurin Bevan, ‘The Claim of Wales: A 12 Gwynfor Evans, Aros Mae (Abertawe: Gwasg Statement’. First published in Tribune . Re-printed John Penry, 1971) 296. My translation. in Wales: The National Magazine , Vol VII: No. 25 13 Angharad Tomos, Hiraeth am Yfory: David (Spring, 1947) 151 – 153. Thomas a Mudiad Llafur Gogledd Cymru 25 Quoted by Harri Webb in ‘Against Imperialism’, (Llandysul: Gomer, 2002) 240. No Half Way House , ed. Meic Stephens 14 The most convincing accounts of Bevan’s (Talybont: Y Lolfa, 1997) 98. attitudes are to be found in Gwyn Jenkins, 26 Ibid. 98. Thanks to Nicholas Jones for this ‘Keeping up with the Macs; The Devolution reference. See his article ‘Supercharging the Debate of 1957-9’, Planet: The Welsh Struggle: Models of Nationalist Victory in the Internationalist 82 (August / Septemebr 1990) Poetry of Harri Webb’, Welsh Writing in English:

20 | Aneurin Bevan and Paul Robeson: Socialism, Class and Identity National Eisteddfod Lecture 2010 | 21 A Yearbook of Critical Essays . Ed. Tony Brown. Review II , 3 (May / June 2000) 107 – 120. Vol. 9 (2004) 102 – 122. 44 Raymond Williams, ‘Culture and Revolution: a 27 Quoted by Dai Smith, Wales! Wales? (London: response’ in Terry Eagleton a Brian Wicker (eds) George Allen and Unwin, 1984) 132. From Culture to Revolution (London: Sheed and 28 Karl Marx, ‘The British Rule in India’, in Marx Ward, 1968) 308. and Engels , Basic Writings on Politics and 45 See Daniel Williams, ‘Cymdeithas a Chenedl Philosophy , ed. Lewis Feuer (Garden City, NY: yng Ngwaith Raymond Williams’, Taliesin 97 Anchor Books, 1959) 480. (Gwanwyn 1997) 55 – 76. 29 Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan 1945 – 1960, 394 - 6. 46 Raymond Williams, Who Speaks for Wales , 4. 30 Martin Duberman, Paul Robeson: A Biography 47 Raymond Williams, Towards 2000 (London: (1988. New York: New Press, 1989) 228. Chatto and Windus, 1983). 31 Marie Seton, Paul Robeson (London : Dobson, 48 I’m returning here to a question that I discussed 1958) 121. with Ned Thomas a Dai Smith in ‘The Exchange: 32 Robeson, ‘The People of America are the Power’ Raymond Williams’, Planet: The Welsh (1951), Paul Robeson Speaks , ed., Philip S. Foner Internationalist (Summer 2009) 45 – 66. (London: Quartet Books, 1978) 271. 49 My thinking here is influenced by Walter Benn 33 ‘Robeson and Bevan Get Big Welcome’, Michaels, ‘Plots Against America: Neoliberalism Western Mail , 4th August 1958. and Antiracism’, American Literary History 18.2 34 Charles L. Blockson, ‘Paul Robeson: A Bibliophile (2006) 288 – 302. in Spite of Himself’, in J. C. Stewart ed., Paul 50 Richard Wyn Jones, Rhoi Cymru’n Gyntaf: Robeson: Artist and Citizen (New Brunswick: Syniadaeth Plaid Cymru (Caerdydd: Gwasg Rutgers University Press, 1998) 235 – 250. Prifysgol Cymru, 2007) 87. 35 Paul Robeson, Here I Stand (1958. Boston, 51 Quoted in T. Robin Chapman, Un Bywyd o Blith Beacon Press, 1988) 36. Nifer: Cofiant Saunders Lewis (Llandysul: Gomer, 36 Paul Robeson, ‘How I Discovered Africa’ (1953), 2006) 275. Paul Robeson Speaks , 352. Also Here I Stand , 36. 52 Simon Brooks, Yr Hawl i Oroesi: Ysgrifau 37 Programme for concert held at the Majestic Gwleidyddol a Diwylliannol (Llanrwst: Gwasg Cinema, Wrexham, Sunday March 25, 1934. Carreg Gwalch, 2009) 117. Copy in the Paul Robeson Collection at the 53 Ibid. 118. Miners Library, University of Wales Swansea. 54 Lewis Jones, Cwmardy (1937) and We Live 38 Robeson, Here I Stand , 54. (1939) reprinted as one volume in The Library 39 Robeson, ‘Robeson Spurns Music He Doesn’t of Wales, Cwmardy and We Live (Aberteifi: Understand’ (1933), Paul Robeson Speaks , 85. Parthian, 2005) 297. 40 Robeson, ‘I Want to be African’ (1934), Paul 55 Lewis Jones, We Live , 617 – 620. Robeson Speaks , 90. 56 Jones, Cwmardy , 82. 41 Robeson, ‘Pacifica Radio Interview’ (1958), Paul 57 Marc Shell, Children of the Earth: Literature, Robeson Speaks , 453. It seems that Robeson is Politics and Nationhood (Oxford: Oxford following the common, if unfortunate, practice University Press, 1993) 4. of referring to Britain as England. 58 Roberto Mangabeira Unger, The Left Alternative 42 Kate Baldwin, Beyond the Color Line and the Iron (London: Verso, 2005) 51. Curtain (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002) 59 For ‘right steps in the wrong direction’ see Slavoj 211. Žižek’s discussion of Heidegger in In Defense of 43 Nancy Fraser, ‘Rethinking Recognition’, New Left Lost Causes (London: Verso, 2008) 95 – 153.

22 | Aneurin Bevan and Paul Robeson: Socialism, Class and Identity