|
|
|
Book Review
| Jacqueline Dickenson, Renegades and Rats: Betrayal and the Remaking of Radical Organisations in Britain and Australia, MUP Academic Monograph Series, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria, 2006. pp. x + 269. $49.95 paper.
|
| The Academic Monograph Series is a worthwhile initiative of Melbourne University Press to bring to publication research that might not otherwise make it in the increasingly circumscribed world of commercial non-fiction book publishing. As with others in this series, this book brings to accessibility work originally produced as a PhD thesis. As the author explains, she was drawn to examine the area of 'rats and renegades', and the role that betrayal plays in the maintenance of solidarity in British and Australian Labour/Labor history, through her study of H.H. Champion. Champion was drawn to socialism, and away from his aristocratic and military background, but was to become reviled as a traitor to the labour movement in Britain and Australia. Initially active in the Marxist-oriented Social Democratic Federation in Britain, and accused of sedition as a result of the Trafalgar Square riot of 1886, Champion was to come under suspicion in the British labour movement for his 'freelance activities, erratic behaviour and dubious connections'. In particular these related to the 'Tory Gold' affair where he was suspected of encouraging socialist candidates to stand for election in order to split the anti-conservative vote. This was at a time when British Liberals were attempting to contain the trade unions within their political sphere. Champion's anti-trade union 'Tory Socialism' was evident when, during a visit to Australia at the time of the 1890 Maritime Strike, he issued public statements critical of the strikers. Returning to Britain he was denied participation in the emerging Independent Labour Party and returned to Australia. He was active in the Victorian Socialist League and later the Victorian Socialist Party before his death in 1928. |
1
|
|
Champion's eclectic political persona is not just a starting point for this study but also perhaps typical of those who come under its focus, for it is such personalities who are likely to bridle at the constraints imposed by pledges and organisation. The others the author gathers in for this study include the Australian and British labour movement politicians, William Trenwith and John Burns, whose working-class origins provide a different dimension to political betrayal to that of Champion. Both were to serve in Liberal cabinets. To these are added the studies of the British socialist Victor Grayson, and his resistance to the emerging Parliamentary Labor Party, and Adela Pankhurst Walsh, who was to travel from communism through to the right-wing activism of 'Australia First' in the decades between the two world wars. Studies of the role of the political spouse through the writing of Ada Holman (wife of NSW Premier and 1916 conscription schismatic William), together with explorations of political betrayal in language and political fiction, complete the focus of the study. |
2
|
|
Throughout, the author is less interested in the black and white characterisation of those who in the Australian vernacular became known as 'rats' and instead brings to bear a historical analysis of their behaviour through the exploration of the complex notion of 'trust' and the emotional, as well as political, dimensions of betrayal. This is in the context of the labour movements in both countries moving to an organisational 'closure' in their respective parties, ultimately taking shape in structures and formalised pledges. The author also analyses this closure in terms of its gendered and racialised nature with the Labour/Labor persona defined ultimately as white and male. In her conclusion, the author draws attention to the historical 'usefulness' of betrayal in defining solidarity. |
3
|
|
Through the collection assembled, this history sheds further light on the fluidities and ambiguities in the formation of the Labour/Labor parties in Britain and Australia at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth. In so doing it provides particular political insights into hubris and hatred, and the complex interactions between the emotional and the ideological, which is the stuff of political schism. This is particularly so with political radicals who, as the writer points out, operate 'outside society's existing parameters' and are under pressure to define and redefine their identity, and the boundaries between trust and distrust. It was this aspect that this reviewer, a schismatic thrown out of the ALP in the 1980s and involved in the formation of The Greens, found particularly interesting. It is to be hoped that the author might further develop these insights into study of other episodes of conflict and schism in Australian labour movement and radical history. |
4
|
| | | | |
| University of New South Wales |
TONY HARRIS | |
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|