Welsh Journals

Continually, one has the feeling that much in the book is out of proportion. Personalities are overshadowed by unnecessarily detailed discussions, and the author adds little to our understanding of Mabon, Brace, Hartshorn and the other miners' leaders. There is little discussion of political matters in a period when trade unions were becoming increasingly political, and the industrial views of trades union leaders were being shaped by political influences. A quarter of the book is taken up with a discussion of the 1910 Cambrian Combine dispute, but, here again, the emphasis is all wrong. Page after page is given over to the well- worn Churchill debate, yet we are only given a single paragraph on The Miners' Next Step. As Dr. J. E. Williams pointed out in his volume on the Derbyshire Miners, Mr. Page Arnot tends to underestimate the influence of the syndicalists and to treat them all too briefly. A book of this character leads to consideration of the form which trade union histories should take. It seems clear that they will be of limited value unless the union under study is seen in terms of the social, political and industrial forces which gave rise to its formation and subsequent growth. As far as South Wales in the early twentieth century is concerned, the student of labour history is faced with the task of analyzing a complex social structure, a full pattern of inter-class relation- ships, and a detailed picture of local variation. The emergence of a trade union must then be directly related to the findings of this investigation. If the union can be seen as an expression of the tensions in society, it must also be seen as part of the very fabric of society. It fulfilled many social needs, and through its hierarchy of elective posts, full-time officials and members of Parliament it afforded the most obvious channel of working class improvement. Putting a union in its social context means more than just prefacing a work with a largely statistical attempt at social analysis. Rather, it involves a full analysis of the role and function of trade union membership and leadership. Mr. Page Arnot, of course, has chosen more limited terms of reference, and within these he has written a useful and interesting book. What is needed now is to put his story back into its South Wales context. This can only be done by the use of more recent historical techniques and by an attempt to convey more of the colour of what was the most prosperous and most lively period in the history of the South Wales coalfield. PETER STEAD Swansea THE DOWNFALL OF THE LIBERAL PARTY, 1914-1935. By Trevor Wilson. Collins, 1966. Pp. 416. 42s. In 1926 Harold Laski wrote to an American friend to express his regret at the eclipse of the traditional Liberal party. Although a Labour