Welsh Journals

Mr. Bell writes as an English historian and thus with a large measure of detachment. Such detachment has its advantages as well as its disadvantages. Thus, after examining the accusation that the Welsh Church in the last century was an 'alien' church, the author comes to the conclusion that 'it is difficult for an outside observer to see the Church in Wales in the years around 1900 as alien, except by criteria which are excessively rigid and exclusive'. This was a fair judgement for 1900 but not for 1850, and the author is on surer ground when he writes: 'The Church was alien to a particular Welsh way of life at a particular point in time, but it had its roots in the country and was capable of growing more'. This book should be read in conjunction with Dr. Kenneth Morgan's Freedom or Sacrilege? [reviewed, ante IV, No. 3, 318-19] which is an introduction to the history of the disestablishment campaign. Read together, these two historians bring us as close to the heart of this episode in the history of Wales as we are likely to achieve. Perhaps a revised edition of Mr. Bell's excellent book may be necessary if and when the papers of A. G. Edwards, first archbishop of Wales, come to light. E. T. DAVIES Usk HISTORY OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN, VOL. II: THE GENERAL STRIKE, 1925-1926. By James Klugmann. Lawrence and Wishart, 1969. Pp. 373. 70s. This volume of Mr. Klugmann's history of the C.P.G.B. is 'dedicated to the militants who led the great strike of 1926, and to the miners who fought on despite betrayal'. His argument is equally plain-the C.P. alone saw the need for 'preparation', not only to defend working conditions but also 'to turn the defensive into offensive struggles against capitalism'; unfortunately, 'British capitalism was very experienced, crafty, cunning, twisty, manoeuvring, elastic. To prepare the showdown for May 1926 they required not only state machinery. They needed to divide their enemy, the working class to isolate the militants which meant above all the miners, Minority Movement and Communist Party. Dividing the workers was not just a crude process of buying over "agents", but something much subtler'. And if Revolution Man's fight against Boss Man was not unfair enough already, he reminds us that 'Most workers influenced by capitalism are blissfully ignorant of the whole process'. Armed, in support of these contentions, with scissors and liberally supplied with paste, Mr. Klugmann assembles the bulk of his evidence from various conference and committee reports and from familiar secondary sources. The student either of the General Strike or of the C.P.G.B. will find little that is new and not much refreshment to sustain