Welsh Journals

Of course, we know the expected conflagration never materialised but could not the Russian example have been followed in England ? Was there no war exhaustion among Britain's workers? Was there no starvation? Were they all super patriots determined to fight on? Did not some yearn for the revolution as the prelude to peace, and others yearn for peace as the only way of averting bloody revolution? Were Mrs. Webb's grim fore- bodings of working class revolution mere fantasy or was there cause for her concern? In early September 1918, with the metropolitan police on strike, Sylvia Pankhurst wrote in the Dreadnought, 'Spirit of Petrograd After this anything can happen'. You will not find the answer to these questions in Professor Robbins's new book. His concern is with that comfortable group of politicians (main- ly disillusioned radical Liberals), middle class and aristocratic intellectuals, leavened by the odd socialist and labour leader. It would be easy to censure Robbins's book on the grounds that he is exclusively concerned with a study of 'drawing-room' pacifism, and virtually ignores the work of those historians who are concerned with the denizens of London's East End rather than with those whose villas occupied the purlieus of Highgate and Hampstead. This impression might be enhanced by the occasional uncharacteristically lazy reference to the research of other historians, as on p.9 (though it is not titled) to Richard Price's, An Imperial War and the British Working Class (London, 1972). But this is altogether to miss the point. Substantially this book is, or rather was, Professor Robbins's Oxford doctoral thesis. When completed thirteen years ago it was a unique pioneering work. But tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis, and many sections of the book have been overtaken by the work of other scholars, for example, Marvin Swartz's, The Union of Democratic Control in British Politics (Oxford, 1971). Nevertheless, where others have ploughed more deeply they have not substantially altered the landscape as mapped by Robbins. One small complaint, and that is, an occasionally idiosyncratic bibliography of printed sources (there are some strange omissions) has a list of secondary works that includes no item published since early 1972. Has there been an unconscionable delay by the publishers ? It is a pity this book was not published a decade ago. The charm and value of this work to all students of the period is that Professor Robbins's skill as scholar and writer reduces a complex pattern of conflicting events and personalities into an easily comprehended and attractive narrative account. I find this book both more stimulating and better written than the author's earlier highly-praised study of Sir Edward Grey. A. J. A. MORRIS Ulster College, Belfast THE GENERAL STRIKE. By G. A. Phillips. Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1976. Pp. 388. £ 7.95. Dr. Phillips has clearly written the standard history of the general strike, and it is unlikely that his book will soon be superseded. It is thorough, dispassionate and sensible, written substantially from primary sources and