Welsh Journals

new Miners' Charter that accompanied nationalization in 1945 form the legacy to the life-work of Arthur Horner. This book is primarily an account of Horner's industrial rather than of his political activities. Of the latter there is disappointingly (or perhaps significantly) little in this book. The few references to Horner's varied experiences within the Communist Party are defensive and apologetic, and contrast strikingly with the assurance, almost the arrogance, of his account of his work as a miner's leader. The famous episode concerning the deviation of "Hornerism" in 1930-1, when Horner was publicly arraigned by the Politburo for endangering the thesis of "class against class" by adhering to "trade union legalism", is dismissed in an embarrassed page and a half, partly devoted to assuring us that he has never had a fairer hearing. Horner protests too much, and readers must turn to Mr. Pelling's history of the Communist Party for a fuller account. There is a regrettably brief reference to the important Rhondda by-election of 1933, in which Horner was defeated by his one-time fellow-Syndicalist, W. H. Mainwaring. Two pages dispose of Horner's reaction to the convolutions of Soviet foreign policy between 1939 and 1941, with Horner's genuine indignation at Russian betrayal of the anti-Fascist front blurred here by a conventional attack on the record of the Chamberlain government. Horner does deal at greater length with Mr. Kruschev's denunciation of the "errors" of Stalinism at the Twentieth Party Congress and with the suppression of the rising in Hungary in 1956 but in each case Horner is primarily concerned to explain, if not to explain away, his continuing adherence to the Communist Party, in the face of all logical and moral consistency. The rebelliousness of Arthur Horner, within the straitjacket of Marxist ideology, like the docility of many lesser men, helps to indicate the complete failure of the Communist Party to establish a substantial foothold in Britain, despite all the social turmoil of the past forty years. But it is as an account of industrial relations that this autobiography is of most value and in this connection Horner's Welsh background is central to an understanding of his career and his ideas. Readers of Morgannwg will find here some interesting clues to the social and political development of industrial Glamorgan, the individuality of its society and its partial sense of insulation from outside movements. Horner spent virtually his entire career in Wales like Lloyd George he never moved out, and like Lloyd George he remained in some sense a provincial. More than once Horner refers proudly to the tradition of working-class radicalism in Merthyr, running down from the rising of 1831, through the "great election" of 1868 to Keir Hardie's triumph in 1900 1; it is clear that, far from these references being merely sentimental, this radical background provided the mainspring to Horner's political philosophy. Like A. J. Cook, Horner's 1 Readers of Morgannwg should consult two excellent recent articles that deal with this theme: Gwyn A. Williams, "The Making of Radical Merthyr, 1800-36", Welsh History Review, vol 1, no 2. (1961), 161-92 and Ieuan Gwynedd Jones, "The Election of 1868 in Merthyr Tydfil", Journal of Modern History, vol. XXXIII, no 3. (Sept., 1961) 270-86.