American Labour Diplomacy and Cold War Britain

Abstract

movement from behind the scenes, and generally subjecting the country to a campaign of insidious ideological subjugation. While this view -which in its essentials has been repeated in most commentary on the subject since 3 -might have the comforting effect of pinning the blame for unwonted developments in postwar British labour on a baleful external agency, it does not truthfully represent what was in fact an extremely complex historical situation. For one thing, it oversimplifies the British response to the American campaign, which far from being one of dumb subordination, involved a variety of reactions, including active co-operation, creative appropriation and outright resistance. For another -and this is the main point developed later -it exaggerates the concertedness and effective-46

Labor repertoires, neoliberal regimes and US hegemony: what ‘deviant’ Italy tells us of OECD unions’ paths to power

“…But as historians of US intervention in OECD countries attest, the process of new boundary drawing focusing on the party system plus the projection of anti-political union norms were evident all over Europe (cf. Eisenberg, 1983, 1996; Weiler, 1988; Wilford, 2002, 2003). To greater and lesser degrees, depending on the American government’s perception of a country’s strategic importance vis-à-vis the Cold War, all over the OECD Marshall Plan and other forms of multi- and bi-lateral aid became the means to boosting non-communist party-governments and unions; international certification by new international planning bodies often depended on Cold War policies; and the FTUC funded and the ICFTU certified new unions and spread the gospel of free trade unionism.…”

“…There is an extensive historical literature on US unionists' Cold War 'internationalism', their deepening alliance with the US government, and their splitting of national and international organizations of labor, for example,Carew (1984Carew ( , 1987Carew ( , 1996Carew ( , 1998,Filippelli (1989Filippelli ( , 1992,Lewis (2004), MacShane (1992),Romero (1992),Van Goetham (2006),Weiler (1981Weiler ( , 1988,Wilford (2002Wilford ( , 2003.Labor repertoires, neoliberal regimes and US hegemony 251…”