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The article briefly reviews Francis Wheen's "Karl Marx," "Compass Points: Navigating the 20th Century," edited by Robert Chodos; William R. Haycraft's "Yellow Steel: The Story of the Earthmoving Equipment Industry ;" "Rosa Luxembourg: Reflections and Writings," edited by Paul Le Blanc; "No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism," edited by Daniel Guérin, with translation by Paul Sharkey; Lynne Bowen's "Robert Dunsmuir, Laird of the Mines;" Nikolai Bukharin's "How It All Began: The Prison Novel;" Neil Tudiver's "Universities for Sale: Resisting Corporate Control over Canadian Higher Education;" Cynthia R. Commachio's "The Infinite Bonds of Family: Domesticity in Canada, 1850-1940;" Harry Fisher's "Comrades: Tales of a Brigadista in the Spanish Civil War;" Eve Blau's "The Architecture of Red Vienna, 1919-1934;" Alan Kidd's "State, Society, and the Poor in Nineteenth-Century England;" "Nationalism, Labour, and Ethnicity, 1870-1939," edited by Stefan Berger and Angel Smith; and "Tough Girls: Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture," by Sherrie A. Inness.

Labour bureaucracy has long been a subject of interest to sociologists and industrial relations specialists, but it has rarely been examined by labour historians. In Red Flags and Red Tape Mark Leier aims to understand how and why bureaucracy came to dominate an organization that was established to promote greater democracy for the working class. The formative years of the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council, from 1889 to 1910, provide the basis for his study of the interplay between bureaucracy, class, and ideology. Leier sets himself three tasks: he examines the theoretical debates on the labour bureaucracy; he investigates the early history of the VTLC to show how and why bureaucratic structures evolve over time; and he looks at the ideology and personnel of the labour council to try to understand the complex relationship between bureaucrats on the left and right of the political spectrum. He describes the ideology of the bureaucrats (including their attitudes towards gender and race) and how it compares to that of the council's members, and observes that bureaucrats are defined by their power over a movement rather than by their ideology. Finally, since the VTLC was, at different times, dominated by labourists and socialists, Leier explores why different leaders held variant or antagonistic views. Leier concludes that the pressure of trade unionism and the class position of labour officials led to increased bureaucracy and conservatism, even among the socialists of the labour council, and as the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council matured, increased red tape isolated the officials from the membership. --Publisher's description

Extensively revised throughout and including a chapter of new material, Rebel Life chronicles the life of labour organizer, revolutionary, anarchist and labour spy Robert Gosden. Mark Leier's revisions incorporate new information about Gosden's career that has come to light since the first edition was published in 1999. Canada's west coast was rife with upheaval in the second and third decades of the twentieth century. At the centre of the turmoil is Robert Gosden, migrant labourer turned radical activistヨturned police spy. In 1913, he publicly recommends assassinating Premier Richard McBride to resolve theminers' strike. By 1919, he is urging Prime Minister Robert Borden to "disappear" key labour radicals to quelch rising discontent. What happened?Rebel Life plumbs the enigma that was Gosden, but it is much more: an introduction to BC labour history: a trove of rarely seen archival photograph, and sidebars rich with historical arcana; and, with its chapter describing the research that unearthed Gosden's story, Rebel Life is a rich resource for instructors, students, and trade unionists alike.

The article reviews and comments on three books: "Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880-1914" by Tom Goyens, "Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism" by Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt, and "Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism" by Paul McLaughlin.

This paper examines the life of Robert Raglan Gosden, 1882-1961. Gosden was an unskilled worker who joined the Industrial Workers of the World and advocated violent revolution. He took part in the Vancouver Island mining strikes of 1912-1914, and was a key player in the 1916 provincial election scandal. By 1919, however, he was an informant for the RCMP. The paper outlines Gosden's career and analyzes the complex way his class experience shaped his construction of masculinity as well as his radical politics and his later activity as a labour spy.

Examines longstanding conspiracy theories, as well as the reconsideration of forensic evidence given in Susan Mayse's book, "Ginger: The Life and Death of Albert Goodwin," that the British-born miner and labour activist was murdered by Dominion Police on military orders of the federal government in 1918. Concludes that there was no proof of conspiracy nor was there sufficient evidence to show that the police shooter had intent to murder. Argues, however, that this does not absolve the government and business from culpability since they were responsible for taking Canada into an imperial war - and Goodwin, who opposed conscription and the war, was being pursued by the police for evading conscription.

The article reviews the book, "Things That Never Added Up To Me: Songs of Love, War, Theology, Golf and the Great American Railroad," by Al Grierson.

The article reviews and comments on the books, "Hoffa," by William Sloane, and "Labor Shall Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of Labor," by Steven Fraser.

Reprint of an article first published in the Vancouver Sun, entitled "Productivity Latest Stick to Beat Workers." Discusses the debate that it generated.

Briefly describes the newly released documentary, "The Plywood Girls," which focuses on the hundreds of women who worked at the sawmill in Port Alberni, BC, during the Second World War.

Opens with a "labour quote" drawn from Jack London's "War of the Classes" (1905) and promises that this will be a "new and irregular" feature. Reports on varioius forthcoming conferences with labour/work themes.

Brief obituary for Robert Kenney, who died in Toronto on Sept. 28, 1993 at age 88. A bibliophile with a longstanding commitment to Marxist philosophy, Kenney's collections of books, pamphlets, leaflets, and newspapers, as well as the personal papers of A.E. Smith, were donated to the the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. The Memorial University library has acquired 2,200 pamphlets in the English language representing an international spectrum of opinion include socialist, communist (the Canadian Communist Party is well-represented), trade unionist and anti-war. Saskatchewan labour collections assembled by the Saskatchewan provincial archives include union papers, strike files and secondary sources from the 1940s-1980s. The collection is named after Bob Hale, the former Canadian Labour Congress regional director for the Prairies. Takes note of forthcoming conferences and a newsletter on comparative industrial relations published at McMaster University.

Announces that records of the Laurentian University Faculty Association's 1989 strike have been deposited at the university's archives. Also announces a 60-page bibliography of British Columbia's labour history is available that was compiled by graduate students at Simon Fraser University. Briefly reported are recent conferences of the Pacific Northwest Labor History Association on labour and the environment (University of Oregon) and at the University of Northern British Columbia on new directions in BC history.

The Ontario Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Recreation has provided funds for research, documentation, and publication of Ontario workplace heritage. In 1994, grants were disbursed for four projects, including a video production on the thirtieth anniversary of the postal workers' strike, a video and booklet focused on preserving workers' heritage in Ottawa, a video tour guide (entitled Mapping the Workers' City) on Hamilton, and a audio documentary on the history of the Northern Ontario labour movement. Takes note of a forthcoming labour conference at the University of Oregon.

Reports forthcoming conferences and new publications. The Reuther Archives of Labour and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University is to be added to the National Bibliographic System. The Steel Project at University College of Cape Breton has a wide variety of archival resources on steelmaking technology and workers. The files of the Detroit Red Squad have been deposited at the Detroit Public Library, but will remain closed until 2018.

Discusses Rudyard Kipling's poems, "The Cry of Toil," "The Song of the Dead," and "Tommy," which were lampooned by the Industrial Workers of the World. Concludes that, although Kipling was the bard of the British empire, his sympathy for the common soldier influenced the parodies. Both the Kipling and IWW texts are included in the article.

Reports on the Randall B. Smith Collection on the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) at the New York Public Library. Smith (1916-1989) was a civil war veteran who, in addition to collecting a variety of resources, tape-recorded interviews with other veterans. Takes note of forthcoming conferences.

Takes note of forthcoming conferences and the continuation of the Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe with the signing of an agreement between the Amsterdam-based International Marx-Engels Foundation and the Conference of German Academies of the Sciences.

Takes note of forthcoming conferences, the Arkansas History Quarterly, and the annual summer course on comparative labour history taught at the University of Washington.

Takes note of forthcoming conferences, a call for papers, and international research projects on European social democracy in World War I, the Communist International, and the complete works of Mikhail Bakunin.