Knights Across the Atlantic: The Knights of Labor in Britain and Ireland by Steven Parfitt (review)

My name is evoked often in Steven Parfitt's Knights Across the Atlantic, but my admiration for this book has nothing to do with that. In fact, one of Parfitt's contributions is that he addresses lacunae in my work. So let me be among the first to congratulate him on an effort that casts him as a leading light in the next generation of Knights of Labor (kol) scholars, alongside researchers such as Joseph Gertis and Alex Gourevitch.

Gaze carefully into the late 19th century and kol footprints are everywhere. Sometimes, though, the trail is akin to tracks in melting snow – in part because of disorganization or kol secrecy codes, but in large measure because the Knights were deliberately marginalized. For the left, Knights flunked ideological purity tests, for mainstream politicians they were too radical, and for future trade federations they were non-pragmatic. Because the kol faded, it was easy for its detractors to toss it into history's rubbish bin. Parfitt wisely rejects such thinking and views the kol's United Kingdom experience through lenses such as Marcel Van der Linden's thoughts on transnational labour movements and Kim Voss's assertion that American exceptionalism was not part of the 1880s labour landscape. Borders are often fictive and they were especially so in the late 19th century. As Parfitt notes, workers such as potters and glassmakers freely crossed national boundaries, far away labour markets determined local wage rates, victories and defeats elsewhere cheered or disheartened workers, and organizational identities were fluid. The last of these also contributes to the kol's elusiveness. British and Irish Knights left tracks, but what was the boot heel's imprint? kol? Fabian? Social Democratic? Irish Land League? Liberal? Trade unionist? Scottish Land Restoration League? In many cases, the only answer is "yes." One must appreciate this to grasp the subtlety of arguments Parfitt makes later in his book, including that that the kol was part of the new unionism of the late 1880s and simultaneously in opposition to it, was both outside and inside Liberal-Labour alliances, and future Labour parties were both like and unlike the Knights.

He begins his UK study of the kol, as one must, by consulting Henry Pelling, who until now best unspooled the various threads followed by British and Irish Knights. Parfitt went on to scour archives, official records, and newspapers in both Britain and the United States. He addresses the question of why an American movement found purchase on British soil; in 1880 just 4 per cent of British and Irish workers were organized and their unions were viewed "as conservative and aloof or … overly cautious." (30) Small wonder that, for many, "the Knights represented the future of trade unionism." (29)

The efforts of Staffordshire potters to form a kol local in 1882 proved a false start, but as in New Zealand and elsewhere, UK Knights gained momentum in the late 1880s and early 1890s, even as the North American movement waned. At least 74 local assemblies formed in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland – eight more than noted in Jonathan Garlock's database. Many of these had no official number, another challenge for kol scholars. In truth, no one knows how many Knights there were anywhere, only that the often-cited 1886 high water mark of 729,000 is grossly understated. Parfitt reckons that some 20,000 British workers passed through the kol or – depending upon where one wishes to draw organizational borders – perhaps as many as 40,000. Would anyone be shocked if future research revises the figure upward? Numbers alone demonstrate the necessity of removing the kol from history's margins and looking more carefully at its contributions, inspirations, and pitfalls. Parfitt has much to say on all three subjects and some of it topples older assumptions.

The kol's contributions across the Atlantic extended far beyond workplace disputes. Solidarity is the Holy Grail of labour movements and the kol...