In the Interest of Democracy: The Rise and Fall of the Early Cold War Alliance Between the American Federation of Labor and the Central Intelligence Agency by Quenby Olmsted Hughes (review)

In theInterestof Democracy is a valuable contribution to the scholarship on the ways in which organized labour in the US was aligned with the American government to oppose communist states, parties, and unions. Hughes examines the development of and tensions in the relationship between the American Federation of Labor’s (afl) international anti-communist arm, the Free Trade Union Committee (ftuc), and the Central Intelligence Agency (cia). The period she focuses on extends from the establishment of the ftuc in 1944 until the early 1950s, which she argues marks the end of their collaboration in anti-communist endeavours internationally. Based on archival collections opened in the mid-1990s, Hughes’ research provides detailed evidence about the nature of this relationship, helping to clarify some of the historical debates and speculation about whether these organizations in fact did work together and how.

In accord with much of the newer scholarship on the American labour movement’s international interventions, Hughes argues that the afl developed its anti-communist program independently of the state and worked with the state due to their mutual interests and needs. She argues that the collaboration of these organizations makes sense if we understand them as allies in anticommunism. Hughes contends that the US government needed the afl more than the afl needed them. She attributes this to the fact that at this time the afl had more contacts and status in Europe than the emerging cia due to the work of the American Jewish Labor Committee in supporting trade union and Jewish refugees during the war. Also, the cia could not just give funds directly to anti-communist workers’ organizations, which she argues the afl was happy to be a conduit for because they saw it as furthering the work of anticommunism.

Hughes organizes the book into three broad sections. The first section explores the context in which the afl developed its commitment to anticommunism and established an arm of the union to pursue this work internationally. The second section looks at the development of the relationship with the cia, using three different projects they worked together on, and the final section narrates the tensions and dissolution of this relationship. The first chapter is huge is scope, from the birth of the afl in the 19th century to the expulsion of Jay Lovestone, a key player in the afl’s anti-communist endeavours internationally, from the Communist Party usa (cpusa) in 1929. In the second and third chapters, Hughes discusses the politics of the afl, how this led to the establishment of the ftuc, and the ways their goals resembled those of the emerging cia. A particularly interesting piece in this first section is evidence of an initial contract between the ftuc and the cia spelling out the nature and conditions of their alliance.

The second section of the book is a detailed exploration of their work together on three different projects. The first was their role in establishing the Force Ouvrière, an anti-communist union federation in France in the late 1940s. While the Force Ouvrière developed independently of involvement of the ftuc, their break away from the Confédération générale du travail (cgt) was made possible because of the funds from the ftuc via the cia.

The next chapter explores the collaboration of the afl and the cia in a campaign in the un to have work in the communist countries declared as slave labour. This project also included US state political support at the un and funding from the Rockefeller foundation. The last case Hughes looks at is their work together with Eastern European émigrés through the establishment of Radio Free Europe and support of Free Trade Union Center-in-Exile, an organization set up...