American Labour’s Cold War Abroad: From Deep Freeze to Détente, 1945–1970 by Anthony Carew (review)

The role of the American Federation of Labor and then its merged successor the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations) in the Cold War has a complex history that is still not fully understood. Anthony Carew’s detailed account of the first decades after World War II opens a vast new range of evidence of upper-level manoeuvring for power and influence overseas by this federation, first in its original form and then as the turbulent amalgamated institution with the CIO in December 1955. However, this book can best be characterised as a history focused on upper-level leadership rivalry, primarily with European trade union institutional leadership, rather than one of “American labour” in the broader sense.

It concentrates on key players, particularly Jay Lovestone and Irving Brown, who worked in the international area for the AFL under Secretary-Treasurer and later President George Meany, and their main rivals Walter Reuther, Head of the United Auto Workers (UAW), and his brother Victor who handled the international division of the union. Reuther brought the CIO into the merger and was Meany’s nemesis in the Cold War, including international union affairs At times the intricacies of personal battles in meetings and conferences can overwhelm the reader, but Carew provides extensive endnotes (118 pages in total) that contain capsule biographies of every significant union official in the text, along with extensive referencing. The bibliography includes 39 interviews conducted by the author with American, Canadian and European officials, including some dating back to 1982. There is a list of 107 organisations with acronyms at the beginning of the volume. Even with this guide, the number of special overseas organisations set up by the AFL and then the AFL-CIO, as well as the key international trade union organisation covered – the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) based in Europe – is so numerous that one must regularly refer back to the list.

This book’s value is perhaps best as a reference rather than a narrative history, even if there is a narrative covering the personal rivalry of top officials. Taken as a reference work it is a major achievement, with research in every major labour archive related to the subject in North America and Europe, except one: the US National Archives. This is the first major publication to fully utilise the papers of Irving Brown and Jay Lovestone, sources that contain troves of new information, particularly given both men’s penchants to write extensive reports and to be quite transparent about their political views and criticisms in confidential submissions to Meany and others. Lovestone originally was a leading member of the Communist Party USA, but left the party over Stalin’s actions and founded his own group, the Communist Party (Opposition). By the 1930s, he had moved into solely trade union organising, drifting further to the Right, and finally becoming a fierce ideological anti-communist as the chief international advisor to Meany in the AFL. Brown became his protégé, equally anti-communist but far more of an operator – above ground and undercover for the CIA – while in the employ of the AFL and later the AFL-CIO.

The book’s main argument in terms of the Cold War within the US union movement in the pursuit of overseas influence is that Meany sought international union backing for an uncompromising anti-communist stand, especially after the IFCTU was founded as a rival to the Soviet-influenced World Federation of Trade Unions. Lovestone was the architect of this policy, while Brown became the international presence (and “bagman”) in meetings, conferences and the establishment of new organisations and centres around the globe. In contrast, Walter Reuther’s brother, Victor, advocated a more pragmatic approach to combating Soviet influence by advocating organisation and training of union officers and leaders overseas. Victor’s approach was a direct criticism of Brown...