Labor Radical: From the Wobblies to Cio, a Personal History

by Len De Caux and Len DeCaux

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807054445
• ISBN13: 9780807054444
• Release Date: January 1970
• Publisher: Beacon Press (MA)
• Length: 557 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

From Harrow to Hobo

British born Len de Caux was a student at the English Public School Harrow. At Harrow, De Caux encountered widespead prejudice against democracy and against the working class. The most leftists students defended parliamentary democracy as a way to prevent revolution while many students supported eliminating the House of Commons and having a dictatorship. De Caux wasn't impressed with the British ruling class and decided to place his faith in the working class. He moved to America where he started at working class jobs and got involved in the U.S. labor movement. He joined the IWW while they were on the decline and years later participated in the founding of the CIO where he worked as publicity director. De Caux includes personality sketches of many of the CIO's top labor leaders, such as Phillip Murray, Sidney Hillman, Walter Reuther, and John L Lewis, including their stregnths and weaknesses. De Caux was later redbaited out of the CIO but continued to be active in the labor movement. De Caux never lost faith in the U.S. labor movement and ,despite the seeming docility of its members and its many right wing leaders after the start of the Cold War.