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Book Reviews My Life's battles By Will Thorne The Air of Freedom - The Birth of Neu Unionism By Yvonne Kapp Published by Laurence and Wisher at £6.95 and £5.95 respectirel Reviewed by Jane Hartley THESE BOOKS DEAL with the founding of the 'New Unions' the trade unions which organised the unskilled and laid the basis for the GMB and the TGWU.
Before the 1880s many attempts had been made to organise the unskilled but nons had lasted. The craft unions had carved out a comfortable niche for themselves, by limiting entry to the trade they able command i sigwere nificant wage ditferential. In My Life's Battles Will Thorne, in telling his own life story, paints a picture of utter exploitation of the unskilled workers, which explains the explosive battles of the 1880s.
At just six years old he worked from bam to opm, Monday to Friday and 6am to 1pm on Saturday for 2s 6d a week. After his father's death, when he was seven, he worked at a brick and tile works 12 hours a day. Many jobs followed, including one at a munitions factory during the Franco- Prussian war where the day shift worked from 12pm Sunday to Cosmic Dawn: The origins of matter and lite By Eric Chaisson Published by WW Norton, 20.51) Reviewed by Mike Waddington EVER COUNTED TO to a million! Faced with & 700 mile holiday journey as a kid, I had a try but gave up after ten minutes. In fact. it takes two weeks, counting for 5.30pm Monday.
Not surprisingly with this childhood he could not write: when he married in 1879 both he and his wife made their 'mark' on their certificate.
Will Thorne moved to London to the Beckton Gas Works. He became involved in the SDE, a Marxist party, organising street Limehouse and meetings in receiving an education. Together with Ben Tillet and other SDF members such as Eleanor Marx, the drive to organise began After much agitation in 1889 the Gas Workers' Union was formed with the eight-hour day as one of its objectives: 300 joined that day, 3.000 in two weeks. Within six months they had the eight-hour dar and 20,000 members.
The employers went onto the offensive to reclaim the new won concessions: there were strike* mass picketing and running battles with the police. Alter one victorious strike in Leeds, during which Will Thorne was injured. Engels presented him with two volumes of Capital inscribed "To Will Thorne: The victor of the Leeds battle"
Will Thorne later Although swung to the right be was head and shoulders above today's trade union leaders, as were the other key figures of this time, dealt with in The Air of Freedom. They inc. lude Ben Tillet: John Burns, il Amalgamated of the member Society of Engineers who became a tremendous speaker for the SIF. prominent in the unemployed 16 hours a day, to reach a million To count to a billion would take an entire lifetime.
Thinking like thisis necessary to imagine the scale of the universe and the time that matter has been in existence, evolving over acons (billions of is Earth years).
thought to be around *-s billion vears old. Our sun is just one of hundreds of billions 111 the suburbs of our Milky Way galaxy. itself one of billions of galaxies. The star nearest to our star is MY LIFE'S BATTLES THE AIR OF FREEDOM:
THE BIRTH OF THE NEW UNIONISM demonstrations of the 1880s; Tom Mann, also an ASE member, who by 188ª was a full time organiser for the SDF: and Bleanor Marx, whose influence gave the new union its internationalist outlook and i "respectful attitude 10 women as trade unionists when that was rare indeed."
My Life's Battles is particularly good when dealing with working class life and the first struggles. while The Air of Freedom gives a better all round look at the political arguments in the labour morement at the time. Both are reconmended.
Proxima Centuri, 24 trillion miles away!
Chaisson attempts to convey the history of the carth by converting il into a 50 year analogy: Life began six years ago. plants about to years ago, dinosaurs about a vear ago, to disappear eight months ago. Homo sapiens appeared just hours ago; agriculture is one hour old and the whole of recorded history took place in the last 30 The Renaissance was minutes.
three minutes ago.
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This analogy reduces man into perspective but also demonstrates how life has developed, with a quickening tempo of change. That is Chaisson's aim. to describe "the view contemporary universe known as cosmic evolution - a truly big picture, a cosmogenesis, dialectical materialism whereby gradual changes in the composition and assembly of matter have given rise to galaxies, stars, planets and life. We attempt to systematise the essential ingof redients astrophysics and biochemistry, for these two subjects more than any others are making an enormous impact on our philosophical conception of Anatomy of a Scientific Discovery By Jeff Goldberg Published by Bantam Books, £4.99 Reviewed by Gwyn Morris THIS BOOK PROVIDES i useful insight into the fierce competition and rivalry in the scientific world. It points to the prizes of success, not just rewards of Nobel prizes, but the financial gains to be made in the commercial applications of new discoveries. It also gives a readable account of our developing understanding of the functioning of the brain and nervous system.
The story starts in a woefully underfunded research laboratory at Aberdeen University with a germ of an idea which was later going to tax the imagination of hundreds of scientists interna- Just fill in the form below or write to us with a cheque or postal order payable to World Socialist Books, 3/13 Hepscott Road, London E9 SHB. Subscription Rates: $5 for four issues, UK/Ireland, £6 overseas. ourselves and of our place in the Dialectics? As Chaisson says. "there now seems to be a clear thread linking the evolution of simple atoms into galaxies and stars, the evolution of stars into heary elements, the evolution of those elements into the molecular building blocks of life. of those molecules into life itself, of life into intelligence and of intelligent nological civilisation." Up to now I've thought Asimor's Veu' Guide to Science was the best general explanation, but Chaisson is better and more concise. However, in the last 50 read. lions of pounds of research funding. The idea, put simply, was that the nervous system itself produced chemicals which modified the sensation of pain. There were numerous examples of men and women reporting no pain even when badly wounded in war. It was thought that painkillers such as morphine mimiced natural Chemicals.
At Aberdeen, despite poor equipment and the nervousness of workers there to ask for advice on techniques from other laboratories for fear of giving away their secrets, this brain chemical or endomorphine was isolated, purified and its structure elucidated. Their results hit the world scientific community like a bomb, and started a mad race to lead this new research field in public and private laboratories. quickly that the first endomorphine isolated was part of a family also a contribution to the further development of the MIR pages. where he examines the future. Chaisson seems incapable of applying the evolutionary process that he has described to society. The other danger of the long view is to reduce human beings and their social organisation to an irrelevant blip on the cosmic clock — after all, they have only been around for 0.1 per cent of the carth's existence. Still, up to this point the book is good. Follow the evolution of the stars from gas through the main sequence. into red giants, and then, depending on mass, into white dwarves. neutron stars or black holes. It is well worth the tionally and attract tens of milof chemicals acting in the nervous system. What at first seemed a simple system proved immensely complicated. Furthermore, the chemicals were small proteins, which would prove incredibly expensive to produce commercially. The possibility of short-term gain receded and the multinationals scaled down their efforts. The complexity of these chemicals at a molecular level was reflected in their effects or funetions. Their presence in certain glands linked them to appetite and temperature control, in addition to regulating the emotional and physical response of humans to stress, anxiety and fear. They have also been linked to the process of childbirth - levels were six times higher at the end of pregnancy than in non-pregnant women. It is clear that these molecules form a link between chemical, However, it became clear very physical and emotional states, having a role in pain, pleasure, memory, stress, immunity and sexual response. Exciting and fascinating as this is, its sheer complexity is a block to commercial exploitation. Consequently, the piecing together of this gigantic puzzle, and mapping its relationship with environmental inf luences, will inevitably fall to small groups of scientists around the world.
Goldberg's book, then, provides futher evidence of the delays and pitfalls inherant in competitive science, unable to harness all the disparate research interests to find the answers to questions which could revolutionise potentially our understanding of the workings of our bodies.
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Working women fight Whose choice? - new from Fortress Books for their rights THE TORY government's new Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act holds far-reaching implications for the whole of society and for women in particular.
The New Moral Right, which Includes Tory right-wingers and 'pro-life' groups, have joined in battle with their 'traditional' views on women's role and the family: Whose Choice? by Vivien Seal, a new book from Fortress Books, answers the right's ideological crusade and defends women's reproductive rights.
It also recounts the struggle of working-class women for health contraception, the right to care, fertility treatment.
abortion and It clearly explains the new reproductive technologies but it also shows that fertility control raises vital political issues which cannot be left to the Tories, the medical hierarchy or big business. VIVIEN SEAL is a university lecturer and an active member of the Manchester Labour Women's Council, whose campaigning suggested this book.
With 112 pages, bibliography and index, Whose Choice? will be published at £4.95. But as a special offer to labour movement activists, Fortress Books are offering it at £2.95 (plus 55p post and packing) or four for £10 (post free).
Order from Fortress Books, PO Box 141, London E2 ORL WHOSE CHOICE?
Working Class Women and the Control of Fertilit Viven seat