Research Catalog

The Popular Front and the progressive tradition : socialists, liberals, and the quest for unity, 1884-1939

Title: The Popular Front and the progressive tradition : socialists, liberals, and the quest for unity, 1884-1939 / David Blaazer.
Author: Blaazer, David.
Publication: Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1992.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	DA576 .B5 1992	Off-site

Details

Description

xv, 247 pages; 24 cm

Summary

This book is an in-depth exploration of the Popular Front and United Front campaigns in Britain in the late 1930s. The author aims to dispel the myth that these campaigns can be understood largely as a ruse engineered by the Communists into which non-Communists were drawn blindly. Instead the author searches for the idea of 'progressive unity' in earlier episodes in the history of the British progressive tradition, including the early life of the Fabian Society, and the agitations against the Boer War, the First World War, and the Treaty of Versailles. By reassessing the significance of these episodes, and by reconsidering the role of seminal progressive thinkers in the formation of the ideas and political culture of Labour leftism, the author shows that the relationships between liberals and socialists, and between reformists and revolutionaries, had long been both intimate and fluid. By examining the reasons and assumptions behind individual Labour leftists' decisions to support the struggle for progressive unity in the late 1930s, it is shown that the Popular Front was neither an aberration nor a 'stunt', but a reasoned and culturally familiar response to the major political crisis presented by fascism and appeasement.

Subjects

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

1. The progressive side of politics -- 2. The colours of the rainbow -- 3. Imperialism and war -- 4. The pilgrims' progress -- 5. Inside the left -- 6. Fascism, unity, and loyalty: 1932-1937 -- 7. The Popular Front.

ISBN

0521413834
9780521413831

LCCN

91042575

OCLC

ocm24870729
24870729
SCSB-14124049

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library