The broad story of international labour relations and inter-union conflicts in the post-war period is quite well known. Over a short period beginning in 1945, many unions and national labour centres echoed the emerging alignments of the new Cold War, shifting at dizzying speed through a range of attitudes and policies. Labour organizations mirrored East–West tensions for many more years, although with subtle variations that acknowledged some traditional union ideals and workplace activism. Markers along this road included: early post-war hopes for international solidarity through the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU); political positioning by communist-led and non-communist unions on major international questions; initiatives by some European and American labour leaders to freeze contacts with communist countries and institutions; and, splitting and new formations that were engineered to weaken Soviet-oriented unions. This was the setting for the overt and covert activities described with great insight and fine detail by Anthony Carew in this book.

Previously, Carew has written on European labour relations and managerial policies during Marshall Plan period and beyond. His work displays an overriding interest in union internal democracy, particularly how the interests and views of individual employees are reflected in workplace policies. His interests encompass many countries and industrial sectors, in addition to the diversity of ideals that underlie different types of labour organizations. (Two of his previous books, Labour Under the Marshall Plan and Democracy and Government in European Trade Unions are important contributions to labour studies.) This latest work offers a detailed examination of the Cold War's impact on unions, as well as on union participation in shaping political decisions affecting members and societies. Carew successfully sought access to the files of the AFL–CIO International Affairs Department that had long been closed to scholars. This archival collection revealed a wealth of correspondence, internal papers and field reports. The history he now recounts helps us understand the orientation and structure of today's labour movements in Europe and elsewhere, notably the United States.

This book is a definitive account of the early and middle periods of the Cold War, seen from the vantage point of its leading American players. It examines the views and moves of leaders in the American Federation of Labor (AFL) notably led by George Meany, and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), especially its Autoworkers wing led by Walter Reuther. (To recall, in 1955 the AFL and the CIO came together in a merger described at the time as “a marriage without a honeymoon”.) It also recounts the activities of many officials involved in government operations, such as the Marshall Plan, US diplomatic and intelligence initiatives, and diplomatic work by other countries. Carew pays particular attention to two well-known AFL figures from this period, Irving Brown and Jay Lovestone. They were a remarkable team who stayed closely united for some 40 years, managing to blur the lines between their official positions as union staff and as confidants with operational links to America's intelligence services. Not that they were above suspicion: labour activists in the United States generally did not enjoy the trust of the higher powers in government. Lovestone, as the one-time leader of the Communist Party USA, had renounced his communist goals but not his Leninist mode of operating, and he was a target for FBI surveillance and phone tapping.

Thanks to the widespread American practice of publishing personal memoirs and depositing extensive working documents into publicly accessible archives, a large amount of Cold War information from labour sources is now available for study. (If only governments and unions in other countries were equally open, and if only their files were equally comprehensive.) Carew bases his work on extensive reading of files in the US, Britain, Sweden, Canada, and The Netherlands, supplemented by interviews he conducted over many years with key participants. In particular, we benefit from the back-and-forth of personal correspondence across the Atlantic, as Brown and Lovestone shared ideas, instructions and interpretations in their frequent letters. We watch them closely, as they wrote extensively in an age before instant emails and cheap international phone calls. Carew pieces together their exchanges and he contextualizes views and operations within major Cold War events – such as the Berlin blockade, the communist coup in Czechoslovakia, the Korean War, and conflicts in places such as Hungary and Brazil.

Right at the start, Carew describes three dominant forces present during the years of this study – and he argues that these affected perceptions and actions by all labour leaders in America and abroad. First, there was significant public respect and political weight accorded to labour movements in the aftermath of World War II. Unions, their national centres, and their international bodies were significant participants in “the ideological confrontation between East and West” and in shaping “the course and social dimension of the Cold War”. Second, both the AFL and then the AFL–CIO believed that America had a special global role in forcefully voicing “full-blooded anti-communism […] as the motivating force” in international union relations. Third, the internal American struggle between the AFL as the centre for more traditional craft unions, and the CIO as the new centre for industrial unions, was a constant problem; this domestic conflict was present, even exacerbated, in the competition for power in the international arena. Two leaders, George Meany and Walter Reuther, personified these powerful organizational tensions. Their mutual antagonisms added to the complexity of international disputes and financial stresses. These specifically labour movement factors added to the East–West antagonism already in play, focused on conflicting military and economic interests and the ideological struggle between democratic capitalism and soviet communism – or, in labour shorthand, between “free trade unionism” and “state unionism”.

Carew follows a chronological path, starting with the early post-war steps taken by the AFL to promote internal opposition groups within several major European unions that had communist leadership. He analyses the 1949 founding of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) as a breakaway organization created by withdrawals from the communist-led World Federation of Trade Unions. And he identifies one constant theme in the AFL's international position: its commitment to its own program of training and tangible support for unions that it selected – whether in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This was the powerful lever wielded by US union representatives beyond American borders. The AFL (and the AFL–CIO) insisted it would operate independently to promote its own vision, using significant and mainly secret government funding, notwithstanding its leading role in the ICFTU and international regional labour bodies. Eventually, the AFL–CIO under the formidable leadership of George Meany, chose to withdraw entirely from the ICFTU – abandoning its own progeny – with the charge that its European leaders were too weak and slow in opposing the challenges of world communism.

The book concludes in 1970, at a seemingly auspicious time in global relations. The Soviet Union appeared more confident in its stability and achievements, despite its suppression of the 1968 Prague Spring with the liberalising goal of “socialism with a human face”. Among Western countries, there was a spirit of youthful change and openness, despite the controversies in America and elsewhere over the Vietnam War. Social-democratic governments were in power in several major countries, and they shared hopes for a spirit of détente between the Great Powers. An “Opening to the East”, or Ostpolitik, signalled a desire among some governments, cultural figures and labour leaders for new East–West contacts after the deepest Cold War years. In America, however, the ageing AFL–CIO leader, George Meany, continued to argue that Soviet state-run unions were not legitimate representatives of labouring people. In Carew's words, American labour leaders maintained their “well-founded belief that there could be no common purpose with the communists on the essentials of trade unionism”.

Throughout his account of the tensions within American labour and the difficult disputes in the Western international movement, Carew consistently avoids oversimplifications. He does not tell a tale of Ugly Americans undermining a pristine state of international labour solidarity. The WFTU had shown its hand in its anti-Western politicized stances; communist-led affiliate unions, such as the French CGT, did not hesitate to use physical force to support political objectives. Europeans had a long history of managing conflicts between Communists, Social Democrats, and other liberal forces. Labour leaders such as Vince Tewson in Britain, Arne Geijer in Sweden, Willi Richter in West Germany, and Louis Major in Belgium were very opposed to communist operators and had no illusions about their methods and goals.

Carew's descriptions of debates within the ICFTU and other Western labour organizations are nuanced and detailed, citing multiple sources, and giving voice to a range of leaders and unions. This is a tour de force of fine research. Carew writes in a clear and elegant manner, with a total absence of jargon. The main protagonists, European and American, are treated with respect. Their personal rivalries are explained and their own words quoted. Many secondary figures are acknowledged and given small biographies in the extensive footnotes section. This adds to the authenticity and texture of the main history, while the clarity of the central narrative still stands out.

The book's focus is on power and control within many institutions of the labour movement – national centres such as the British TUC, or the German DGB, the AFL-CIO, as well as the ICFTU. It is a very British intellectual study in the sense that it is concerned with structures, leadership, and decision-making within organizations. Labour bodies provide continuity and operational capacity to carry out tasks, achieving concrete benefits for working people. Some philosophical and ideological issues are implicit, notably in discussing the concept of “free” trade unionism or the policy goals of the United Autoworkers in labour education, but these are not the book's main themes.

Carew does not choose sides between protagonists. He is not pro TUC or pro American, pro “Broad Left”, or pro “business unionism”. He is clearly appalled by George Meany's choice of words on some occasions and he cites some egregious examples of verbal insults that could make Donald Trump blush. But he also cites union leaders who praised Meany's tenacity and personal modesty. He stresses that American union leaders were vehemently opposed to European colonialism and they supported rapid decolonisation in Africa and Asia. Carew describes the tireless fieldwork of Irving Brown and the stratagems of Jay Lovestone, but he invites readers to draw conclusions. He does not engage in speculative “what ifs”, or the style of fantasies now known as “alt.history”.

The geographical field of action for much of this book is in Europe, particularly Germany, France, and Italy. Other countries also figure, notably Greece, Finland, Japan, Turkey, and Britain. The Americans focused on Europe because it was the heartland of the East–West conflict, bordering on most of the Soviet bloc countries. Post-war reconstruction in Europe, assisted through the Marshall Plan, was pivotal for evolving economic relationships and labour policies, eventually leading to the creation of new institutions for European cooperation, in parallel with the earlier NATO military alliance. But the Cold War was not limited to Europe. The East–West conflict and the development of democratic (and non-democratic) institutions were part of the post-war history of other regions. Carew deals with those places as secondary matters, visibly less important to his central story. Perhaps other historians will study labour movements in other parts of the world during the Cold War, digging deeply into archival sources as Carew has done?

And this leads to my final observation: will there now be a companion study on labour history during the final decades of the Cold War? Many new forces were emerging in those years, such as the burgeoning pressures of globalization, freer international trade, growing integration in Western Europe, sustained liberalizing movements in Eastern Europe, and polarizing political leaders in some countries. The stark outlines of the early Cold War were becoming fuzzy, but profound differences continued within and between national labour movements and their international organizations. A history of more recent years would be a gateway to our own times; it needs a detailed treatment of the calibre that Carew has brought to the period 1945 to 1970.