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Book Reviews
the short
times of
Belushi
by Bob Woodward
Published by Faber &
Faber £5.99
Reviewed by
Mike Waddington A kind of underlying sympathy exists for famous personalities who destroy themselves, despite their lavish and luxurious incomes. For ordinary people their names can retain the aura of the victim.
Marilyn Monroe best epitomises this category, as does Brendan Behan or Dylan Thomas. Many people feel, even if they do not subscribe to the conspiracy theory, that such people were exploited to the point of exhaustion and pressurized. if not driven, to their deaths.
John Belushi was a cult figure, a star of Animal House. The Blues Brothers and Spielberg's 1941. He died from a heroin overdose in 1982. Woodward's book follow's
Wired:
na fast
life Joh
Women workers and
the trade unions
by Sarah Boston
published by Law'ence
and Wishart
price £8.95
Reviewed by
Yvonne Harrison
Sarah Boston's book is one of just a few which deal in detail with the role of women in building the labour movement. She gives an inspiring account of the willingness of women to struggle. both independently and alongside male workers, to improve their wages and conditions, often in the most adverse circumstances.
The Sander confectionary girls strike in 1892 is one example of that tenacity exhibited in the early part of this century and which still exists today: They walked out after 30 of them were sacked and organised a prolonged strike in
the same investigative approach of his more famous expose of Nixon and Watergate in the Washington Post. He reconstructs a harrowing account of Belushi's self destruction. It is compelling reading and will soon be made into a film. When published in the USA it caused a sensation, revealing as it does the number of Hollywood stars who 'do drugs', especially cocaine.
Belushi (his family originated from Albania) was a talented comedian who gained fame on the New York TV show Saturday Night Live which captured the attention of American youth for its irreverence. Belushi and his partner, Dan Ackroyd, were singled out for their skit on Nixon and Kissinger. The TV audience reached 28 million - the advertising rates were hiked up from $9,500 per 30 second slot to $22,000 and Belushi meant megabucks.
Belushi starred in AnimalHouse, which cost $2.7 million to make and grossed over $60 million. More demands were made on him as his income rocketed (from $35,000
their own union, as well as joint action with Bristol dockers. In a march through the streets of Bristol on Christmas Eve they were met by a squadron of hussars and dragoons who had been ordered to smash them. Many were injured, the dockers leaders arrested and the march speakers charged with 'inciting a riot. But this did not cow the girls, who stuck out for six months before winning improved wages, although not their main aim of union recognition. As Sarah Boston comments, like the match girls, they left their mark on the labour movement.'
More recently, Boston rightly lays emphasis on the struggle of the Ford women machinists for equal pay in 1968. They brought Fords to a standstill and won a partial victory. Their action was instrumental in bringing in the 1970 Equal Pay Act, although they did not win equal pay and skilled status until 1985 when they won a
for Animal House to $350,000 for his next film). But with his success came drug addiction.
His next films lost money for their makers (1941 lost $27 million and The Blues Brothers $16 million). The question was: could he deliver for the investors? To keep him going, his drug taking was unofficially sanctioned as a way of keeping up his spirits and his performance his 'friends' were always on hand to supply because nobody wanted to be responsible for a Belushi performance being below par. His wife said later: "I wish someone had ruined John's career by writing about his cocaine use. That would have saved his life but ruined business'.
Nobody ever forced Belushi, so the story goes. But talent is a marketable commodity even if the packaging can sometimes be too frail. As his brother James said: 'you always have to compete again no matter what you've done... it was really the American tragedy. Making it big and f***** by success. There is a message in his death as much as in his life'.
case under the 'equal pay for work of equal value' clause. As Boston points out, legislation can be slow and laborious and is no substitute for organised union action which is the key to winning real gains for women workers.
Boston's book is more of a chronicle of women's development in the workplace. It does not discuss the causes of women's oppression in society. She does not explain why women from wealthier families were relegated to idleness while in poor families they became low-paid wage labourers.' That women are exploited at work alongside male workers; and at home by bearing overwhelmingly the burden of domestie work is ignored. Boston describes but does not explain.
She catalogues the growth of women's organisations in the early 1900s. These were necessary for women to organise, but it was by no means a golden age for
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women and eventually these early Autumn 1989 organisations were incorporated Book Reviews into the general labour unions. 460 MIR Boston suggests that women ill achieve real equality onl hen they are able to go to wor and receive equal pay: and when William Lovett by Joel Weiner & Arthur Henderson by EM Leventhal, published by Manchester University Press. Price £7.95 and £8.95 respectively.
Reviewed by Ian Hunter Lovett, from the earliest days of movement in the the labour 1830s and Henderson from the formative period of the Labour party early this century are separated in time. But they are united as stalwarts of 'moderation' Lovett, the defender of 'moral force' against the 'wild' advocates in the Chartist of revolution movement; and 'Uncle Arthur' Henderson, the dogged promoter of Lib-lab trade unionism and 'constitutional' Labourism and compromise.
The Chartists were for class power through universal suffrage. It was the first genuine workingclass political movement in Britain. But Chartism was not only associated with Lovett but also with militants like Feargus O'Connor, Bronterre O'Brien and with Marx and Engels' friends George The Soul of Man under Socialism by Oscar Wilde New edition by Journeyman press price 22.95 Reviewed by Marc Valleé Wilde's vision of how people should live in an ideal world of 'beauty, pleasure and perfect harmony' brought about by socialism was first published in the Edinburgh Review in 1891.
From as early as 1881 when he was in his late twenties to the middle of 1895, literary London was put out of countenance by "their concerns are listened to, at the TV'C by a full and silent hall: when the number of women delegates to the TUC is proportional to their membership But she fails to show what forces in society block the progress to Harney and Ernest Jones. Chartist history, however, has been coloured and distorted by Fabians and reformists who have tried to obscure the relationship between Marx and the Chartist leaders in order to separate British Labour history from any connection with Lovett claimed that the Chartist movement had been highjacked by hot-heads. Weiner shows that this was not the case. On the contrary, even Lovett was not averse to challenging repressive laws with violent rhetoric. Weiner reveals the fundamental weakness of Chartism - that it was promoted through a series of gigantic bluffs: a combination of great displays of activity, coupled with fierce threats unless workers' demands were met. It was naively hoped that the government would cave in under this pressure. The crisis for Chartism came when the government stood firm and the bluff was called Some, like Lovett, failed the test. Lovett baulked and turned his attentions away from class action towards 'moral re-education'. Increasingly isolated from the Chartist mainstream, he blamed workers for their own problems and finally supported a capitalist economy and alliances with the middle- Dublin (via Oxford) declared that he was a socialist and hinted that he was a homosexual. His literary output has lasted to this day, with many of his plays like "The importance of being Earnest' still performed now. He was a man of SOC- ¡ety' who nevertheless gave generously to the dockers' strike exactly 100 years ago In his unique style, in the book, Wilde protests against the degrading and demoralising effects of poverty, authoritarianism and inertia of a society unwilling to change. He argues that the artist's role is to challenge moral hypocrisy and to create change. For him, socialism, by converting private property into public this outrageous Irishman from wealth, and substituting cooperasuch achievements or how they can be overcome; and specifically how women's oppression is rooted in capitalist society and only the end of the class system can change fundamentally women's position in society.
class, both of which he had originally so resolutely opposed. Unfortunately, Weiner provides not even a glimpse of the dynamic of the class struggle which continued to drive the mainstream of the Chartists towards Marxism, Similarly, in Leventhal's biog raphy of Henderson there is no understanding of how the logic of class conflict drove 'moderates' like him to break with Liberalism and found the Labour party. Leventhal tells us that in the early days of Newcastle city council, Henderson "learnt the values of political conciliation and comp romise". On the contrary, what Henderson did learn, the hard way, was that that even Liberal workers, as he was then, immed. iately engendered the hostility of the middle-class Liberal caucus as soon as they tried to pursue spec ifically working-class issues. That is why he eventually left the Liberals.
Lacking a Marxist analysis of events, Weiner and Leventhal can tell us the story of Lovett and Henderson, but they cannot explain why things happened the way they did. So there are worthwhile gleanings to be found from both books, as long as they approached with a sufficiently critical eye. tion for competition, would restore society to its proper condition - a thoroughly healthy organism which ensured the well being of every member of the community. Wilde argued that the abolition of private property far from stifl ing individualism, would allow it to flower. Nobody would waste his life accumulating things and the symbols for things ie money. 'One will live to live. That is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist - that is all'. Wilde's class background sometimes shows through when he seems to adopt an elitist view of the artist who looks down on the working people, but Wilde's vision of a socialist future is a ref reshing and welcome change. D
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