The Development of the Colombian Labor Movement . By Miguel Urrutia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969, Pp. xi, 297. $10.00).
Roderick Martin's well-documented study indicates that there is no lasting political homogeneity among communists, non-communists, or British trade union leaders. He describes developments after the Russian revolution of 1917, when the leaders of the U.S.S.R. decided that minority pro-communist movements should be created in the established trade union centers of Great Britain. At first, there was some resistance to this policy by certain British left-wing labor union leaders. After much courting by U.S.S.R. leaders through their sympathizers and adherents in Great Britain-which included visits to the Kremlin by pro-Soviet Britons-a "National Minority Movement" was established in England and Scotland in 1924. A major aspect of the Minority Movement organizing period was the effort o convince British trade unionists to choose the Soviet way rather than that of the Social Democratic International Federation of Trade Unions, the "Amsterdam International." Thus, the first manifesto of the British Bureau, a Russian-financed center for revolutionary trade unionists stated: The world is now divided into two great divisions, and we must make our choice as to which camp we belong. On the one side is the Capitalist Class with its ... Yellow Amsterdam International. On the other side is the Communist International and all that is loyal and true to the working class ... all our minor issues.., are being thrust o the background as the mightier questions rise up demanding that we conquer Capitalism.