Laboured love (2020)

Book Review from the November 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Love and Labour. (Red Button Years – Volume 1). By Ken Fuller. ISBN: 978-1-6990-9278-1. 2019.

As there is no publisher accredited, we presume this is a self-published book. The author lists seven other books, six being non-fiction. One of them, ‘Radical Aristocrats: London Busworkers from the 1880s to the 1980s’, published by Lawrence and Wishart in 1985, provided the basis for this story.

Self-publishing has become widely available due to technological advances making it much more affordable. It is an avenue for authors of books, fiction and non-fiction, with such limited appeal as to be unlikely to generate profit enough, or even at all, to interest commercial publishers.

This must not be taken to imply such books are badly written, but rather their appeal is to a limited audience due to the subject matter. The weakness of the process can be the absence of the critical eye of an experienced editor. Such is my the overall impression of this novel.

There can be no doubting Ken Fuller’s immersion in the subject on which he writers. A former bus driver and full-time officer in the Transport and General Workers Union, he has dedicated much of his life to exploring and recording the history of this element of trade unionism, with specific reference to London. Perhaps he is too close to his subject.

A basic tenet of writing good fiction is ‘show, don’t tell’, engage the reader, invite the reader to construct mental scenes, challenge those constructs through the story taking unexpected turns. Reading should be an active process.

Unfortunately, this novel does an awful lot of telling. There is page after page of what reads like verbatim minutes of union meetings. Anyone who has been active in a union will recognise how drawn out and, frankly, tedious, even though important, such meetings can be. Especially so for someone on the outside glancing in.

Fuller does not seem clear as to his intention. As a chronicler of London bus workers’ history he has undoubtedly a creditable depth of knowledge. He is also keenly aware of the wider contexts in which that history flowed its course.

However, to make sure no research goes to waste, characters find their mouths being over over-stuffed with historical details. They don’t so much have conversations so much as swap lectures. For example, George Sanders, a union official, delivers an impromptu potted history of London Transport companies, along with American influence and dividend returns while standing, supposedly chatting, at Hyde Park Corner.

The novel opens in 1913 and works its way through to 1917. Its two main characters are Mickey Rice, erstwhile tram driver in Reading who becomes a bus conductor, then driver, in London, and Dorothy Bridgeman.

Dorothy has fled a privileged, but stifling upbringing, to become a radical socialist in what would become the Leninist sense. Dorothy and Mickey become lovers as well as union comrades and we are treated to a number of their explicitly erotic scenes.

The first of these is revealing (sorry) in that mid-coitus Mickey and Emily, the name Dorothy was using at the time, engage in a discussion on the radical, or otherwise, nature of impromptu sex. Emily (Dorothy) concludes, it is ‘…no threat whatsoever to the bourgeois order – unless, that is, they also embrace the class struggle.’ (Page 52).

Both are fictional characters, but many others are historical personages. As such they serve to give voice to the competing elements within the burgeoning Red Button, a reference to the badge worn by bus workers’ union members, union.

Dorothy takes the story off into London’s seriously impoverished East End when she meets and allies herself with Sylvia Pankhurst, who has split from Christabel and Emmeline who betray themselves by becoming purveyors of white feathers activists as they aid the war’s recruiting drive.

Dorothy ends up in Holloway after indulging in the suffragette habit of smashing windows; a hammer being more effective than a rock, Sylvia opines. This leads her to conclude that breaking windows changes nothing.

The First World War does energise the novel, especially the accounts of those trying to stop workers killing each other on behalf of capital. The danger this invites in a jingoistic atmosphere is explored and does point up that the war effort was not universally popular.

Fuller explores how circumstance, especially extreme circumstance, can affect an individual. When Dorothy is killed by a German bomb, Mickey seriously considers enlisting. He is eventually talked out of it by Dorothy’s ‘ghost’ as his own conscience and political consciousness manifest through his memories of her voice.

The politics of the novel focus on the role of the British Socialist Party, the Labour Party and the ILP. There is a Leninist thread represented by the character Rothstein, but the main focus is on the union and competing factions within it.

A familiar story of the left-right dichotomy, still playing out over a hundred years later. The pro- versus anti- war elements give expression to this, and there is some understanding of how capitalism is the root cause of war. There is no mention that in the ten years leading up to the war’s outbreak the Socialist Party of Great Britain had consistently voiced this point.

Indeed socialism, as dealt with in this book, is to be achieved via reformism or some Bolshevik-style revolution. That the working class will have to look beyond trade unions and political parties vying for power and achieve socialism through its own conscious action is not addressed.

Any undertaking on the scale of this novel is admirable. It appears to me, though , there is a much better novel in here begging to be revealed. I started This review began by invoking the role of the editor. If the book was 200 pages shorter it would be 200 pages better.

‘Love and Labour’ is a labour of love on the author’s part, and also the reader’s. Dispense with the potted histories, the detailed accounts of union machinations and let the story emerge. Dorothy and Mickey are strong characters, but even they are too often recruited as mouthpieces for the author.

Dave Alton

Blogger's Note:

Ken Fuller's book, Radical Aristocrats: London Busworkers from the 1880s to the 1980s, was reviewed in the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard. It was of particular interest to Socialist Standard readers 'cos a couple of SPGBers, Frank Snelling and Bill Waters, were active in the Busworkers' rank and file movement in the 1930s.

On the SPGB website, Ken Fuller replied to the above review. Reproduced in full below:

The author the book “Love and Labour” has sent in this reply:

Dear Comrade,

I was in two minds whether to respond to your review of my novel, Love and Labour, but decided that, in view of the fact that your reviewer gets certain details wrong, I should do so.

Your reviewer is of the view that the novel would have benefited from the services of an expert editor. Maybe so, but he seems to have missed the point, as what he describes as “union machinations” constitute one of the major themes of the book. (An expert editor could also have eliminated the several typos which disfigure the review.)

Most damningly, however, there is evidence that your reviewer gave but cursory attention to the book. For example, he complains that George Sanders, while standing at Hyde Park Corner, goes into great detail concerning the history of the Traffic Combine, even to the extent of mentioning the rate of dividend. Well, no. In fact, Sanders is driving Dorothy Bridgeman to her interview for a job at the London General Omnibus Company, where she will gather intelligence for the red-button union. Surely it is reasonable in these circumstances for Sanders to voice his concern that the profits of the LGOC (with its 20 percent dividend) will be used to subsidise the Underground rather than being used to improve the wages and conditions of busworkers!

Then again, your reviewer has Dorothy thrown into prison for breaking windows a la Sylvia Pankhurst. In fact, she ends up in Holloway for throwing rocks at a tram driven by a strike breaker at the tail end of the London Tram Strike of 1915. Given the fact that the account of the tram strike constitutes one of the longest chapters in the book, it is difficult to see how such a mistake could have been made, unless the reviewer’s attention was elsewhere.

Then again, the review mentions in passing “the character Rothstein” with apparently no understanding of the fact that Theodore Rothstein was a towering figure in the socialist and anti-war movements of the period.

I would have posted the above as a comment after the review, but can see no way of logging on, as I am not a member. I would therefore be grateful if you would insert it for me.

Yours fraternally,

Ken Fuller.