Live Working Or Die Fighting

"Required reading for the Seattle brigade"

Steve Poole has reviewed the book in the Guardian. He says: "What does a young Chinese woman working in a battery-charging plant have to do with the Peterloo massacre, or Bolivian tin miners with early 20th-century German socialism, or Nigerian slum-dwellers with the Paris Commune? A lot, argues Mason's brilliantly conceived and beautifully written book...[Mason] has found a way to make his book vividly accessible ... without compromising its intellectual force. Required reading for the Seattle brigade."

Other news on the book: I delivered the Thompson's Annual Lecture at Cariff University School of Social Sciences on Thursday, together with UNI Global Union leader Phil Jennings. On Friday 29 June I am presenting a lunchtime talk to the centre-right think tank Civitas (who are definitely not from the Seattle brigade! contact them if you want to attend, it is invite only) and more on the immediate horizon there is a Q&A on the book at the Compass Conference in London on Sat 9 June.

RSA Lecture - listen here

Last Thursday I did a Q&A session on the book to a lively audience at the Royal Society for the Promotion of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.  There's a link to the audio here and there should be a transcript up there soon. The debate ranged from the impact of individualism, what first world people can do for third world workers, and where things are likely to go next. One interesting thing I found out is that the only workers' leader to get the RSA's Albert Medal is in fact featured in Chapter 2 of the book: Michel Chevalier, Saint-Simonian economist and free-love advocate in the 1830s, by the time of the Paris Commune is Napoleon IIIs tame labour relations man (Napoleon III got the medal too). 

Listen to Paul on Thinking Allowed, Radio Four, Wednesday 1600

I'm on BBC Radio Four's prestigious social science programme, "Thinking Allowed", at 4pm Wednesday. The discussion focus is going to be the global workforce today.  You can listen here.

The Independent Reviews the book

David Goldblatt has reviewed the book in The Independent. Read the review here. He says:

"Mason recoils from drawing lessons from his parallels, but the same power logic of numbers is still in force. Don't get mad, get organised. Perhaps the best parts of this book cover the alternative social worlds created by the Bund, the mass party of Jewish Poland, and the wave of factory sit-ins and experiments in workers' control that rocked Italy, France and the US in the interwar era. But the social movements of the South, as Mason makes clear, are already there in the parallel urban universe of Bolivian indigenous peoples and the co-op factories of Argentina."

Interview in "Solidarity"

The left wing newspaper Solidarity carries an interview with the author. Read it here.

Don't Miss the Edinburgh Launch - Friday

I'm on my way to Edinburgh for the Scottish launch of the book. It will be at Wordpower, at 1900 on Friday 11th May. Directions here. What usually happens is I read for about 15 minutes, take Q&A for as long as people want to hear it, and then circulate. We had a very lively discussion of the book at a reading in Leicester on Bank Holiday Monday. See you there if you are coming.

Review from The Times, 5 May

Michael Collins (author of The Likes of Us) has reviewed the book in The Times. Read the review here. He says: "Mason sometimes sounds like a young radical from another era hectoring someone at the student bar, pausing only to run his tongue along a Rizla’s edge. Once that particular tone passes, the book morphs into something significant. The research is exhaustive, with contemporary interviews and quotes from the speeches of ordinary 19th-century men and women." Needless to say I have never inhaled!

Socialist Review reviews the book

Socialist Review's May Day 2007 issue contains a review of the book and an interview with the author, by John Rees. Read it here. It says:

"Like many good ideas this is a deceptively simple juxtaposition that contracts the time between these historical episodes and our own problems. These historical snapshots do piece together to form a rough narrative of working class revolt stretching forward through the chapters of the book. These examples range from the Paris Commune of 1871, to the rise of US labour from the Wobblies to the sit-down strikes of the 1930s, the Russian and Chinese revolutions, the Italian factory occupations and the rise of fascism.  Better still, both the contemporary accounts of labour organising and the historical accounts come alive because they are often told through the life stories of the workers and radicals doing the organising. Louise Michel in the Paris Commune, Tom Mann in London's East End, Big Bill Haywood of the Wobblies and hundreds of others jump off the page agitating, being heroic, stupid, insightful and ridiculous by turns. "

Ireland's union leader reviews the book

David Begg, general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions has reviewed Live Working or Die Fighting in the Irish Times (24 April). Read the full review here. It concludes:

"This book is a salutary reminder that, despite the glitz of modernity, there persists an enduring struggle between capital and labour from which no generation or nationality is exempt."

Watch this space for the Dublin book launch, TBC.

Radio Five Live. 3.30am Easter Monday

If you are working a night shift, or making a bleary eyed drive back from some Cornish surf-n-rave extravaganza to get to work on time, tune in to Radio Five Live's "Up All Night" programme on Easter Monday at 3.30am to hear me interviewed about Live Working or Die Fighting. It will be here for a week after broadcast for non night-owls.