English Farmworkers and Local Patriotism, 1900–1930. By Mansfield, Nicholas. [Studies in Labour History.] Ashgate, Aldershot [etc.] 2001. xiii, 227 pp. Ill. Maps. £40.00

Local French communists bitterly attacked French imperialist policy in the region. Since the Socialist Party (PS) continued to identify with the French republican tradition and state, and the PS and PCF commanded the allegiances of many Alsatian workers, the working class was now split on the national question. Integral to that story is analysis of how Mexico City working-class organization moved from class collaborationist mutualism to more combative and independent organizational modes, highlighted by the emergence of the anarchist-led Casa in 1912. Because the 1857 Constitution legally restrained labor organization in the workplace, working-class mobilization began in the political arena, with Francisco Maderos electoral challenge to Porrio Daz in 1910, and continued during the 1912 congressional elections. In each area, in different ways, Catholics were able to adapt to the new political circumstances and nd new means of preserving certain functions. [...]while Catholic denominational schools were forbidden (with one exception in East Berlin), Catholic kindergartens, after-school centres, and orphanages survived; and other means of out-of-school religious instruction, catechism teaching, and parish-based youth work ensured that Catholic socialization processes were not too adversely affected by the spread of atheist doctrines and youth organizations. [...]with regard to the communication system, basic organizational means of communication at parish level were relatively impervious to state intervention; West German radio stations were able to take over the functions of opinion formation and inuence which were suppressed in the East; and the long-term mentality formation of Catholics was sustained through the publication of purely religious books and worship services which conformed with the states notions of freedom of purely religious practice. [...]Tischner seeks to demonstrate in great detail that East German Catholicism was in different ways in different areas able to effect an institutional transformation in the early postwar years which allowed it to preserve a system permitting the transmission of a distinctive Catholic milieu, right through the forty years of an antireligious, atheist state up to its collapse in 19891990.