Abstract

Tom Buchanan's insightful and exhaustively researched study fills a gap in the historiography of British views on China. While the past years have seen an increasing number of publications about Anglo-Chinese relations, the British Left's relations with China have been mostly ignored. Buchanan analyzes three aspects of this relationship between 1925 and 1976: namely, the role the British Left played in organizations like the China Campaign Committee or the Britain-China Friendship Association, “the policies and attitudes of the ‘mainstream’ Labour movement” (p. ix), and the points of convergence between the Labour Party and the non-Labour Left. However, while the first aspect is well covered in the book and gives it a certain narrative coherence, the mainstream labor movement does not figure as prominently as might be expected, and the Labour Party makes only very rare appearances.