Freedom’s Labors: Lane Kirkland worked for more than his union
BY FRED SIEGEL, Wall Street Journal Online, Tuesday, March 8, 2005 12:01 a.m. (May require subscription.)
“He may not be much remembered today, but Lane Kirkland, president of
the AFL-CIO from 1979 to 1995, was a great man, and not only as a labor
leader. He was an architect of America’s victory in the Cold War and a
person of considerable intellect whose sense of history–and of
American interests–was often well ahead of the curve.
Policy makers now urge us, post 9/11, to reduce our dependence on Saudi
oil; Kirkland was making that case 30 years ago when he was
second-in-command to George Meany at the AFL-CIO. President Bush has
placed democracy at the center of our foreign policy; Kirkland was
advancing the argument 25 years ago. The Kurds are a key to our hopes
for the future of Iraq; Kirkland was supporting their claims in the
1970s. When American liberals sought an accommodation with what they
thought was a rising Soviet Union in the 1980s, Kirkland chided them
for appeasing our nemesis. And when Reaganites didn’t know what to make
of the emerging Solidarity movement in Poland, Kirkland championed its
cause. It was Solidarity’s strength that showed–to those willing to
see–that the Soviet colossus had feet of clay.
It is impossible to overstate the momentousness of such events, and yet
they have fallen into a shadowy disregard, eclipsed by recent history.
What is more, Kirkland has become, Soviet-style, a nonperson to the
labor movement he once led. Fortunately, Arch Puddington’s engaging
“Lane Kirkland: Champion of American Labor” returns this extraordinary
man to the pantheon of American heroes…
He believed that labor, at its best, represented an ethic of
brotherhood and solidarity that had something to teach the rest of
society. He often criticized American corporations for doing business
with our enemies. He argued that free societies were best for trade
unionists. Thus he pushed the Reagan administration into supporting
democratic reform for Central America, and he resisted the unionists
who backed the proto-communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Given the
choice, Kirkland insisted, ‘people will always choose freedom’…”