http://www.ias.org.uk/theglobe/jan98/review.htm
 
FYI (From the Globe, January 1998)
 
> Book Review
>
> Early IOGT - its influence rediscovered
>
>
>
> Temperance and Racism David M. Fahey
>
> University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky
>
> ISBN 0-8131-1984-7
>
> During his studies on the drink question in the late nineteenth
> century in Britain, Professor Fahey, an American historian, became
> fascinated by an international fraternal temperance society which had
> its origin in America in 1851 and was brought to Europe in 1868 - the
> Independent Order of Good Templars (now IOGT International). He was
> soon to discover an organisation which over a hundred years ago was
> the "world's largest, most militant, and most evangelical organisation
> hostile to alcoholic drink". After the American Civil War millions of
> Americans joined the 'Order'. By the end of the century it had
> recruited 1.3 million members in England and 1 million in Scotland.
>
> Professor Fahey in his book "Temperance and Racism" has chosen the
> period of the "great schism" in the organisation (1876 to 1887) to
> study the uniqueness of this fraternal society. The split in the
> organisation was primarily over the issue of black membership in the
> white lodges of the southern states of the USA. This episode in Good
> Templar history, Professor Fahey contends, throws a new window on
> racial attitudes and behaviour in the late nineteenth century on both
> sides of the Mason - Dixon line and the Atlantic. The newer British
> organisations were not prepared to compromise on the fundamental
> principle of human brotherhood and racial equality, but opponents of
> their uncompromising attitude believed it had more to do with the
> British and in particular its leaders wish to establish hegemony over
> the American organisation.
>
> Although not a member, Professor Fahey, from the written records, has
> captured the essential spirit of the organisation - its fraternalism
> and internationalism. "It was a network that was simultaneously both
> more intimately parochial and more international than any nation
> state". IOGT stood out from other American fraternal societies because
> it did not exclude women - sisterhood was part of the fraternity and
> this had a family appeal. As a consequence of embracing women, as well
> as men, it was in the vanguard of women's suffrage. By combining
> temperance and fraternalism it provided a support group for
> abstainers. Members also had an immense pride in its internationalism
> and it was this which set it apart from other temperance societies.
>
> Having concentrated on the split in the organisation, it is a pity
> that Fahey has not referred to the final peroration which Malins, the
> leader of the British section, made when he led them out of the
> international session in Kentucky in 1876 with the words "I honour the
> flag of my country, but I honour the flag of Good Templary more
> because it covers all nations and all peoples".
>
> Fahey in writing his book maintains that his prime purpose is "to make
> Good Templars visible" since "historians of race, gender and
> international moral reforms have forgotten them". If his book inspires
> others to examine the role of IOGT in helping to form social and
> political opinion during the latter part of the 19th century and
> beginning of the 20th century, he will have achieved his purpose.
>
>
> Keir Hardie Caroline Benn
>
> Richard Cohen London
>
> ISBN 1-86066-116-5
>
> Confirmation of the role temperance and IOGT played in the shaping of
> social democratic movements is to be found in Caroline Benn's new
> biography of Keir Hardie. Benn writes "Modern readers tend to regard
> temperance as quaint and puritanical and underrate its importance
> politically". Keir Hardie was a founder of the British Labour Party,
> its first Parliamentary Leader and its only acknowledged "folk hero".
> But 'abstinence was Keir Hardie's first political cause'. Brought up
> in a "free-thinking" working class household, Hardie, after joining a
> Good Templar Lodge and taking the pledge, accepted religion. Benn
> records how, under his leadership, the Cumnock Good Templar Lodge
> quadrupled in membership.
>
> Caroline Benn's biography shows that true temperance advocates are not
> hung up on single issues - they are concerned with the whole man and
> condition of society. Hardie worked passionately for social justice
> and democracy, women's suffrage, ecology, pacifism and
> internationalism. He was a universalist both in his faith and
> politics.
>
> "What gave Hardie his strength as an agitator was his ethical
> perspective". Supporting local option to shut down the local liquor
> trade Hardie remarked: "Those who can take a glass or let it alone are
> under moral obligation for the sake of the weaker brethren, who cannot
> do so, to let it alone".
>
> The Good Templar influence on him was indeed crucial in his political
> vision and practice. Although not quoted in Benn's biography Keir
> Hardie acknowledged this when he paid his tribute to the influence of
> IOGT... "Had I never joined the Order, I should most probably have
> remained a hewer of coal, and a drawer of water to the end of my days.
> It was Good Templary that brought me before the public. It was in the
> service of Good Templary that I conquered my stage fright and gained
> my platform legs. I well remember the occasion of my first attempt to
> address an audience. It was a Templar Soiree in Straven ... people
> seemed to listen to me, and I took heart of grace to try my powers on
> a larger assembly of men".