26 | THE VOICE MAY 2023
BLACK WORKERS CONFERENCE 2023
CENTURY OF BLACK SELF-ORGANISATION Black workers have a long and proud history of fighting for rights in the movement
DEAL: The CWU helped challenge racism at Royal Mail (photo: Getty)
By Maurice Mcleod
This means Black labour disputes have not always followed the traditional paths, sometimes they find themselves NIONS AND trade working in direct opposition to disputes have become white workers. part of our daily news Although the Black presence diet as workers across in British workplaces stepped the country demand decent up massively after the Second working conditions and wages World War, Black workers were that keep up with price rises. fighting for their rights The traditional imlong before that. age of the unionIn 1919, after ist has been the First World cemented War, there as every was a vibrant night we community of see white, Black workworkingers in Britain, class union ABLE: Merchant particularly leaders runseamen in around the Newcastle-uponning rings ports like LiverTyne in 1941 around main(photo: Getty) pool, where 5,000 stream journalBlack merchant seaists. men, largely from the Trade disputes usually Caribbean lived. Returning occur when vulnerable indiservicemen, struggling to find vidual workers come together work, found it easy to blame to use their combined might to the ‘immigrant’ workers. force change. Sporadic race attacks spiralled into full scale rioting was so vicious that gunBRITISH HISTORY which boats were sent down the MerNo group of workers are more sey to suppress the violence. vulnerable than Black workThere were similar mass aters and so it should come as tacks on Black and Asian workno surprise that many pivotal ers in areas like Glasgow, South struggles in British history were Shields, Salford, Hull, Cardiff, led by Black workers and work- Newport and Barry leaving at ers of colour. least five people dead and over The union movement has 250 arrested. not always been welcoming to In many cases, the white atBlack workers who were some- tacks were led by unions, for times seen as a threat to the ex- example, in Glasgow the atisting white workforce. tacks on Chinese and Sierra
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Leonean sailors were led by the British Seafarers Union (BSU). Black workers found themselves ignored, or even opposed, by mainstream unions and so began to form their own. In 1936 in Cardiff, Black workers formed the Coloured Seamen’s Union, bringing together Africans, West Indians, Arabs and Malays to fight against the colour bar on the Cardiff Docks.
CONDITIONS
The desire for Black self-organisation within the union movement grew and the Coloured Film Artistes’ Association (CFAA) became Britain’s first independent black trade union when it launched at Elstree to
HANDY: Black mechanics got a better deal at the Ford plant in Dagenham after segregation between plants was exposed (photo: Getty)
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No group of workers are more vulnerable than Black workers improve the terms and working conditions for black actors. In Coventry in 1938, Asian workers formed the Indian Workers Association (IWA) which subsequently expanded to areas with a high number of Indian workers, like Leicester and Southall. From the 1950s onwards, the number of Black workers grew steadily. Most workers from the empire found themselves working in the lowest paid industries, such as factory work and cleaning. They would face discrimination from all sides. At a Ford plant in Dagenham, in 1968, the female machinists, who were almost all from South Asian backgrounds, went on strike over pay. They made the seat covers for the cars and had just had their jobs downgraded.
STRIKE
Although the women only won a partial victory, their campaign sparked an ‘equal pay demonstration’ in Trafalgar Square the next year and was a major reason for the passing of the 1970 Equal Pay Act. In 1976, workers at Grun-
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wick, a north London film processing company, went on strike over the treatment of workers. The strike was led by Asian women and made the group’s leader, Jayaben Desai a household name. The strike escalated and garnered support from across the union movement. They were ultimately unsuccessful but the resolution of the female leaders who even went on hunger strike at one stage, has inspired unionists ever since. In the late 1980s, there were several massive trade disputes as Thatcher clamped down on union activism. One of the largest disputes, the Wapping print dispute, saw a large workforce of 6,000 printers and newspaper workers go on strike over the introduction of new technology, and discrimination in the workplace. Many of the working-class print workers were from Black and minority ethnic communities. These workers had long faced discrimination in the workplace and saw the introduction of new technology as a further threat to their livelihoods. The National Union of Jour-
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nalists (NUJ) represented many of the print workers at Wapping, but some Black workers believed the union was not doing enough to address their specific concerns. The strike lasted for over a year and resulted in significant changes to the newspaper industry, including the introduction of new technology and changes to employment practices. More recently, the Royal Mail dispute of 2017 saw allegations of racial discrimination against Black workers in the allocation of overtime and promotion opportunities.
VULNERABLE
The Communication Workers Union (CWU) called a series of strikes in response, but negotiations eventually led to an agreement that addressed the workers’ concerns. In today’s disputes, whether in our hospitals, post offices or countless other workplaces, wherever you find poorly paid, vulnerable workers, you find Black workers. When the union movement is at its best, it is about solidarity not division and has antiracism at its core. True unionism realises that equality doesn’t mean anything unless everyone has it, and that improving conditions for Black workers improves pay and conditions for everyone else.
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