BLACK WORKERS CONFERENCE 2023 CENTURY OF BLACK SELF-ORGANISATION

By Maurice Mcleod

UNIONS AND trade disputes have become part of our daily news diet as workers across the country demand decent working conditions and wages that keep up with price rises.

The traditional image of the unionist has been cemented as every night we see white, workingclass union leaders running rings around mainstream journalists.

Trade disputes usually occur when vulnerable individual workers come together to use their combined might to force change.

British History

No group of workers are more vulnerable than Black workers and so it should come as no surprise that many pivotal struggles in British history were led by Black workers and workers of colour.

The union movement has not always been welcoming to Black workers who were sometimes seen as a threat to the existing white workforce.

This means Black labour disputes have not always followed the traditional paths, sometimes they find themselves working in direct opposition to white workers.

Although the Black presence in British workplaces stepped up massively after the Second World War, Black workers were fighting for their rights long before that.

In 1919, after the First World War, there was a vibrant community of Black workers in Britain, particularly around the ports like Liverpool, where 5,000 Black merchant seamen, largely from the Caribbean lived. Returning servicemen, struggling to find work, found it easy to blame the ‘immigrant’ workers. Sporadic race attacks spiralled into full scale rioting which was so vicious that gunboats were sent down the Mersey to suppress the violence. There were similar mass attacks on Black and Asian workers in areas like Glasgow, South Shields, Salford, Hull, Cardiff, Newport and Barry leaving at least five people dead and over 250 arrested.

In many cases, the white attacks were led by unions, for example, in Glasgow the attacks on Chinese and Sierra

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 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- 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- 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.