Jonathan Hyslop

The Imperial Working Class Makes Itself 'White': White Labourism in Britain, Australia, and South Africa Before the First World War

The white working classes in the pre-First World War British Empire were not composed of ‘nationally’ discrete entities, but were bound together into an Imperial working class by flows of population which traversed the world. The labour movements based on this imperial working class produced and disseminated a common ideology of White Labourism. In this ideology, the element of the critique of exploitation and the element of racism were inextricably intermingled. The paper seeks to identify a few of the many ‘vectors’ along which white labourist ideology moved around the world. The paper ends with a discussion of the British labour movement response to the 1914 deportations of South African white labour leaders, which seeks to demonstrate how integral to that movement the conceptions of White Labourism had become.

Political Corruption: Before and After Apartheid

Since South Africas 1994 political transition, a major feature of the countrys new politics has been the centrality of issues of corruption in public controversy. This article aims to analyse how the administrative and political legacies brought to the present by both the old South African state structures and the new political leadership produce varying types of corruption. The article takes three paths to this goal, considering the issues conceptually, comparatively and historically. First, it argues that most writing on South African corruption has failed to use the analytically necessary distinctions between concepts of rent-seeking behaviour, patron–client relationships and corruption as such. Second the article points to the comparative frameworks that may usefully be adopted to examine the question, with particular attention to the work of Chabal and Daloz. Third, the article attempts a historical overview of corruption questions in South Africa. It contends that there was a high degree of variability in the levels and nature of rent-seeking activities in the state during the century of white domination in Southern Africa. The legacies of forms of rent seeking, patronage and corruption existing within the former white state, the Bantustans, and within the liberation movement itself have all combined to affect the politics of the post-apartheid state.

White Working-class Women and the Invention of Apartheid: ‘Purified’ Afrikaner Nationalist Agitation for Legislation Against ‘Mixed’ Marriages, 1934–9

The South African white general election of 1938 was largely fought around a poster. The poster was published by the supporters of D. F. Malans hard-line Afrikaner Nationalists, who were attempting to unseat the more pro-imperial United Party (UP) government of Hertzog and Smuts. The poster portrayed the alleged threat of ‘mixed’ marriages to Afrikaner women, and attacked the UP for failing to legislate against it. Rejecting J. M. Coetzees contention that such racist manifestations can solely be understood in terms of the unconscious, the paper argues that shifting gender relations amongst Afrikaners were crucial to this agitation. As young Afrikaner women moved into industry on a large scale during the 1920s and 1930s, men experienced womens greater economic and social independence as a challenge to their authority. Nationalist leaders played successfully on this insecurity by appealing to men to ‘protect’ women against supposed black threats, including ‘mixed’ marriages. The particular campaign of 1938, however, backfired somewhat on the Malanites. The Hertzog and Smuts supporters were divided over the proposal for legislation. But even their liberal faction was against ‘mixed’ marriages; they simply did not see a law as the best way of preventing it. The UP responded to the Nationalist campaign by arguing that white women were being insulted by the mere suggestion that they would marry across the colour line. They used this particular strand of racism to mobilise white women and men against the Nationalists. But the whole affair ultimately smoothed the way for Malan to legislate against ‘mixed’ marriage after he came to power in 1948. The combined effects of both Nationalist and UP campaigns was to strengthen racist opinion about the issue. In order to avoid the divisions in his party on the marriage question, Hertzog handed it over to a Commission of Inquiry. The 1939 De Villiers Report recommended in favour of legislation, but was not acted on because of the break-up of the Hertzog–Smuts government. Yet this UP appointed commission was ultimately used by the Nationalist government as the basis of its own racist marriage legislation.

Why did Apartheid's supporters capitulate? ‘Whiteness’, class and consumption in urban South Africa, 1985–1995

Abstract This paper poses the question of why South African whites eventually acquiesced in the democratic transition of the 1990s. Whilst domestic and international political pressure was clearly the crucial factor in bringing about change, the question of why whites did not go along with right wing advocacy of continued defence of the status quo remains. The argument of the paper is that the subjectivities of whites changed between the 1970s and the 1990s in a way which made them much less available for mobilization in defence of apartheid. They moved from strong identification with the modernist, statist project of apartheid, to far more individualized and consumerist self-identities. This was the outcome of an interaction between the changing internal class structure and the global socio-cultural changes associated with late modernity.

The Invention of the Concentration Camp: Cuba, Southern Africa and the Philippines, 1896–1907

Abstract This article contends that new cultures of military professionalism were crucial to the emergence of the concentration camp as a social phenomenon in the late 1890s and the first decade of the twentieth century. It uses an analysis of the interaction between professional military culture and the process of war-fighting to provide a better understanding of the origins of the camp. Military professionalism, despite important national differences, took instrumental rationality as a core value. This produced a willingness by soldiers to take responsibility for organizing civilian populations on a macro-social scale. In each of four case studies, clearing the population from the rural areas in a ‘scorched earth’ response to guerilla activity led to the development of the camps. The article argues that this approach has more explanatory adequacy than those based on theories of genocide, biopower, exceptional states, racial ideology, or rational choice. The paper suggests that a major way in which the camps of 1896–1907 were linked to mid 20th century camps was through a global diffusion of the concept, via new forms of print media.

Rethinking Worlds of Labour: Southern African Labour History in International Context

South African historians and social scientists have often bemoaned ‘South African exceptionalism’: in other words a tendency to see the country’s historical trajectory as absolutely unique. Yet they have also been strangely reluctant to place their findings in a more global context. The articles which comprise this edition were papers given at a University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) History Workshop and Sociology of Work Unit international conference entitled ‘Rethinking Worlds of Labour: southern African labour history in international context’ held from 28 to 31 July 2006.

Steamship Empire Asian, African and British Sailors in the Merchant Marine c.1880—1945

The introduction of the steamships on a large scale in the late 19th century saw African and Asian sailors becoming a central component of the workforce of the British merchant marine. This development was met with considerable resistance from British seamen who saw these workers as a cheap labour force that would undermine their established position. This article interprets the steam empire as a set of overlapping webs, comprising the shipping companies, British diasporic labour and Indian Ocean seafarers. It traces how a racialized politics was generated within these webs, and the major conflicts to which this gave rise.

Scottish Labour, Race, and Southern African Empire c.1880-1922: A Reply to Kenefick

SUMMARY: In his article in the current edition of International Review of Social History, the Scottish historian, Billy Kenefick, argues against my thesis that the labour force of the United Kingdom and the settler colonies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can be understood as having constituted a linked ‘‘imperial working class’’ in which an ideology of racialized white labour protectionism predominated. Kenefick believes that in South Africa British socialists challenged white labourism, and that Scottish immigrants played a very prominent role in this anti-racist project. My reply traces the relationship between Scottish national identity, imperialism, and the labour movement. It then examines the evidence on the racial politics of Scottish trade unionists in South Africa and argues that, with a very few individual exceptions, they did buy into the ideas of white labourism. Finally, the article considers Scottish labour attitudes to race in the home country, and demonstrates that there was strong sympathy for the racial labour politics of the settler colonies. In his article criticizing my work on the role of racial ideology in the preWorld-War-I labour movement of Britain and its diaspora, the Scots historian Billy Kenefick argues against my thesis that the labour force of the United Kingdom and the settler colonies can be understood as having constituted a linked ‘‘imperial working class’’ in which an ideology of ‘‘white labourism’’ predominated. 1 In my view, white labourism, combining

Guns, Drugs and Revolutionary Propaganda: Indian Sailors and Smuggling in the 1920s

ABSTRACT There is considerable evidence that during the 1920s, there was extensive transcontinental smuggling by Indian sailors of commodities including weaponry and narcotics. They also engaged in some smuggling of revolutionary propaganda. This article examines a number of smuggling incidents and asks what they tell us about the construction of narratives about mariners by both the authorities and the revolutionaries of the time. It contends that both radical and official narratives misconstrued the seamens social world. Drawing on archival evidence and utilising the analysis of maritime culture developed by Carolyn Nordstrom, the article argues that whereas both Marxists and colonial officials tended to understand the sailors as potential revolutionaries, their own practice and self-image was much more that of traders in an illegal economy.

The world voyage of James Keir Hardie: Indian nationalism, Zulu insurgency and the British labour diaspora 1907–1908

In 1907–1908, the British labour leader, James Keir Hardie, made a round-the-world tour, which included visits to India, Australasia and southern Africa. The support for Indian nationalism which he expressed precipitated a major international political controversy, in the course of which Hardie came under severe attack from the Right, both in Britain and in her colonies. In southern Africa, the issue, combined with Hardie’s earlier criticism of the repression of the 1906 Bambatha rising in Natal, sparked rioting against Hardie by British settlers during his visit. This article seeks to show how Hardie’s voyage illuminates the imperial politics of its moment. Hardie’s journey demonstrates how politics in the British colonies of his era took place not within local political boundaries, but in a single field which covered both metropolis and colonies. The article is a case study which helps to illustrate and develop an argument that the white working classes in the pre-First World War British Empire were not composed of nationally discrete entities, but were bound together into an imperial working class which developed a distinct common ideology, White Labourism, fusing elements of racism and xenophobia with worker militancy and anti-capitalism. The current paper refines this analysis of the politics of the imperial working class by situating it in relation to the rising force of Indian nationalism in the same period, and to the changes this development generated in the politics of the settler colonies and the imperial centre. In India, Hardie forged links with the dynamic new political mobilization that had followed on the crisis over the partition of Bengal. In doing so, he entered, as an ally, into the discursive struggle which Indian nationalists were waging for self-government. By taking a pro-Indian position he antagonized the British Right. Labourites in the white settlement colonies wanted to defend Hardie, as a representative figure of British labour, but were embarrassed by the fact that Hardie’s position on India went against the grain of White Labourist ideology. In southern Africa, local leaders of British labour did opt to defend Hardie. But they did so not only at the risk of alienating their members, but also at the price of being forced into direct confrontations with anti-Hardie groupings.