AGM 2004

LABOUR AND RACE

The theme of this year’s Labour Heritage was ‘Labour and race’ with speakers on racism and the impact of imperialism on the labour movement in Britain and the role of black labour activists.

Labour and ethnic minorities – an overview

The first speaker was Ken Lunn from the University of Portsmouth who gave an overview of Labour and ethnic minorities. He said that the view that British workers had their attitudes on race formed by the legacy of Empire and were as a result hostile to immigrant workers was over simplified and should be challenged. It was also not enough to see immigrant workers simply as the victims of capitalist exploitation. He had spent over 25 years doing research on different groups of immigrant workers and they were extremely diverse with different cultural traditions. The main focus of Labour and race has been the immigration of black and Asian workers to Britain after 1945, but the history of immigrant workers goes back a lot further than that. Ken spoke of Jewish workers who organized separate trades unions in the face of hostility from the established trades union movement. Seaports such as Liverpool had long received immigrant communities and had supported strong Asian seamen’s organizations to combat racism. The diversity of ethnic communities in Britain was illustrated by the examples of the Arab community in South Shields and the Lithuanian community in the Fife coalfields. Local studies had supplemented national histories in this respect.

Discussion included the issue of race and culture in the relationship between ethnic minorities and the ‘native working class’. The majority of the workforce in Britain have their origins in an immigrant community, such as the Irish. Race was also an issue. Immigrant white communities had over generations become ‘invisible’ but black workers would not ‘melt away’ in the same way.

The Labour Party and Africa 1920-1961

The second speaker was Paul Kelemen from the University of Manchester who spoke on the theme of ‘The Labour Party and Africa 1920-1961’. The focus of his speech was Kenya and the land reform movement. In Kenya as in other African countries white settlers had taken the best land from the Africans leaving land hunger in the African reserves. There had been support for land distribution and the radical solution of co-operatives in the 1930s but with a Labour Government in 1945-1951 keen to boost agricultural productivity in the colonies, policy changed in favour of the white settlers. Europeans were again encouraged to settle in Kenya. The interest of the European consumer was counterposed to the African producer. By 1952 land reform in Kenya was vigorously pursued by the Kenyan African Union and the Mau Mau rebellion began. Now with Labour out of office the Labour left supported the African peasantry in its quest for land redistribution and credit provision to be able to farm. The increasing brutality of the security forces was condemned. In 1954 the Movement for Colonial Freedom was set up, led by Fenner Brockway and supported independence for the colonies. When land distribution to Africans was achieved, loans from the British government left them indebted and thus dependent on growing cash crops. The position of the Trades Union Congress was to try to set up trades unions in the colonies.

Krishna Menon

In the afternoon Marika Sherwood of the Black and Asian Studies Association spoke on the case of Krishna Menon who was adopted as a prospective Labour candidate for Dundee but was subsequently rejected by the Labour Party national office. Menon was born into a wealthy family in India in 1896. In the 1930s he had been active in the Home Rule League in India. He later came to London, studied at LSE and was admitted to the Bar. He joined the India League which he described as being full of white English people. He also joined the Labour Party and became a councilor in St Pancras. It is not clear why he was selected as a candidate for Dundee, although the jute industry was a link between the city and India. Workers in the jute industry had lost their jobs as the industry relocated to India. Workers from Dundee went out to Calcutta.The records of Dundee Labour Party have been lost in a fire so it has not been possible to research fully.

Movement for Colonial Freedom

Stan Newens spoke on the Movement for Colonial Freedom. In 1945 one fifth of the world was still under British sovereignity. 780 million people throughout the world still lived under European colonial world. Hopes of independence for the colonies under a Labour Government were not encouraged by the Labour Party’s general election manifesto which gave no commitment to introduce bills to provide for self-government, except in the case of India. Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin said that the loss of the colonies would mean falling living standards for British people. However continued colonial rule was in contradiction to the Atlantic Charter which advocated full sovereignty for all the world’s peoples. In some British colonies repression was on the order of the day – in Malaya for instance communist insurgents were put down by British security forces, who even used head hunters to bring in rebels’ heads. This news was concealed from the British public but anti-colonial activists received the photographic evidence. Fenner Brockway played an active role in convening a conference of anti-colonialists and representatives of nationalist and independence movements, and black organizations such as the League of Coloured Peoples in 1947. Offices were set up in Paris and London and in 1948 the Congress of People’s Against Imperialism was established.

With the outbreak of wars against French rule in North Africa the Paris office was closed. By now India, Ceylon and Burma had their independence. In Africa however independence organizations, such as the Mau Mau led by Kenyatta were established and solidarity was called for. Against this background, the Movement for Colonial Freedom was founded in 1954. The Labour Party’s official position was not to support independence leaders. This however was not universally accepted and 70 MPs, including Harold Wilson and Barbara Castle, supported the Movement for Colonial Freedom. It had support also amongst celebrities such as Benjamin Britten and in the universities. Fenner Brockway was the chairman, Douglas Rogers the secretary and Tony Benn the treasurer. It had a lot of support amongst the rank and file of the Labour Party and trades union movement and waged a very high profile campaign. It drafted over 1500 parliamentary questions. Press cuttings from Kenya proved that prisoners in the independence movement had been beaten to death at Hola Camp and Barbara Castle succeeded in getting this confimed in the House of Commons. In 1963 Kenyatta declared an independent republic.

Other activities were organized by the MCF around the Suez crisis in 1956.A Suez Emergency Committee was set up. In the end however the Labour Party itself took over the organization of the demonstration on 4th November 1956 against the British invasion of Egypt. The MCF campaigned for freedom for the Portuguese colonies in Africa, for peace in Vietnam, support for Castro in the Cuban revolution and opposition to the seizure of power by the Ba’ath regime in Iraq and the reign of terror against its opponents. But it was divided on the question of Israel. On the homefront it fought racism and mobilized opposition to Enoch Powell’s rivers of blood speech in 1968. The MCF continued to campaign against neo-colonialism after independence, and opposed military take-overs in Africa, Asia and Latin America, such as the Pinochet coup in 1973. In 1970 it was renamed “Liberation” and will celebrate its 50th anniversary in May 2004.

John Archer

The final speaker was Sean Creighton who spoke about the life of a black activist in Battersea called John Archer. He was elected mayor in Battersea in 1913 and quite possibly was the first black mayor in Britain. He combined Labour politics with pan-Africanism and Roman Catholicism. He was born in Liverpool in 1863. His father was a seaman and his mother was Irish. When he moved to Battersea in the 1890s he worked with the Progressive Alliance. He was involved with the Pan African Association and was a delegate at the Pan African Conference in 1900. Archer became a councilor in Battersea in 1906 and in 1912 he was elected to the local Board of Guardians. He was mayor between 1913-1914 and did not experience any problems of colour prejudice, in spite of speculations by the local press. It was reported that “ a man of colour” had been elected as mayor of Battersea and congratulations flowed in from all over the world. Archer continued to fight for the unemployed on the Board of Guardians where he was the leader of the Labour group. In 1922 he ceased to be a councilor but he was an Alderman up to 1931 when he was re-elected as a councilor and deputy leader of the council. He died in 1932 aged 68. He left a legacy as a champion of both poor and coloured people. A block of flats is named after him.

Sean Creighton's talk on John Archer is available here.

Labour Heritage AGM

Labour Heritage held its AGM on the same day. It was reported that Labour Heritage had experienced a successful year, with conferences in Essex and West London and a regular bulletin. One new development had been the setting up of a web site maintained by Jason Williams. This web site has already received over 500 visits.

Thanks were given to two members of the committee who were not standing again, both for their outstanding contributions to Labour Heritage over the past years. They were Irene Wagner who, as treasurer had been involved right from the very beginning in 1982 and Sean Creighton who as secretary over the past few years had revitalized the organization. A new committee was elected for the forthcoming year –

Chair-Stan Newens, Secretary-Heidi Topman, Treasurer-John Grigg, Bulletin editor-Barbara Humphries, plus Jonathan Wood, Bill Bolland, Stephen Bird, and Helen McAlpine. Jason Williams who has developed the Labour Heritage web site was co-opted at the first committee meeting. (www.labourheritage.com)