Immigrant workmen of the early twentieth century were not pioneers, frontiersmen or revolutionaries. The colonial society was not so different from their own as to cause a sense of aliena tion. They fitted into the order of things as they found it and did what they could to better their conditions. They combined in ways familiar to them in their home countries, pressed their claims on governments and employers, and took political action to shape legislation affecting their terms of employment. The means they used varied according to the state of the labour market, the composition of the working classes, and the attitude of their masters. These factors, rather than differences in origin or outlook, accounted for the contrasting policies adopted by the labour movement in the Cape and in the northern colonies.
The Cape's distinctive features were a non-racial franchise, an old tradition of legal identity between white and Coloured, a high proportion of Coloured artisans and factory workers, and the small size of the African population in the western districts.
White and Coloured working people lived in the same neigh bourhood, worked on the same jobs, inter-married occasionally and cohabited more frequently, and had much the same standard of living. The elements of an integrated society existed. Labour leaders and trade unionists accepted the position, canvassed Coloured voters and organized Coloured wage earners. When George Woollends formed a socialist party in 19o4, he cited instances of hospitality extended to whites by Coloured families, and demanded justice for all working men, whether Dutch, Coloured, Malay or British-born. They should rid their minds of false ideas about colour distinctions, he urged, and unite on equal terms for socialism.1
Not all trade unionists at the Cape were as tolerant. A small,
C.S.A. -4
Class and Colour in South Africa r85o-195o
tight society of about
i5ostonemasons refused to admit any Coloured and monopolized their trade on public buildings.
Robert Stuart (1870-1950), the union's secretary, came to Cape Town from his native city of Aberdeen in
19o,took part in
forming the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) in I902, andbecame a leading organizer of white and Coloured unions. But he never attempted to break down the colour bar in his own trade. Other early unions in the south were less successful in maintaining a colour bar. The plasterers barred 'Coloured labour' from membership in
190Iand prohibited any member from working on the same scaffold 'with a coloured man, or a Malay, under pain of a fine'. F. Z.
J.Peregrino
(1853-1919, b.Accra), the West African editor and publisher of the
South African Spectator,remarked scathingly that these 'inconsiderate and unreasonable white men' wished to perpetuate race pre
judice, debase the Coloured artisan, and deny him the right to work at his trade. 'The Coloured Mechanic, Malay, black or Africander should make a common cause, and Organize, Organize, Organize.'
2Bricklayers also adopted a colour bar in
19o4.The Coloured artisans then formed their own union and undercut the white man's wage of i2s. or
14s.a day. Employers hired the cheaper man, and the white workers negotiated with the Coloured for a single union of bricklayers and plasterers.
Objections to an open, non-racial union came at times from the Coloured, as in Cape Town's bespoke tailoring trade. White journeymen, most of whom were Jewish, organized a society in
19o5.It tried hard but without success to enrol the large number of Muslims in the trade. Working seventy or eighty hours a week, the Muslims cut and stitched in their homes, usually in a room where the family ate and slept, and earned on an average
£3
xos. a week for piece work.
3The union won its first victory
in a test case, which decided that master tailors should pay for
alterations to an ill-fitting suit. This, the union said, was tangible
proof of its ability to fight also the battles of the Muslims, and
should gain their confidence. The union then made an agreement
with one big firm for a fifty-hour working week, a minimum wage
of £4 4s.for a journeyman, and
£for a woman. Even this
victory did not convince the Muslims. They adhered to their
traditional work patterns and preferred to deal directly with shopkeepers and master tailors.'
Manufacturers of leather goods, confectionery, cigarettes and furniture had a free hand in the absence of factory or wage legis lation. They employed juveniles and adults in badly ventilated shops, without proper toilet facilities or safeguards against injury.
Employers giving evidence in 1906 before a select committee on a factory bill admitted to taking on boys and girls aged twelve years and upwards at a wage of is. 8d. to 2S. 6d. a week. Em ployees worked fifty-two hours a week and, where this was feasible, took work to be completed at home. African labourers were paid 3s. 6d. or 4s. a week; Coloured men might get is.
more for the same kind of work. One tobacco firm paid girls of fourteen and sixteen years a weekly wage of 6s. 6d. to 8s. and women cutters 15S. to 35s. Another firm employing more than 300 white girls paid them an average wage of I Is. 3d. a week, and i6s. 7d. for packers. Skilled Coloured men in a food factory received an average of £3 a week, and white skilled immigrants
£4 los. or
£5
a week. Wages in the leather trade ranged from£2 to £3 a week. Most of the higher-paid men were whites, but they overlapped with Coloured in all skilled and semi-skilled grades.
The two wings of the movement worked closely together in organizing May Day celebrations, soup kitchens for the unem ployed, legal defence for Needham and Lewinson, two SDF
members arrested in August 19o6 for 'incendiary speeches', and elections. The societies of masons, printers, engineers and cigar makers hired the Federation's hall for meetings. When the cigar
ette makers struck work in June for higher wages, they turned the hall into a factory and set up a 'Lock Out Cooperative'. The tailors complained that a member of the SDF was cutting prices,
whereupon it decided to call on him to resign if he refused to join the union. But the tailors refused to donate money to the Federation's committee on unemployment, 'as it will lead to trouble in their union to mix up unionism with politics'. 5
Coloured and white working men had similar interests. They joined in the big unemployment demonstrations of 19o6 and in the campaigns of 19o6-7 for a workmen's compensation and 75
Class and Colour in South Africa 185o-z95o
factories act. The Labour Advance party, formed in October x9o5 by
the Cape Town trades council and Social Democratic
Federation, urged the adoption of a forty-eight hour workingweek, universal, free and compulsory education, and adult
suffrage for all civilized persons.6 The party's speakers declared that there should be no distinction between white and Coloured workers. All had the same aims and should work together.7Labour leaders drove the point home when addressing the
cosmopolitan audiences at the Stone, the Coloured people's traditional open-air forum on the slopes of Devil's Peak in the workiqg-class area of District Six. The Coloured were sceptical.
They drew attention to a 'no Coloured labour' clause in the contract for new university buildings, and blamed the unions.
John Tobin, a founding member of the African Political Organ ization (A p o), accused socialists of being rotten with colour prejudice.
They denied the charge indignantly. Wilfrid Harrison, ex guardsman, carpenter and Cape Town's leading socialist, asser ted that the trades council had nothing to do with the obnoxious
clause. All unions affiliated to the council welcomed any com petent Coloured tradesman. He proclaimed himself to be a red hot socialist revolutionary, at least in economic affairs, and like all genuine socialists repudiated a colour line. Harry MacManus, an Irish socialist, found a close resemblance between disputes over colour and the feud between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. Le Roux, speaking in Afrikaans, ridiculed the idea that South Africa could ever be a white man's country. A. Needham, leader of the short-lived Socialist Democratic party, claimed that the 'colour question' had no relevance to socialism. They might as well speak of a 'red question' for men with red hair.8 This was the language of orthodox socialism, couched in an idiom attuned
to the liberal tolerance of the western Cape.
The Cape Federation regarded itself as a branch of the London SDF, sold its paper the Clarion, and adopted propa ganda techniques that were suited to the conditions of a multi racial society. New members were welcomed with the singing of the Red Flag; a weekly journal, the Cape Socialist, appeared
when funds permitted; study classes were held for immigrant
76Dutchmen, Italians and Jews; and speakers harangued the crowd in Afrikaans, Xhosa and English. The Russian revolution of 19o5 was applauded at a public meeting, to which Olive Schreiner sent a message of solidarity and confidence: 'we are witnessing the beginning of the greatest event that has taken place in the history of humanity during the last centuries.'
The Federation gave much attention to the 'Native Question' and the 'Coloured Question', set up a 'Kaffir Propaganda Com mittee', and learned from Harrison that the Coloured people were beginning to consider the question of socialism and how it affected them. He suggested holding meetings at the Stone, the
APO's open-air forum, but the Coloured comrades thought that this would be 'discourteous and inadvisable'. They reported 'a good deal of interest among the Malays' and proposed a concert to assist the parliamentary election fund.9
Staunch socialists on the Rand, in contrast, appealed to a white electorate for protection from Asian, African and Coloured competition. The divergence between the attitudes of the south ern and northern wings of the movement can be explained in terms of a response to contrasting situations. It is less easy to decide how far organized white labour in the north was respon sible for racial policies which it supported, developed and ex ploited for sectional gains. The republic's bitter racialism had infected the whole society, until discrimination seemed as natural and inevitable as differences in skin colour. In its agrarian setting, where farmers hired craftsmen and rarely competed with them, the discrimination determined status, land ownership and political power rather than the division of labour. The industrial colour bar of the mining era was a new development.
It originated in the special skills of foreign-born technicians who turned their spheres of employment into a closed preserve.
The barriers were not so high or rigid at the end of the war as to keep all dark men out of skilled work. Coloured artisans, lured to the Rand by its promise of 'a golden pound a day', worked at their trades also on the mines. Africans with industrial experi ence could rise above the level of a labourer. Landless Afrikaners and unskilled immigrants were available for manual work at the lower end of the scale. The position was fluid and might have
Class and Colour in South Africa 185o-r95o
been shaped into the pattern of the Cape's open labour market.
It was Milner's officials, acting under the Mines, Works and Machinery Ordinance
of 1903,who took the decisions that led to a rigid demarcation of work along colour lines.
The ordinance itself did not discriminate or authorize a dis crimination that would have brought it within the ambit of matters reserved
bythe constitution for the secretary of state's approval.
Byrepealing the republican laws ii of
1897and
12of
x898,the ordinance removed the sole remaining colour bar in the Transvaal's mining legislation. But Wybergh, the com missioner of mines, introduced new colour bars in regulations issued under the ordinance. These defined the posts of manager, engine driver, banksman and onsetter in such a way as to reserve them for whites.
10Amended regulations of
19o6did the same thing for the work of a boiler attendant, lift operator, shift boss, surface foreman, mine overseer and mechanical engineer.
1The discriminations were imposed
by an all-powerful British administration, without public pressure, stated reason, or comment
bytrade unions, mine managements and the legislative council. As in the case of at least two other discriminatory measures
-the municipal franchise ordinance and the precious stones ordinance
of 1903 - Milner failed to reserve the regulations for approval in
Whitehall. Was it to avoid publicity that Wybergh discriminated in an oblique, almost furtive manner
bydefining work categories?
When president of the Transvaal branch of the South African League, that instrument of British imperialism, Wybergh had conducted a violent and dishonest campaign against the republic in 1898-9. His political activities lost him a lucrative post in Rhodes' Consolidated Goldfields. The firm had been deeply involved in the Jameson Raid and was not disposed to allow its staff to commit it in a similar conspiracy. Milner rewarded him after the war with the key post of commissioner of mines, but forced him to resign in
1903for having opposed the introduction of Chinese indentured workers. Elected to the legislative assem
bly in 1907,