White labour policies emerged from an all-white franchise.
Having concentrated political power in the white minority, the British administration in the Transvaal connived at giving it control of industry, commerce and the skilled trades. Political power opened the door to economic privilege. Class, colour and national antagonisms offered a wide range of possibilities. Am bitious working men could appeal to class interests against em
ployers or to racial sentiments against Africans and Asians;
combine with Britishers against 'the Boer' or with Afri kaners against 'the capitalist'. Trade unionists and socialists on the Rand made a bid for political leadership soon after the war
byforming the Witwatersrand Trades and Labour Council.
Its foundation members were the societies of boiler makers, bricklayers, carpenters, engine drivers, engineers, iron moulders, musicians, printers, shop assistants and stonemasons.
The council's aims were modestly worded so as to disarm any suspicion of an intent to organize unions or interfere in their domestic affairs. It would link 'all branches of the working classes' together, promote the efficiency and progress of trade societies, and 'secure the return of representatives upon all governing bodies'.
Aparliamentary committee was elected to report on bills and motions affecting trade and labour. Delegates could be unseated for taking part in political activity 'not in conformity with the accepted policy of the Council'.' This was the language of a political organization, and the council was commonly referred to as the Labour party.
Patriotic members of the council worked closely with the
British administration. Both the council and the miners' union
backed Milner's proposal that the Transvaal should donate
£30million to the cost of the war. Chamberlain, when visiting the
98Rand in January 1903, congratulated the unions on their decision.
Working men in England, he said, were also paying towards the cost. They 'would feel they were rather left in the lurch by their comrades here, if they alone of all classes were to object to any contribution '.2 Peter Whiteside, president of the trades council,
and Alexander Riatt, branch president of the ASE, were re-
i)
warded with seats on Johannesburg's nominated town council, while Milner also appointed Riatt as a member of the legislative council to represent the working classes. Born in Glasgow in 1867, Riatt qualified as a mechanical engineer, emigrated to South Africa in 189o, took a prominent part in the British agitation against the republic, and fought with Bethune's mounted infantry in the war. A leading opponent of the Chinese labour policy, he was again rewarded with a seat on the legisla tive council after the introduction of responsible government in 1907. He resigned his seat, however, to become Inspector of White Labour three months before he died in November 1907.
The decision to import Chinese changed the political climate and opened a period of bitter class and national conflict on the Rand. More than any other factor, the 'Chinese question' spurred British working men and Afrikaner nationalists into organized political activity. Their common cause against the 'Hoggenheimers'* laid the foundations of unity in time to come.
After the enactment of the Chinese labour importation ordinance Whiteside told the trades council that he would despair of his party's future in the Transvaal were it not for the active and cordial cooperation of the Dutch. They gave the worker reason to hope that he would not have to face the foreign capitalist single-handed when the Transvaal obtained self-government.3 Whiteside's solution revealed the labour movement's racial bias.
British workers looked to anti-British landowners for alies, and disdained their African and Coloured fellow workers.
The small body of white workers was unstable, poorly organ ized, divided and vulnerable. Some of the bigger unions, such as the societies of miners, railwaymen and plasterers, kept aloof
* A term of abuse with an anti-Semitic flavour that was used then, and would be used even more commonly in later years, to describe the mining magnates.
99
I . .
Class and Colour in South Africa r850-I950
from the trades council because of personal rivalries or its political activities. Not having a firm base in the working class, Whiteside, Riatt and certain other leaders collaborated with business and professional men in the White League and African Labour League against the Chinese. The inter-class alliance operated also in Johannesburg's first municipal elections of December
1903,when every voter cast thirty votes to
fillthirty vacancies. The trades council threw in its lot with the United Conference group and nominated five candidates on their ticket.
Miners, railwaymen and plasterers backed the opposition Reform ticket, and also put up five candidates. Only two Labour men,
Riatt and Shanks, were elected. The results of the 1904 elections were as disappointing. Whitesidewas the only successful candidate out of ten men who stood on a Labour platform. These setbacks and much disagreement over the participation by trade unions in elections strengthened the case for a distinct Labour party.All signs pointed towards such a possibility. A Social Demo cratic Federation had sprung up in Cape Town. Another SDF held a May Day demonstration on the Rand in 1904 as a counter
blast to the conservative trade unions' Labour Day rally on Good Friday. The trades council invited the 'Boer Generals' to attend the rally, and received assurances of goodwill from Smuts. Whiteside visited Cape Town a few days later. He told the local trades council that only by taking part in politics could workers obtain the legislation needed to improve their condition.
Foreign financiers would not be able to play ducks and drakes with a British colony, as they were doing in the Transvaal, if workers on the Rand had the Cape's advantages of a parliament and a pro-Labour newspaper like the South African News.4 He was talking to the converted. Cape Town's trade unionists had already formed the nucleus of a Labour party and entered the lists in a parliamentary election.
Five Labour candidates contested seats in the Cape's general elections of 1904. Four stood in Cape Town with the backing of the Political Labour League, an offshoot of the trades council.
The fifth represented the British Workmen's Political and Defence Association of Port Elizabeth. The League's constitu tion and programme were suited to the colony's non-racial
100
franchise. Membership was open to wage earners of any race or colour, and the programme required equal rights for all civilized men. This was a splendid avowal of democratic principle and a unique repudiation
bywhite labour of racial policies. The effects were negligible. The leaders missed the opportunity of proving their sincerity
bynominating a Coloured or African candidate. Their representatives were white, British and, with one exception, recent immigrants. They had little money, experi ence or organization behind them and were easily routed
byJameson's Progressive party, which had all three qualities, and could, in addition, rely on patriotic sentiments whipped up dur ing the war among English-speaking and Coloured working men.
The Progressives obtained a majority of one in the legislative council and of five in the assembly. Dr L.
S.Jameson, Rhodes' former lieutenant and the leader of the raid on the Transvaal, became prime minister. Britain's war had completed his mission, vindicated his political villainy, and enabled him to maintain the Rhodes tradition of combining the premiership with a director ship in the colony's richest corporation. The Labour candidates Corley, Craig and Purcell attacked his association with De Beers, accused him of supporting the Chinese policy, and demanded a tax on diamonds. They denounced his party as one pledged to the capitalists, that would not therefore introduce labour measures like workmen's compensation and compulsory arbitration in industrial disputes. Corley, a carpenter and the Labour League's president, warned his audiences that workmen would gain nothing from a representative of De Beers. A month later, defeated in the elections and blacklisted by employers, he broke up home and emigrated to New Zealand.
5The decision to take part in elections was reached after much
debate on the rival merits of political and direct action, an issue
that perplexed radical socialists for many years also in the
Transvaal and Natal. The federation decided on independent
political action in June
19o6and advised the trades council
accordingly. It then formed a Labour Representation Committee
and called a meeting of delegates from all working-class bodies
to 'present a united front to the enemy at the elections'. The
two wings of the movement could not agree, however, and the
iolClass and Colour in South Africa r850-1950
federation decided in March i9o7 to nominate Needham, Levin
son and Howard for the parliamentary elections. Ridout stood for the municipal council and obtained 1,498 votes for socialism from the workmen's single vote; but his opponent got
3,000votes from the plural suffrage of property owners.
6Trade unionists took a hard knock at Kimberley, where De Beers ruled with an iron rod. The leading spirit here was James Trembath, a Cornish compositor, who settled in the town after the siege of
90ooand struggled for more than ten years to organize a labour movement. An attempt was made to put up labour
candidates in 1904, and when this failed Trembath and hisassociates formed a trades council. Seven of its nine members worked for De Beers, which summarily dismissed them in
195oafter a dispute over workmen's compensation. One of the victimized men was Walter Madeley (1873-1947), a fitter from Woolwich, who twenty years later held office in Hertzog's cabinet. The company's behaviour gave rise to much agitation, but the company never relaxed its grip on the town. Madeley and the other victims were unable to find work locally, while the council lost what influence it had over the majority of workmen. 'There are many good trade unionists who are but indifferent politicians and many good politicians who are not trade unionists,' declared Trembath. It was unfair, he added, to force any man to pay for political propaganda to which he might be wholly opposed.
'For these reasons, a Political Labour League was formed to fight elections and conduct political campaigns.
Trembath urged working men in all centres to combine in order to put into parliament men who belonged to their class and looked after their interests. Without direct representation, he argued, they would always be mere pawns in the parliamentary game; they would receive only crumbs of labour legislation, never the loaf. Socialists in Durban held similar views and
formed the Clarion Fellowship in 1903. Appealing to an allwhite and almost wholly British electorate, Natal's labour move ment took on a distinctly British flavour. The Fellowship was modelled on the English society of the same name, distributed its publications, contributed to Hyndman's election expenses, and helped to send
E.B. Rose as South Africa's representative to
102
the Second International congress at Amsterdam in 1905. The founders of the movement in Durban were two Scotsmen: A. L.
Clark, 'the father of railway trade unionism', and Harry Norrie, a tailor from Forfarshire. Both spent their lives in preaching socialism, passed through many stages of radicalism, and never came to grips with the realities of Natal's multi-racial society.
The Fellowship sponsored a Workers' Political Union in 1905 to fight a parliamentary by-election in Durban. Their candidate, C. H. Haggar, a bearded, colourful doctor of philosophy from East Anglia, was defeated. But he won a seat in 19o6 on the borough council as the nominee of the Natal Labour Representa tive Committee. This led to a quarrel between trade unionists and socialists over the choice of candidates that wrecked the trades council. Later in the year, however, Haggar, N. P.
Palmer, D. Taylor and J. Connolly were elected on a Labour platform to the legislative assembly. Though this seemed a spectacular success, it reflected the amorphous nature of Natal's politics rather than the strength of its labour movement.
The Witwatersrand trade council's decision to form a Political Labour League followed hard on Lyttleton's promise in July 1904 of representative government for the Transvaal. The in augural meeting took place only a year later on 31 August.
Bill Andrews, the council's president, H. W. Sampson, its secretary, and Whiteside called for an end to Labour's local isolation, the formation of branches in every colony, and an all-South African campaign. The League's programme of twenty-two points made no concession, however, to the Cape's traditional policy of racial equality; and called for a union of the white races, equal rights for their languages, responsible government, white adult suffrage and single-member consti tuencies. Like their masters, the Labour leaders appealed for Anglo-Afrikaner unity at the expense of Africans, Coloured and Asians.
Andrews, Sampson and J. H. Brideson represented the League in Johannesburg's municipal elections of October 1905. All were defeated in a campaign marred by internal squabbles and appeals to racial prejudice. The miners' union threw its weight against
Brideson, and the League sabotaged Andrews, its president. Its
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Class and Colour in South Africa r85o-195o
executive, which included Sampson and Whiteside, publicly rebuked him for allegedly repudiating his pledge to abide
bycaucus decisions. The Rev.
C. A.Lane, who defeated him
bytwenty-one votes, included in his manifesto a demand for a ban on extra-marital intercourse between black and white; it was unnatural, he claimed, for the races had been differentiated
byNature and should be kept separate
bylaw.
C.H. Short, the third candidate in the ward, accused Andrews of being supported
bythe mine magnates of Corner House, condemned 'the ten dency to mix the races', and denounced 'the preaching of the
gospel of social equality of White and Black'. Andrews alone avoided such racist incitement, though he did not repudiate the League's undertaking to employ white labour where possible in municipal services.
While laying the foundations of their movement
bytaking part in municipal elections, Labour leaders staked a claim to representation on a higher plane
byjoining in the campaign for responsible government. Mine owners and big business men, with the backing of Milner and the Colonial Office, tried to keep the reins in their hands. They formed the Transvaal Progressive Association in November
1904and advocated strong ties with Britain, Chinese labour, equal voting rights for white men, and an interim period of representative government. Abe Bailey, a leading mine director and Progressive politician, declared that he for one would not let the Boers 'win with the ballot-box what they had failed to accomplish with the Mauser'.
8Botha's Het Volk party, the Transvaal Responsible Govern ment Association led
by E.P. Solomon, and Labour countered with a demand for immediate self-rule. At times they seemed to interchange their traditional roles. Germiston workers heard
Whiteside (who had served as a quartermaster-sergeant againstthe republic) denounce the Jameson raid and praise Kruger for having offered a franchise more generous than that proposed by the
Lyttleton constitution.9 Afew
days later, in February 19o5,A.
D.Wolmarans, an uncompromising member of Het Volk's head committee, told farmers at Nylstroom that they had no quarrel with Britain. Their enemy was the capitalist, who had made war on the republic and was now fighting artisans and
104
Workers and the Vote
farmers. They should stand together, stop the importation of Chinese, give employment to white men, and make the Trans
vaal a white man's country.
10 VWhen hotheaded republicans like Wolmarans and C. F. Beyers
spoke of war between labour and capital, their rural audiencetook them to mean the old battle against foreigners, mine mag-S t nates and British imperialism. Het Volk represented landowners
and not socialists. 'Capital and Labour must work hand in hand - the one could not do without the other,' was Louis Botha's message to the Pretoria branch of the ASE at their annual dinner in June 1905. He assured the engineers that his people, in their impoverished state, had drawn closer to the working man, for whom Paul Kruger always kept an open ear.' I British workmen and Afrikaner landowners stood far apart in language, tradition and national loyalties. Many working men in the Transvaal preferred to remain under Britain's protective mantle and supported the plea of the mine owners for representa tive government.1 2 Labour leaders who backed the demand for immediate self-government joined forces not with Afrikaners but with English-speaking merchants and professional men.
Whiteside, Wybergh, Shanks, Riatt and Creswell helped to draft the manifesto of the Responsible Government Association, signed it in the company of eighty others, and spoke on the association's platform. The Responsibles entered into an elec toral pact with Het Volk after the publication in 19o5 of the Lyttleton constitution, which provided for an elected majority in the legislature and an executive council dominated by British officials. Andrews and Sampson met representatives of the Responsibles in May to discuss an extension of the pact to include Labour, and reported back to the trades council, which agreed to support the pact on condition that Labour was free to press its own claims for the eight-hour working day, work men's compensation and other reforms.1 3
The constitutional issue was settled by a change of govern ment in Britain. Balfour's conservative ministry fell in December 1905. Campbell-Bannerman took office, went to the country in January 19o6, and won an election unique in British politics for the prominence given to a wholly colonial issue - the Chinese
o105
Class and Colour in South Africa z850-1950
importations. The new Liberal cabinet scrapped Lyttleton's constitution and, acting on the recommendations of the Ridge way committee, decided to introduce quasi-responsible govern ment in the Transvaal. It was to have a nominated upper
chamber and a legislative assembly of sixty-nine white members elected by white men only. Political parties in the colony prepared for battle. Socialists and trade unionists formed the Independent Labour party in May 19o6. Het Volk's executive on the Rand turned down a motion to cooperate with Labour which, it said, had socialist tendencies. The Responsibles, in cluding Creswell and Wybergh, merged with the Reform Club, called themselves the Transvaal Nationalist Association, and renewed their electoral agreement with Het Volk. Labour held aloof and, in December 19o6, formed the Labour Representation Committee. It combined trade unionists, the I L P, and small left wing groups of Germans, Italians and Russian Jews.
Socialists, trade unionists and political opportunists painfully edged their way to united action. Some trade unionists com plained that socialists dominated the LRC. A British Labour Union, making a brief appearance before the 1907 elections, denounced the 'fallacious doctrine of socialism as propounded by the Socialist Labour Parties'.14 At the other end of the spectrum, Jock Campbell's Socialist Labour party, formed in
1902, turned its back on all elections and distributed the works of Karl Kautsky, Daniel De Leon and his fellow syndicalists.1 5 Labour managed in spite of these differences to put up thirteen candidates in the Transvaal general election of February 1907.
They polled 5,216 votes out of the 13,i8o cast in the thirteen constituencies and won three seats. Sampson and Whiteside were returned in Johannesburg, and J. Reid in Pretoria. Het Volk won thirty-seven seats, which gave it a clear majority of five, and Botha included E. P. Solomon and H. C. Hull, two leaders of the Transvaal Nationalist Association, in his cabinet.
Het Volk did not oppose the Labour candidates. These lost to the Nationalists in three, and to the Progressives in seven, con stituencies. As in Natal and the Cape, the bulk of the working class vote went to parties representing capitalists and the middle class. They, and not Afrikaner nationalism, were Labour's chief
xo6