Abstract
A significant proportion of the published work on ways in which issues of ‘race’ and immigration have impacted on the British labour movement has continued to plough an already deep and increasingly unproductive furrow.1 The framework essentially focuses on a ‘native’ labour movement, composed largely of white males, which has viewed ‘others’ as challengers to the hard-won rights of trade unions and their associated political parties. This presents, therefore, a history of negativity, of opposition and of hostility.2 Such work may occasionally acknowledge the contributions of certain groups, such as the Irish, to British labour politics. There are also examples of the toleration of others, particularly those with defined legitimate claims to citizenship status, although they remain essentially beyond the pale of white British male identity. In the main, however, the model remains fixed and static.
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Notes
L. Tabili, ‘We Ask for British Justice’: Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain (New York, 1994).
Tabili, ‘We Ask for British Justice’, 6. A. Kershen, Uniting the Tailors: Trade Unionism Amongst the Tailors of London and Leeds, 1870–1939 (London, 1995) has some detailed material but perhaps lacks this kind of critical evaluation.
See here the very insular approach of A. Marsh and V. Ryan, The Seamen (Oxford, 1989).
R. Lawless, From Ta’izz to Tyneside: An Arab Community in the North-east of England During the Early Twentieth Century (Exeter, 1995).
M. Hickman and B. Walter, ‘Deconstructing Whiteness: Irish Women in Britain’, Feminist Review, 50 (1995), 7.
M. Banton and J. Harwood, The Race Concept (Newton Abbot, 1975), 9.
See J. MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880–1960 (Manchester, 1984); J. MacKenzie, ed., Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester, 1986).
C. Husband, ‘Introduction: “Race”, the Continuity of a Concept’, in C. Husband, ed., ‘Race’ in Britain: Continuity and Change (London, 1982), 19–20.
See J. MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880–1960 (Manchester, 1984); J. MacKenzie, ed., Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester, 1986).
C. Husband, ‘Introduction: “Race”, the Continuity of a Concept’, in C. Husband, ed., ‘Race’ in Britain: Continuity and Change (London, 1982), 19–20.
D. Kay and R. Miles, Refugees or Migrant Workers? European Volunteer Workers in Britain, 1946–1951 (London, 1992), 175.
28 See comment in S. Fielding, Class and Ethnicity: Irish Catholics in England, 1880–1939 (Buckingham, 1993), 127.
E. Hunt, British Labour History, 1815–1914 (London, 1981), 167.
See T. Kushner, The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: A Social and Cultural History (Oxford, 1994), 61–118.
J. Tannahill, European Volunteer Workers in Britain (Manchester, 1956), 63–4.
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Lunn, K. (2000). A Racialized Hierarchy of Labour? Race, Immigration and the British Labour Movement, 1880–1950. In: Alexander, P., Halpern, R. (eds) Racializing Class,Classifying Race. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230500969_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230500969_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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