African Working Men, Racial Consciousness, and the Imperial State during World War II

During World War II African  workers understood their importance to the survival of the empire. Workers were highly aware of their power in production and in the broader society. Infrastructural workers – railway, public works, dock workers – were ideally positioned and played a leading role in stimulating unrest among others.
Britain, however, was unsure if it could control this working class. The 1930’s explosions in the West Indies pushed the Colonial Office to recognize that  their ‘peasants’ were actually a colonial working class with sophisticated understandings of leveraging  power. There were failures in the ‘imperial imagination’ which could neither see African men as workers nor as equal to British workers.  The war became a period of experimentation: How best to consult workers? Could labor policy be coordinated across Britain’s colonies? Could workers be trusted not to interrupt the vital production of war-time commodities? What strategies addressed unrest before it erupted into strikes?
This paper focuses on the militancy of African labor that forced policy coordination and experimentation with social and labor reforms.   In particular, it examines the ways race and gender shaped worker militancy. There was a rising racial consciousness which workers articulated in strikes over ‘respect’ and ‘dignity’.  ‘Respect’ and ‘dignity’ framed the discourse against racist treatment by a white boss.  Respect and dignity also reflected gender ideals, for they informed ‘honor’, a condition to which all men aspired.  Protests arose in part from violations of African working men’s notions of ‘honor’.  However, racism was not the only feature of the work place that violated men’s dignity and honor, economic crisis did as well. The economic crisis of the war years blocked men’s ability to fulfill aspirations in their families and communities and thus achieve ‘honor’.