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William Walker, Irish Labour and ‘Chinese slavery’ in South Africa, 1904–6

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2015

Emmet O’Connor
Emmet O’Connor*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Ulster, Magee College
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Extract

In 1903 the governor of South Africa, Lord Alfred Milner, agreed to proposals from the owners of the Transvaal gold mines to alleviate the labour shortage caused by the recent war by recruiting workers from China. The Conservative government of Arthur Balfour gave its approval in May 1904, and had overall responsibility for the scheme until it yielded power to the Liberals in December 1905. The so-called ‘coolies’ were to be indentured on a three-year contract, paid less than the blacks, and quarantined from the local population. Well before the first shipment arrived on the Witwatersrand in June 1904, British trade unionists were alarmed that a precedent was being set for the importation of cheap labour closer to home, and Britain’s ‘Non-conformist conscience’ was disturbed at the spectre of ‘nameless practices’ developing in compounds of young men separated from their families. Events seemed to bear out the apprehensions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 145 , May 2010 , pp. 48 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2010

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References

1 In 1905 there were about 45,000 Chinese employed on the Rand, earning an average of 37s . 7 d . each per month; 90,000 blacks, earning an average of 51s . 9 d . each per month; and 18,000 whites, earning an average of £25 to £30 each per month. Grant, Kevin, A civilised savagery: Britain and the new slaveries in Africa, 1884–1926 (London, 2005), pp 96, 100, 104Google Scholar; Markham, Violet R., The new era in South Africa (London, 1904), p. 95Google Scholar.

2 See Grant, , A civilised savagery, pp 79–107Google Scholar. Gordon, Samuel Ian, ‘The Chinese labour controversy in British politics and policy making’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Ulster, Jordanstown, 1987Google Scholar) is one of the most comprehensive studies. It says nothing on Ireland. Pelling summed up the issues in the general election as ‘Tariff reform, “Chinese labour”, education, and (a rather poor fourth) home rule for Ireland’. Pelling, Henry, A short history of the Labour Party (London, 1976), p. 15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 The only references are in Boyle, John W., The Irish labor movement in the nineteenth century (Washington, D.C., 1988), pp 270, 289–90Google Scholar, and Purdie, Bob, ‘William Walker: Belfast trade unionist, socialist and Irish unionist’ in Gildart, Keith and Howell, David (eds), Dictionary of labour biography, volume XII (Basingstoke, 2005), pp 283–4.Google Scholar

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6 The Irish Party supported the Trade Disputes Bill, which was intended to reverse the Taff Vale judgement and was commonly known as the ‘Congress Bill’ due to its provenance in the T.U.C. John Redmond hoped that, in return, the T.U.C. would press for the extension of the bill’s definition of conspiracy to include agitation by the United Irish League. See Saville, John, ‘The Trade Disputes Act of 1906’ in Ewing, K.D., The right to strike: from the Trade Disputes Act 1906 to a trade union freedom bill 2006 (Liverpool, 2006), p. 76Google Scholar; Clegg, H.A., Fox, Alan and Thompson, A.F., A history of British trade unions since 1889, volume 1, 1889–1910 (Oxford, 1964), p. 369Google Scholar.

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8 See Cork Workers’ Club, The Connolly Walker controversy: on socialist unity in Ireland (Historical Reprints no. 9, Cork, n.d.). For the B.P.A. questions and Walker’s replies, see the Irish Protestant, 9 Sept. 1905.

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14 Belfast trades council minutes, 26 Jan., 20 Feb. 1904 (University of Ulster, Magee College (U.U.M.C.).

15 Belfast trades council minutes, 20 Feb. 1904 (U.U.M.C.). On Sloanism see Boyle, John W., ‘The Belfast Protestant Association and the Independent Orange Order’ in I.H.S., xiii no. 49 (1962), pp 117–52Google Scholar, and Patterson, Henry, ‘Independent Orangeism and class conflict in Edwardian Belfast’ in R.I.A. Proc., 80, sect. C, 1 (1980), pp 1–27Google Scholar.

16 Belfast trades council minutes, 6 Oct. 1902, 20 Feb. 1904, 4 May 1905, 13 Jan. 1906 (U.U.M.C.).

17 Belfast News-letter, 21 Mar. 1904.

18 Belfast trades council minutes, 3 Mar., 7 Apr. 1904 (U.U.M.C.).

19 Leith Observer, 14 Aug. 1909, quoted in Purdie, , ‘An Ulster Labourist in Liberal Scotland’, p. 122Google Scholar.

20 Report of the eleventh Irish Trades Union Congress (1904), pp 14–15 (U.U.M.C.).

21 Ibid., pp 18–19.

22 Belfast trades council minutes, 1 June 1905 (U.U.M.C.); Report of the twelfth Irish Trades Union Congress (1905), pp 5–12 (U.U.M.C.).

23 Boyle, , The Irish labor movement in the nineteenth century, p. 277.Google Scholar

24 Belfast Labour Chronicle, 12 July 1905, 23 Sept. 1905, 7–14 Oct. 1905.

25 Ibid., Mar. 1905.

26 Ibid., 23 Sept. 1905, 21 Oct. 1905, 6 Jan. 1906.

27 Ibid., 7 Apr. 1906.

28 The results in 1905 were Dixon, 4,440 and Walker, 3,966, while in 1906 Dixon won 4,907 votes as compared with Walker’s 4,616. Dixon’s death led to a third election in Belfast North in 1907. The results were: G. Clark (Unionist), 6,021, Walker, 4,191. (Brian Walker, M. (ed.), Parliamentary election results in Ireland, 1801–1922 (Dublin, 1978), pp 165, 170Google Scholar).

29 Patterson, , Class conflict & sectarianism, p. 59Google Scholar.

30 Northern Whig, 7 Sept. 1905.

31 Ibid., 5 Sept. 1905; Belfast News-letter, 12 Sept. 1905.

32 Boyle, ‘The Belfast Protestant Association and the Independent Orange Order’, p. 128.

33 Irish News and Belfast Morning News, 2 Sept. 1905.

34 Ibid., 14 Sept. 1905.

35 Higginbottam, S., Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers: our society’s history (Manchester, 1939), p. 280Google Scholar.

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37 Belfast Labour Chronicle, 12 Sept. 1905. Dixon was, among other things, a shipowner. ‘Joey’ is probably Joseph Chamberlain.

38 Irish Protestant, 9 Sept. 1905.

39 Boyle, ‘The Belfast Protestant Association and the Independent Orange Order’, p. 138, first offered this interpretation, based on an interview with Danny McDevitt, a colleague of Walker’s during the by-election.

40 Belfast News-letter, 8 Sept. 1905.

41 Quoted in Patterson, , Class confict & sectarianism, p. 58Google Scholar.

42 Gray, John, City in revolt: James Larkin and the Belfast dock strike of 1907 (Belfast, 1985), pp 39–40Google Scholar.

43 Northern Whig, 2, 6, 14 Sept. 1905; Belfast News-letter, 12 Sept. 1905. The Belfast Labour Chronicle, 12 Sept. 1905, protested that Walker and Murphy had kept their seats during the toast.

44 Irish News and Belfast Morning News, 23 Aug. 1905; Belfast News-letter, 24 Aug. 1905.

45 Belfast Labour Chronicle, 12 Sept. 1905.

46 Belfast News-letter, 25 Aug. 1905.

47 Gordon, , ‘The Chinese labour controversy in British politics and policy making’, p. 119Google Scholar.

48 Irish News and Belfast Morning News, 7 Sept. 1905.

49 Northern Whig, 2 Sept. 1905; Northern Star, 9 Sept. 1905.

50 Belfast trades council minutes, 11 Jan. 1906 (U.U.M.C.); Irish News and Belfast Morning News, 5 Apr. 1907.

51 Gray, , City in revolt, pp 38–40Google Scholar; Belfast News-letter, 18 Jan. 1906.

52 Boyle, , The Irish labor movement in the nineteenth century, pp 321–7Google Scholar; Gray, , City in revolt, p. 39Google Scholar.

53 Purdie, , ‘An Ulster Labourist in Liberal Scotland’, pp 121, 125Google Scholar; Ian, MacDougall, Labour in Scotland: a pictorial history (Edinburgh, 1985), p. 156Google Scholar.

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58 Irish News and Belfast Morning News, 11 Apr. 1907.