Scottish labour, race, and southern african empire c.1880-1922: A reply to kenefick

Abstract

In his article in the current edition of International Review of Social History, the Scottish historian, Billy Kenefick, argues against my thesis that the labour force of the United Kingdom and the settler colonies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can be understood as having constituted a linked imperial working class in which an ideology of racialized white labour protectionism predominated. Kenefick believes that in South Africa British socialists challenged white labourism, and that Scottish immigrants played a very prominent role in this anti-racist project. My reply traces the relationship between Scottish national identity, imperialism, and the labour movement. It then examines the evidence on the racial politics of Scottish trade unionists in South Africa and argues that, with a very few individual exceptions, they did buy into the ideas of white labourism. Finally, the article considers Scottish labour attitudes to race in the home country, and demonstrates that there was strong sympathy for the racial labour politics of the settler colonies. Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 2010.