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[Préface de la première édition]
"This book is an attempt to put in historical perspective the Black presence in Britain as it relates to the development of British capitalism and its control and exploitation of black labour. The making of the black working class in twentieth-century Britain has been a long process, reflecting essential changes in Britain’s labour needs over time, both at home and abroad.
As overseas trade expanded, the discipline and control of labour (both black and white) became imperative to Britain’s economic well-being. To ensure the continued exploitation of colonial labour, an ideology based on racial differences, which bred an inferior/superior nexus both in interpersonal relations and in international trade, was constructed to keep Blacks in subjection.
Thus, plantocracy racism supported by British capitalists, politicians, historians and influential people of letters, engendered dogmatic belief in white supremacy and institutionalised racism in Britain and her colonial ‘possessions’. Consequently, the cultural transmission of racist ideas was handed down over generations. Historically, as Blacks in the colonies laboured under the inhuman and deplorable working conditions endemic in slavery, indentureship and trade union-regulated working conditions, in response, they resorted either ‘spontaneously’ or in an ‘organised’ way to various forms of resistance [...]
In general, ‘black’ refers to non-white persons, particularly those from former colonial and Commonwealth countries. Within this usage, there are sub-divisions denoting the various constituent groups: these are Africans, Asians, West Indians, Afro-Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, Asian-Caribbeans and Black British. ‘Working class’ refers essentially to those unskilled and semi-skilled Blacks who came to Britain throughout the period, but particularly during the heavy post-war immigration in search of jobs."
[Préface de la seconde édition, 2017]
"Given that there had been Black people in Britain since Roman times, I structured the book in three parts to cover the period from 1555 to 1986; a perspective which I thought was preferential if one was to better understand not only the pre-twentieth-century Black presence, but also the interwar period and the turbulent forty years prior to 1986."
"In recent years, however, the influx of migrants (including those seeking asylum and refugees) from all over the world has added to an even more diverse working population; an extraordinary commingling of people speaking a large number of languages, especially in London and the larger British cities.
Soon after I’d completed the manuscript there was no doubt in my mind that The Making (for so long a hidden story) was an essential and timely text which not only broadens and gives depth to our understanding of the past, but also foregrounds an evolving multicultural Britain. It was also very rare that a book of this kind should become a bestseller and quickly go out of print at a time when academics were still largely disinterested in the growing populations of Black and ethnic minorities as integral to British history. But while The Making has been informative for students and general readers, for a new generation of those born and bred in Britain, as well as new immigrants from outside the Commonwealth, a great deal was (and is) taken for granted! Some fundamental ‘rights’ (for example, the Race Relations Act, affecting people at the workplace and in communities) enjoyed by today’s citizens were not achieved overnight. In fact, such ‘rights’ became law as a direct result of insistent, bitter campaigns against racism and sexism waged by Black and Asian workers in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s."
"Today, the fundamental question that confronts us is this: where are Black and ethnic minority workers located in the employment structure? As if to confirm the persistent, stark daily lived reality of many working people, a few reports on pay and disadvantage have recently appeared. ‘Analysis of pay data by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) suggests that the difference in average pay rates amounts to a gap of 23 percent,’ stated a BBC Education and Social Affairs report titled ‘Black Workers “earning less than white colleagues” adding that Black graduates earn less than their white counterparts, the average pay gap between Black and white workers with A-levels being 14 percent; and at GCSE level, the gap is 11 percent. So many issues raised and dealt with in The Making, including the inequities in relation to race, education and pay, still confront us. A generation on, how should we address the problem?
Frances O’Grady, the TUC General Secretary identified the problem: ‘Race still plays a huge role in determining pay.’ She added the ‘harsh reality is that at any level of education, Black and Asian workers are getting paid LESS than their white counterparts. The Government cannot afford to ignore these figures and must now take genuine action to tackle pay discrimination.’ And what role could or should the government play? One way forward was urgently needed ‘interventions’. When dealing with the deprived and disadvantaged, the last Labour Government was convinced throughout its long reign that the key to social mobility was ‘education, education, education’. Alas, whatever the beneficial effects of the Labour Government’s policies, though masked by self-righteous rhetoric (and, at times, exaggerated political correctness), deep-seated problems remain. While disproportionality in the number of disadvantaged Blacks and Asians attending universities was flagged up repeatedly as a major hurdle, beyond this, there were other consequential inequalities to confront. Various researchers, including those at the BBC and the race equality think tank the Runnymede Trust have found that ‘pay gaps are not due to the type of university attended, they even extend to Black workers with degrees’. In fact, the TUC’s analysis, based on the Labour Force Survey figures from 2014 and 2015, shows the pay gaps were widest among the more qualified. And so education is not working for the benefit of the aspirant as it should. This is shocking."
"On 14 September 2016, an Evening Standard headline read: ‘POLICE DO TARGET BLACK PEOPLE.’ In the article Scotland Yard’s new diversity chief, Victor Olisa, a Black man, admitted ‘stop and search’ on the streets targeted Black people. Thirty years earlier in The Making, I had written at length about ‘sus charges’, Black youth and confrontations between Black people and the police. Now, with great interest, I read that the police were still ‘routinely discriminating against Black people in stop and search operations in London as part of a misguided performance culture’. Furthermore, the diversity chief attested that ‘it was accepted practice to stop young black men to try to boost arrest rates for drugs such as cannabis’. To avoid the ‘negative stereotyping of black people’, he felt stop and search should not only be based on intelligence, but most importantly officers should be able ‘to explain as an individual why you stopped Joe Bloggs’."
"For many people, Dadabhai Naoroji, elected in 1892 is known as the first Black MP. But new research refutes this. The first Black Member of Parliament was James Townsend, whose election to the House of Commons predates Naoroji by some 125 years. He was also the first Black Lord Mayor of London."
[PART THREE : The Black Working Class (1962–1986)]
After 1962, in view of the decreasing numbers of black workers allowed into Britain, black migrant labour had become part of the British working class, at least in theory. Given this broad categorisation, it is necessary to locate black workers more specifically within the class politics of British capitalism. [...]
Given that Britain is a capitalist social formation, according to [le sociologue Erik O. Wright], class relations can be understood in terms of three processes underlying the social relations of production: control of labour power, control of the physical means of production, and control of investment and resources. Control of all three processes is in the hands of the capitalist class, while the working class has no control over investment or the means of production. Indeed, the worker’s labour power (both mental and manual) is sold for a wage. Moreover, the worker has no control over the labour power of others."
"Within the working class, however, there are class fractions. Miles and Phizaclea [1980] have used the concept of fraction to refer to an objective position within a class boundary which is, in turn, determined by both economic and politico-ideological relations. Thus, the structure of class determination simultaneously defines the position of one class vis-à-vis another and cleavages within a class. They argue that all classes are objectively fractionalised. Indeed, a class can be said to have objective interests in relation to that other class with which it shares an antagonistic relation but in any given social formation class relations are simultaneously relations between class fractions and this applies both within and between classes. Moreover, they contend that the precise nature and effect of these relations between fractions of classes (and hence between classes and classes) is a ‘historical and conjunctional’ question.
Since 1945 then there have been important changes in the British labour market. For example, decline in the staple heavy industries was offset by expansion in the service sector and white-collar employment. By the mid-1970s, it was in these expanding sectors that half the female wage labour force was employed, compared to only a quarter in the manufacturing industries. Increasingly, women were employed in industries that paid low wages. As women, they were paid women’s rates so that the sexual division of labour within the family was repeated in waged work. In time, ‘industrialised housework’ were the types of jobs done by women in the public and private sectors of the economy. The more ‘female’ a job became, the more it was devalued."
"Thus, the married woman’s objective of alleviating the economic distress at home by doing wage-work was frustrated. This need to work was reflected in the fact that the number of married women in the workforce doubled in the twenty years from 1951 to 1971. Moreover, always ready to exploit labour, employers (aided and abetted by the state) viewed women as playing a dual role. Their primary function was as domestic labourers, while of secondary and temporary importance, was the wage work for the employer. This duality armed their employers with a number of reasons why their opportunities for training and promotion (never mind higher wages) should be reduced. It is not surprising, therefore, that with all the demands made on their time, some two-thirds of women wage labourers were part-time workers. Thus, their already vulnerable position became even more so.
Given the low status and low pay of these women, a distinction must be made between black labour and white female labour. Before moving on, a further distinction seems necessary. One survey showed that among black workers there was a lower incidence of discrimination among black women who had applied for jobs in comparison with black men.
Of major significance in the field of female employment for those aged between 16 and 54 years, it was found that 75 per cent of West Indian women were working compared with 55 per cent of all women. This is not surprising in view of the larger families among West Indians. Indeed, the difference in the proportion of West Indian, as compared to all women engaged in wage labour is highest during child-bearing years. Therefore, that dual role in production was (and is) more likely to be performed by black women in Britain taken as a whole.
Overall then, as an actual or potential domestic labourer, a woman’s role was, (and is) used ideologically against her, in the form of sexism. This kind of discrimination helps to determine her subordinate position as a wage labourer. Thus, sexism, like racism, refers to a process of social categorisation. Women have therefore come to occupy a particular position in terms of economic, political and ideological relations in order to constitute a class fraction, within the working class."
"There is an international exploitation of labour to meet the demands of the capitalist mode of production. In many Western European countries migrant labour is directly recruited to low grade jobs. This economic subordination is accompanied by disadvantage in housing, education and in political rights. It has been argued that migrant workers should be seen in the context of this common social and economic situation, and that this objective division within the class is also accompanied by a subjective division, namely that the indigenous working class, because of its authoritarianism, ‘a product of repressive socialisation’ and a fear of competition, is highly prejudiced towards migrant workers. In turn, this leads to division in the labour movement, giving the advantage to the dominant class. Thus, the specific economic and social circumstances do not change the class determination of migrant labour. Hence, migrant labour constitutes a distinct fraction of the working class.
Moreover, migrant labour as a class fraction is better understood when set against the backdrop of post-war economic growth and accumulation of capital. The expansion of service industries and the emergence of new industries attracted labour away from the undesirable low wage jobs. This labour shortage, in the context of full employment until the late 1960s, was filled by the internationalisation of the labour market. In other words, by migrant labour. But, there were alternatives to this option. For example, higher wages could have been paid to attract labour into the low-wage jobs. However, this alternative ignores the fact that some sections of capital depended upon migrant labour ‘as a source of excess profit necessary to compensate for their below average rate of profit’.
Further, capital was able to draw on female labour. This option however would have been cumbersome and costly in terms of child care and other social facilities. Thus, the contract labour system was preferred in Germany, France and Switzerland, and migrant labour from the New Commonwealth was used in Britain. The British case is particularly interesting in that migrant labour involved almost no expenditure on social capital. Therefore in retrospect, it has become abundantly clear that many of the ‘problems’ that arose from migration had little or nothing to do with the character of the migrants themselves, but rather to the failure of the British authorities to provide adequate housing, social and welfare facilities."
"British capitalism made good its labour shortage, beginning in the mid-1950s, through its continuing relationship with the British Empire Commonwealth. This ‘legal legacy’ is central to black migrant labour in Britain in that Commonwealth citizens shared with citizens of the United Kingdom and the colonies the right to live and work in Britain. Therefore, it was comparatively easier for Commonwealth citizens to sell their labour power in Britain than for Turks and Greeks, for example, who were not only ‘alien’, but needed work permits. Coincidental with this labour shortage were certain factors in Commonwealth countries which encouraged black migration to Britain for economic reasons."
"In the early 1950s then, an economic migration from the West Indies was followed by migration from the Indian sub-continent."
"Given that most of the migrant labour to Britain came from the New Commonwealth between 1950 and 1968, it is important to note that the populations of these countries were predominantly black. And, apart from this, at least initially, migrant labour from the New Commonwealth countries were not as officially organised and recruited selectively (with perhaps the exception of the recruitment office set up by London Transport in Barbados) on a contract basis as in most of the European Economic Community countries. Related to this feature is the fact that the 1962 Immigration Act effectively restricted free entry of the New Commonwealth citizen from the right to live and work in Britain. Gradually, these rights have been removed to the extent that, since the 1971 Immigration Act, Britain had a contract labour system in line with those of the EEC capitalist formations which has come into effect.
This meant that migrants already here in Britain before the 1962 Act were separated from their dependants who did not have the right to live with them in Britain. However, New Commonwealth migrants to Britain during the 1950s and 1960s could, and have settled in Britain. Thus, given its specificity as a fraction of the working class, it is reproducing itself as part of the working class, not as migrant labour, but as black indigenous labour. Moreover, unlike migrant labour elsewhere in western capitalism, New Commonwealth migrant labour has, theoretically at least, the right of full political participation in electoral politics.
A closer look, however, is more revealing. Firstly, there has been a continuing trend of substantial discrimination against black workers in the vital and related areas of employment, housing and services. Indeed, until 1966 discriminators had no legal constraints. Thus legally disadvantaged black migrant workers were not able to change their subordinate position. There was some attempt through the 1966 and 1968 Race Relations Acts to change this situation, but it was the 1976 Act, on the other hand, which was most effective. Furthermore, evidence suggests that black migrant workers and their children occupy second class status in the process of law enforcement."
"Among male black workers (excluding African Asians) a 1976 Political and Economic Planning study found that 42 per cent were in semi – or unskilled jobs, with a further 45 per cent in skilled manual jobs. By comparison, the figures for male white workers were 18 and 42 per cent respectively. Among black women 63.5 per cent were engaged in manual work, compared with 45 per cent of white women."
"Within manufacturing one also found disproportionate numbers of black migrants in shipbuilding, vehicle production, textiles, construction and food manufacture. An analysis of the regional data showed a substantial, disproportionate concentration of black migrants in the textile industry in Yorkshire and Lancashire and a lesser concentration in metal manufacture in the Midlands. Further, where black migrants were employed in the service sector of the economy, they were disproportionately represented in transport and communications, hotels and catering and the National Health Service, precisely those sectors in which semi – and unskilled labour predominate."
"Those manufacturing industries and services where black migrants were concentrated share several (if not all) of the following characteristics: shortage of labour, shift working, unsocial hours, low pay and an unpleasant working environment."
"Faced with a labour shortage then, employers in these sectors of the economy were willing to employ black migrant labour. Thus, in the context of full employment during the 1950s and the early 1960s, black labour served as replacement labour for socially undesirable jobs vacated by white indigenous labour. And finally, there was evidence that the concentration of black labour in the manual working class was being reproduced in part because of racial discrimination."
"Black children born in Britain and who have completed higher education experience considerable discrimination. In fact, black graduates tend to find jobs commensurate with their qualifications only when there are no well-qualified Whites competing with them. Consequently, it is significant that with limited opportunities, the black working class include not only a substantial proportion of black migrants with degrees obtained abroad, but also the black British who hold degrees from British universities. Given their economic position in Britain, the black working class, then as now, clearly constitute a class fraction."
"‘Racism’ [...] is [...] to refer to those negative beliefs of one group which first identify and then set apart another by attaching significance ‘to some biological or other inherent characteristic(s) which it is said to possess, and which deterministically associate that characteristic(s) with some other (negatively valued) feature(s) or action(s). The possession of these supposed characteristics is then used as justification for denying that group equal access to material and other resources and/or political rights’."
"Although racist beliefs can be held about certain groups which are not distinguishable by colour, for example, the hostile sentiment in Britain about Irish migrant workers and Jewish refugees, one cannot ignore the significance of skin colour to racist beliefs. Indeed, the question of colour formed the basis of the racism articulated from within all classes in Britain since the 1950s. Thus, it is the question of ‘race’ and the articulation of racism in Britain which places black workers in a special position in ideological relations. Indeed, the evidence shows that governments, politicians, neo-fascist political organisations, the mass media, employers, institutions representing the labour movement and sections of the British working class have all acted upon and articulated racist beliefs."
"In response to the evolution of this socially constructed community, accumulative evidence about racial discrimination and racial disadvantage has led governments to introduce not only anti-discrimination legislation, but also a number of initiatives to tackle the steadily deteriorating position of black workers bounded by the decaying urban environment where their homes are located."
"There had been a decline in the working population in all the central urban areas following a reduction in the number employed in manufacturing industry and the distributive trades. This reflected a general shift to tertiary employment nationally, as well as a decentralisation of manufacturing industry.
However, in spite of these characteristics in all urban areas, they were not of the same magnitude, nor were they moving at the same pace. In fact, of all these urban areas, London showed the most dramatic contrast. This is reflected in the largest absolute increase in employment in the inner London area in the 1950s, and the largest absolute decrease in the 1960s, while the metropolitan outer ring showed the largest absolute growth in both decades.
This decline is illustrated by the fact that between 1966 and 1974, London’s total population fell by 9.4 per cent, although the decline in inner boroughs was much greater at 17.3 per cent than in the outer boroughs. During the same period there was a decline in manufacturing employment of 27 per cent. It has been argued that permanent factory closure and relocation is a more explanatory factor than relocation in London’s decline.
Among the reasons put forward for factory closure and relocation were lack of space for expansion, large increases in rates and rent and wage costs, a shortage of certain types of labour, the impact of the rationalisation of capital, nationally and internationally, leading to mergers and factory closures in order to maintain and improve profitability, and finally government policy which encouraged closure and relocations.
This decline seriously affected patterns of unemployment, disadvantage in housing and housing relocation, education, youth service provision and social services of Blacks in the urban centres. Employment is vital to the black workers’ fight for survival."
"New Commonwealth-born males tend to be overrepresented among all active males in employment (except in the case of Africans and those from other countries) and West Indian females were overrepresented among all females in employment. Pakistani women, on the other hand, were underrepresented. Moreover, West Indian women were most overrepresented among all females in employment. Indeed, they were highly prone to unemployment; being twice as likely to be out of a job as to be in one. Unemployment, then, not only tended to hit the West Indians harder than any other ethnic group, it also hit the West Indian woman harder than other women workers. Thus, on the question of activity rates, a clear and systematic difference emerged between ethnic minority workers as a group and the indigenous population. In effect, black workers experienced a ‘systematic pattern of disadvantage’ in employment in that they were (and are) significantly more likely to be unemployed than their counterparts in the indigenous population.
However, while these national figures were likely to underestimate the activity rates and the unemployment rates which ethnic minorities experience in different regions (because of uneven distribution of its population), ethnic minority workers tended to concentrate at or near the centres of employment in the urban areas. Cross observed that when this uneven pattern of ethnic minority settlement is taken into account, the impact of their activity rates and their unemployment rates is exacerbated. Consideration of the settlement patterns and activity rates in conurbations such as Tyneside, West Yorkshire, Merseyside, South East Lancashire, West Midlands, Greater London, Outer Metropolitan Area and Scotland showed that while New Commonwealth-born persons accounted for 2.1 per cent of the total population of Britain, they constituted much larger proportions in some conurbations than in others. Indeed, they constituted 6.4 per cent of the population of Greater London and only 0.6 per cent of the population of Scotland. Further, when the uneven distribution was compared to their activity rates, their unemployment rates in such conurbations (i.e. Greater London, West Midlands and West Yorkshire) contrast sharply. This suggested a pattern of disadvantage in unemployment which affects ethnic minorities in some conurbations to a greater extent than is reflected in the total populations in these areas. In fact, Greater London, West Midlands and West Yorkshire figured among the worst conurbations for unemployment among the ethnic minority groups."
-Ron Ramdin, The Making of the Black Working Class in Britain, London / New York, Verso, 2017 (1987 pour la première édition).
