'We have nothing; and can only tell each other sad stories of our slavery. We have waited long for a liberator, but we do not know where to find him.' This was Josiah Tshangana Gumede speaking at the Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism, held at the Palais Egmont in Brussels in February 1927. I am happy to say,' he added, ' that there are Communists also in South Africa. I myself am not one, but it is my experience that the Communist Party is the only party that stands behind us and from which we can expect something.' 1
Gumede represented the ANC, of which he was the president; James la Guma was the Communist party's delegate; and Daniel Colraine, a boilermaker from Johannesburg, spoke for the TUC and the minority movement, in the white trade unions. Bill Andrews sent a message of goodwill on behalf of the South African labour movement. The three delegates submitted a resolution in the name of all workers and oppressed peoples of South Africa, irrespective of race, colour or creed. It called on them to unite for the right of self-determination, the overthrow of capitalist and imperialist domination, and the removal of restrictions on freedom of organization. 'We are waiting and longing for the liberation that must come, repeated Gumede. 'Let this not be the last congress.' 2
Clements Kadalie, the man from Nyasaland, in whom thousands of Africans saw their liberator, denounced the conference and turned down an offer of £100 towards the cost of sending an ICU representative to Brussels. No bona fide trade union, he declared, would associate with a body set up and financed by Moscow for the avowed aim of stirring up class hatred and promoting revolution. 3 Yet some of Kadalie's socialist friends from Britain - Fenner Brockway, George Lansbury and Ellen Wilkinson - attended the conference, together with many respected leaders of national liberation movements, including Madame Sun Yat-sen, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohamed Hatta, Lamine Senghor and Hadj-Ahmed Messali. It was not the origin or composition of the League against Imperialism that deterred Kadalie, but his sudden decision to abandon the role of radical leader.
He had often said that Lenin's victory made of Russia a heaven on earth, and that he would not rest until South Africa took the same course. His May Day message to ICU branches in 1926 urged them to hail the victorious republic of the Russian workers' and to join with all trade unions for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a workers' commonwealth'. Kadalie spoke in the same strain at a rally held in October to protest against his arrest for defying Natal's pass laws. His national council, he hoped, would take up the challenge and awaken in the people the kind of spirit that had moved the Russians in November 1917. 4 Yet the council took a sharp turn to the right when it met in December 1926 at Port Elizabeth.
The meeting was called, wrote Kadalie years later, to settle 'the struggle for ascendancy' between the communists and those like James Gumbs, the West Indian-born president of the ICU, who resented the Cp because it was dominated by whites. 5 If there was a plot to unseat the communists, it took them by surprise. The council spent most of its time discussing whether to send a delegate to Brussels and whether La Guma should be given leave to go there as the CP's representative. Kadalie used the occasion to make an intemperate attack on the communists, They served two masters, he said; were puppets of the whites in the party, and sought to capture the union. Their main concern, he alleged, was to make propaganda and not to improve the workers' conditions.
The council resolved by six votes to five that ' No officer of the ICU shall be a member of the Communist Party.' Three party members on the council - La Guma; E. J. Khaile, the financial secretary; and John Gornas, the provincial secretary in the western Cape - refused to resign from either organization and were summarily expelled. 6 They had given more attention to political propaganda than to improving the economic conditions of the workers, explained Kadalie. 'No bribe will seduce us,' he vowed, into departing from the strictly constitutional path of peaceful methods and moral suasion. By functioning as an orthodox trade union, and without the 'artificial assistance of the Communists', the ICU hoped to overcome racial prejudice, win recognition from the 'genuine European Labour element, and reach its goal of equitable treatment for the sweated workers'. 7
The expelled members served only one master: the downtrodden workers of Africa', replied the Communist party. It urged members to intensify their work among Africans, and to discourage any tendency to break away from the ICU. The union's branches at Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, Vereeniging and Johannesburg demanded the reinstatement of the expelled officials. Kadalie overwhelmed his critics by insisting that La Guma and his associates owed their primary allegiance to a 'white man's party. The ICU's annual conference at Durban in April 1927 decided to demonstrate the international solidarity of labour' on May Day, 'the symbol of class struggle; prohibited its members from identifying themselves in any way with the Communist party; and refused to allow S. M. Pettersen, a white party member from Durban, to take his seat as a delegate of the non-racial Seamen's Union. Racial antagonism is the chief stock-in-trade of the official element of the ICU,' reported the Worker. 'It did not seem possible to them that the interests of black, white and yellow slaves were identical as against the slave masters of all colours.' 8
The ease of the operation suggests that Kadalie had no reason to fear a take-over by the communists, who denied any such intention and reproached themselves for having failed to anticipate and resist the expulsions from within the ICU. To avoid offending it, they had refrained from organizing trade unions on their own account or from conducting study classes while trying to persuade it to undertake this work. 9 The dual membership of the few communists who held key positions in the ICU was normal in the labour and national movement. All party members were expected to join a trade union; and no union, except the ICU, ever banned them or excluded them from office. Kadalie himself worked closely with white racists and liberals, and could hardly have been sincere in objecting to the party's non-racial membership. His argument that whites dominated the CP might have convinced his followers, but it concealed the true motives behind his reactionary policy.
The motives were suspect, said the communists at their annual conference in January 1927. Much more lies behind the recent splitting tactics of Kadalie & Co. than a sudden swing towards the camp of reformism.' Though the expelled members had been victimized for taking Kadalie's teaching to heart, financial and other business reasons undoubtedly entered into the action. Three years later, after Kadalie's downfall, the communists accused him of having opposed their attempt to reorganize the union in industrial sections, introduce democratic controls of funds and elections, and pursue an active strike policy. When he had insisted on retaining dictatorial powers and on appointing officials himself, the communists on the national council had threatened to expose ' the disgraceful misappropriation and squandering of funds, by officials great and small, of whom Kadalie was 'the arch pilferer'. In addition, an influential group of Europeans in England and South Africa, representing the British labour movement and the yellow Amsterdam International, had promised him support and recognition on condition that he expelled the communists and adopted a moderate policy. 10 Having done this, he declared that ' strikes were wicked, useless and obsolete. 11
Financial irregularities, autocratic rule, and inefficiency were probably by-products of a failure to adapt organizational methods to the demands made by a large and rapidly growing membership. Estimates based on enrolment figures or sheer guesswork credited the union with 30,000 members in 1925; 40,000 in 1926; from 80,000 to 120,000 in 1927; and 70,000 in 1928; but the number in financial compliance with the rules was usually less than half the reputed membership. Kadalie told the Economic and Wage Commission in September 1925 that about half the members were in financial standing: La Guma's figure for 1926 was 28,000; Bunting estimated 30,000 in 1927; and Ballinger 12,500 in February 1929. 12 Exaggerations apart, there was no doubt that large numbers joined the union in all provinces between 1924 and 1928. As Skota pointed out, It required experienced and strict business acumen to manage, properly, the ever-growing funds of this organization, but this, however, was sorely lacking. 13
Scores of untrained officials were employed to enrol members, collect their subscriptions of 6d. or 3d. a week, organize them into branches, and attend to their complaints. The most spectacular advances were made in Natal, soon the union's financial mainstay under the dynamic leadership of its provincial secretary, A. G. W. Champion. Born at Tugela in 1893, Champion worked as a mine clerk in Johannesburg after serving in the police force, organized his fellow clerks into a union, and joined the ICU in 1925. Starting from scratch, he built in less than two years a powerful organization with a paid staff of fifty-eight secretaries, organizers and clerks: all preaching the Gospel of the ICU and the emancipation of the African Worker in all parts of Natal'. 14 Many of his staff were former teachers who found the ICU more remunerative; and who, said Kadalie, were not 'well equipped or trained for elementary trade union work, 15
Ignorance of bookkeeping and trade union procedures often blurred the distinction between social and private property. Dishonesty or irresponsible behaviour on the part of branch secretaries, organizers and the national council itself had brought the union into disrepute, said Kadalie at the third annual conference in 1923. People said the educated Native cannot be trusted; he is either a thief or a drunkard; look at the affairs of the ICU' 16 These were teething troubles, unavoidable in a trades union with many members drawn from scores of occupations in town and country. White unions which experienced similar difficulties in their infancy, had the advantage of possessing a significant measure of political power. The ICU, in contrast, fought a constant battle against hostile employers and an oppressive administration that never scrupled to use pass laws and other instruments of colonial domination against the union's organizers. Since only the most resolute could stand up to the intimidation and hazards, the pressure reacted on the internal organization, blocked all attempts to achieve efficiency, and finally deflected Kadalie himself from his radical course.
He quarrelled with the communists partly because they criticized both his policy and conduct of the union's affairs. He wrote in his autobiography that the Cape Town Coloured , members of the national council opposed his decision to move the head office to Johannesburg. They plotted secession and, to boycott him, transferred all the union's funds to the bank account of the Cape Town branch. Having exposed their manoeuvre to the council when it met in April 1927, he was obliged to intervene, at La Guma's request, to save its members from being prosecuted for theft and fraud. 17 None of this rings true or has ever been confirmed. The union had a credit balance of only £23 7s. 6d. in its current account and £25 6s. 5d. in reserve at the end of 1925. C. H. Haggar, the veteran Labour party leader who audited the books, complimented La Guma and Khaile on having kept them well and carefully'. The accounts, he noted, were presented with a good deal of skill and consideration'. 18 The amounts involved were too small to be a bargaining counter in a dispute between the officials; the transfer of funds, if it occurred in the circumstances alleged, would not have been fraudulent; and the integrity of both La Guma and Khaile was never in doubt. Kadalie himself paid tribute to their efficiency, and stated that the national council greatly regretted their departure from the ICU. 19 C.F. Glass, the ex-communist, became the union's bookkeeper after the expulsions.
La Guma's organizational report of 6 March 1926 enumerated many of the shortcomings mentioned in Kadalie's presidential address to the annual conference in 1923. 20 The union was losing at least £500 a year through the inefficient, dishonest and irregular behaviour of officials. Inefficiency would have to be tolerated until the union could afford to employ suitably qualified secretaries; but strong and severe methods must be adopted to eliminate corruption, indiscipline and unconstitutional action - otherwise we become party to the exploitation of the masses'. The national secretary, Kadalie, was also at fault. He set a bad example by ignoring constitutional procedures, notably in drawing heavily on the union's funds to bolster up an unauthorized speculation of the Johannesburg Branch in acquiring the Workers Hall, before having obtained the sanction or approval of the Board of Arbitration'. The greatest danger of all', La Guma reported, was a dictatorship in embryo'. It was 'contrary to the democratic principles upon which the organization is founded' and should be prevented.
Kadalie might have seen in these strictures a threat to his leadership; and had an additional reason for wanting to expel the communists. The big employers of labour throughout the country, and, probably, the Government, suspected me of communistic tendencies,' he wrote, while the communists themselves looked upon me as bourgeois.' 21 It was a familiar story. To be black, and a trade union leader to boot, exposed a man to many hazards; to be a red in addition made life nearly intolerable. The expulsions brought instant relief, claimed Kadalie. The public announcement of its policy against Communist dictatorship, won for the ICU immeasurable support from liberal European public opinion'. 22 One of the liberals put the case more emphatically:
Without international recognition' without legal protection within the country, suspected by the white Labour Party, hampered by legal restrictions, threatened by a Sedition Bill which on the least hint of extremism might lead to a disbanding of the whole organization by an apprehensive Government' the black Trade Unionists, far from profiting by their association with the Communist Party' were imperilled by it. 23
The party's explanation was more succinct: Kaclalie had sold out to the bourgeoisie' in an endeavour to placate the South African Government and prepare the way for affiliation to the IFTU. 24
The decision to affiliate followed a resolution of the ICU's annual conference in April 1926 to join the British TUC as a means of bringing the case of the African workers before the League of Nations and public opinion throughout Europe '. The TUC suggested as an alternative that the union should apply for affiliation to the International Federation of Trade Unions, the so-called Amsterdam International. Kadalie agreed, the more readily because he was advised to do so by a group of socialists and liberals in Britain and South Africa. A 'factor behind the scenes', which led him to adopt 'a middle course, was the advice and help given him by certain European women'. Among them were the novelist Mrs. Ethelreda Lewis, Miss Margaret Hodgson (later Mrs. Ballinger), Miss Mabel Palmer of Durban, and his chief sponsor, Miss Winifred Holtby, then lecturing in South Africa. 25
She returned to England in July 1926 and busied herself on behalf of the ICU, persuaded the Independent Labour party and trade unions to regard it sympathetically, and collected about 200 books for its library. Kadalie reported in November that informal committees might be set up in England to assist the union, and a number of well-known names in the Socialist ranks, were planning to secure its affiliation to the International Federation of Trade Unions. 26 The ICU's anti-communist policy strengthened its claims to assistance from the ILP and the British trade unions. When protesting against the Native Administration Act in September 1927, Winifred Holtby denied that the union had preached hostility against the white settlers. On the contrary, it constantly sought the cooperation of white men', and expelled all communists when some of them attempted to inaugurate a policy of direct action. 27 Lord Oliver, the Labour peer, was more explicit. He deprecated 'the running of a Native "Communist" Party in South Africa', and wished to see the ICU relieved of its Communist propagandists'. When strong enough, it should run genuine Labour Socialist candidates of its own'. 28
His 'middle of the road' policy, writes Kadalie, was a great success. Instead of heading towards its doom as foreshadowed by the Communists', the ICU grew from strength to strength. By July 1927, six months after the expulsions, it claimed 30,000 new members, ten new branches in the Transvaal and seven in the Free State, an improved financial condition, and a vigorous campaign against Hertzog's bills. It was pressing for recognition by the government and had gained support for the first time from the labour movement. Kadalie hoped that his work in Europe and the union's new prosperity would open the eyes of white workers to the folly of standing aloof. They might yet realize that the only hope for South Africa lay in the united efforts of both black and white. 29
Constitutionalism proved to be no more effective, however, than inflammatory speeches . The application of the ICU for registration under the Industrial Conciliation Act was rejected, as it might have foreseen, since the act was so drafted as to exclude Africans from collective bargaining procedures. The registrar objected that its 'pass-bearing' members were not employees as defined, and that, being employed in 'almost every conceivable occupation', they did not constitute a statutory trade union. 30 Attempts to group the members according to occupation, with a view to forming a federation of trade unions, were abandoned after the expulsions and subsequent splits in the organization. It remained a broad undifferentiated body of mainly unskilled workers, not unlike the industrial union favoured by the early syndicalists, and without the cohesion and discipline needed to make it an effective political force.
Kadalie's bid for recognition had a more sympathetic hearing in the Amsterdam International, which accepted the ICU's application for membership in January 1927. This strengthened the union's claim to representation at the international labour conference in Geneva, and the government was asked to nominate Kadalie as the workers' delegate. It naturally refused, and as the white trade unions could not agree on a representative, there was no official workers' delegate from South Africa at Geneva in June. Kadalie went there as an unofficial delegate, 'the only black man at that great assembly, he writes, and the first African ambassador ' to attend an ILO conference. He made a great impression, in spite of much obstruction by South Africa's government and employers' representatives, and alerted the organization to the needs of African workers throughout the continent. Harold Grimshaw, head of the ILOs colonial section, wrote to Fenner Brockway that Kadalie's visit aroused widespread interest, and 'secured a personal success'. He had prepared the way for a favourable reception of African delegates at future conferences.
After leaving Geneva, Kadalie went on a lecture tour of England and Scotland under the ILPs auspices; attended a congress of the IFTU in Paris, where he was again the central figure of attraction'; visited Holland and Germany - but not Russia, though all arrangements were made for him to go there, because time was so limited'. Besides, he 'was suspected by the Union Government and part of the European public of having some connexion with Moscow'. He found time, however, to spend another two months in England, revisit Paris and Berlin, tour Austria, and revise the ICUs constitution with the aid of Grimshaw and Arthur Creech-Jones. In spite of all this goodwill and publicity, the British TUC would not let him attend its annual conference as a fraternal delegate, for fear of offending white trade unionists in South Africa. No matter; he had fulfilled his mission to present the ICU case before the bar of the international labour movement, and to expose the racial prejudices of white South Africa. While many leaders of the national liberation movement had done as much in England, he was the first African to represent his people in the socialist and trade union movement of western Europe.
He returned to South Africa in November after an absence of five months, like Moses coming down from Mount Sinai with new commandments for the children of Israel. As far back as August, when in Holland, he received news that the ICUs affairs were chaotic and needed his personal attention. Africans were flocking to the union from previously untapped fields in Natal, the northern Free State, the eastern and northern Transvaal. It was almost an evangelical movement, sometimes accompanied by mass conversions as when a Transvaal chief led his whole tribe into the union. The farmers were incensed; they demanded a sedition' law, refused to keep labour tenants who belonged to the ICU, burnt their huts, turned them away and confiscated their stock if they did not leave quickly enough. Contributions to the union dropped markedly in Natal. The pressure, the growth, and the spirit of militancy abroad were straining the ICU's resources and producing a crisis of leadership 32
Leaders who fail to lead when the struggle is on are of no use to the workers,' declared the Communist party; and it accused the union officials of failing to organize or to support mass action. When farm workers in Natal, who were threatened with eviction for belonging to the union, suggested a strike, the officials sidetracked them with unrealistic proposals to buy land for the evicted tenants. Coal miners in Natal, many of whom were union members, struck work in June 1927. The officials denied responsibility and even declared that the strike was illegal. Dockworkers at the Point in Durban, the union's main centre, came out on strike twice within a short period, and received no help or guidance from the ICU. When men employed at Kazerne, the railway depot in Johannesburg, called a strike for higher wages, they were advised by H. D. Tyamzashe, a senior union official, to resume work pending a discussion of their grievances, They refused and were dismissed, their place being taken by peasants recruited for the mines. 33
The duty of a real trade union was to avert and not to 'look for' or 'manufacture strikes, wrote Tyamzashe in reply to criticisms by Eddie Roux. Born in Kimberley in 1880, the son of a minister of the Scottish Free Church, and a compositor journalist, Henry Tyamzashe edited the Workers' Herald and served as Kadalie's chief public relations officer. His observations on the union's policy were therefore authoritative. 'I am glad to say, he added, 'that owing to the broad outlook of the ICU administrators the strike weapon has only been used on three occasions by the ICU:' the first, and only successful, operation at the Cape Town docks in November 1919; at Maythams, Johannesburg, in 1927, for a breakfast hour break; and at Onderstepoort, Pretoria, in 1928, when seventy-one strikers were fined and dismissed from employment. 34 Many other strikes were initiated or led by branch committees; but the paid officials invariably intervened only to persuade the men to return to work pending negotiations, and never succeeded in obtaining any significant improvement in wages or working conditions.
The leaders never rose to the challenge of the workers' militancy. A glaring example of failure occurred on the diamond diggings at Lichtenburg, Transvaal, in June 1928, when claim holders arbitrarily and without giving notice reduced wages from 18s. and 20s. a week to 12s. Some 30,000 Africans struck work, picketed, and pulled strikebreakers out of the claims. The diggers formed commandos, urged the government to send aeroplanes, and received police reinforcements from Pretoria and Johannesburg. Government officials persuaded the diggers to offer the men 15s. a week, at which point Kadalie and his lieutenants pledged their support. They would induce the strikers to accept the 15s. and return to work while the union negotiated a final settlement. Similarly at Bellville, Cape, when quarry workers went on strike for a rise from 3s. 6d. to 5s. a day with free quarters and free tools, the local branch of the union was left to handle the dispute without aid from the head office. 35
The ICU acquired a reputation as an extreme radical, even revolutionary force, by virtue of its messianic role and, in the eyes of some members, almost supernatural qualities. Its 'red ticket' membership card, wrote the communist Laurie Greene, probably the ICU's only white member in Natal, was said to keep employers, police and Hertzog himself at bay, to win cases in court, and to give the possessor equal treatment with whites, even to the extent of £1 a day. 36 Kadalie rightly claimed that 'the advent of the ICU was like a beacon of light on the horizon. There was a great desire for emancipation, and the union promised the way. The ICU 'spread from Cape Town like a veld fire over South Africa' and as far north as Nyasaland, where a member was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for possessing a copy of the Workers, Herald. The union 'demonstrated to the world the powers of the African workers once they were properly organized'. 37 This was so. It accomplished in the industrial field what the ANC had achieved in the political. Kadalie aroused the people to an awareness of their economic bondage, awakened a determination to escape from poverty and the stranglehold of colour bars, and fostered trade unionism. He also let the fire burn out behind him as he took his message farther to the north. He and his lieutenants shrank from turning the power they had generated into a weapon against the oppressor.
Walter Citrine, Creech-Jones, Winifred Holtby and other of his British socialist friends were largely to blame for this futility. They impressed on him the importance of strict adherence to constitutional forms, avoiding direct action, communism, or politics'; and they encouraged visions of a great bureaucratic organization, with officials trained in England, separate departments for research, parliamentary and legal affairs, and specialists in every branch of industry. These plans and the constitution drafted for him in England would have taxed the resources of a powerful union with a large, regular income and an established place in the social order. The ICU had none of these qualities and could never acquire them as long as African unions were ignored or harassed by employers, police and government. Morris Alexander told parliament in 1928 that there was a significant resemblance between the turbulent phase of white trade unionism and the ICU's reputation for mass agitation and political propaganda. He moved that Africans be allowed to develop their unions freely and upon lines as are enjoyed by other workers'; and failed to find a seconder in a House that included eighteen Labour members. 38
Kadalie was happier when addressing a mass audience than when pleading for small concessions from employers inferior to him in will-power and intelligence. He missed his cue by trying to become a respectable trade union bureaucrat. On his return from Europe, he declared that he would transform the ICU into a true trade union', cooperate with the white unions, and repudiate any African who was anti-white. None of these aims could be realized under the prevailing conditions; and attempts at reform along these lines probably marred his prospects of settling disputes and restoring unity within the organization. A special congress, held at Kimberley in December 1927, adopted his new constitution, based on the model of the best modern trade unions in England', and agreed, after some dissension, to accept a trade union adviser from England. Conference also debated the crisis in the Natal section of the ICU and rejected Champion's motion to impose a special levy of £1 on every member for the purchase of land. Durban alone had 56,000 members, said Kadalie, and the money could be raised if every member in Natal donated only 1s. All branch offices in Natal were overstaffed, and he urged them to dismiss the redundant clerks. 39
'Our Kadalie was full of English ideas, complained Champion. 'After spreading a gigantic spirit of mistrust against the whiteman and his Government he carne back from overseas with a sudden revolutionized mind. He wanted a European private secretary, white girls as shorthand typists. All that was strange to us who knew his teachings so well. The question was debated the whole of one night at Kimberley, 'where through the voices of two lady delegates, one from Capetown and another from Boksburg, he was told that he went away a black man and carne back a white man'. 40 Champion was not an impartial witness; but these accusations were repeated often and with effect in the bitter wrangling that went on throughout 1928.
The trouble started in Natal, while Champion was acting national secretary during Kadalie's absence. Samuel Dunn, a member of the famous Zulu clan founded by the Englishman John Dunn in Tshaka's reign, took over the provincial secretaryship in Natal. A powerful speaker and efficient organizer, he vied with Champion for leadership among the Zulu and like him was a bad bookkeeper. Champion had him prosecuted on a charge of theft by conversion of £865 belonging to the union, and he was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment. 41 George Lenono, a member of the Durban branch executive, then issued a pamphlet alleging that Champion, too, was at fault. He sued Lenono for libel and lost his case. Tatham, the presiding judge, made severe criticisms of the way in which the unions affairs were administered, including Champion's practice of paying monies received by the organization into his personal bank account. These matters were discussed at length by delegates to the union's eighth annual conference at Bloemfontein in April 1928. It was the largest ever held, though many of those present were said to have come from inactive branches in anticipation of a struggle between Kadalie and Champion. The conference decided against Champion and agreed to suspend him from office pending an investigation.
Champion's followers rallied round him in an atmosphere charged with racial animosity. The Royal Agricultural Society of Natal met in February and agreed on vigilance societies, a rigid combing out of ICU members, and a ban on African meetings without magisterial approval. The ban was introduced by proclamation 252 of 1928, issued under the Native Administration Act, which prohibited any meeting, except for religious or domestic purposes, of more than ten Africans in any reserve throughout Natal, the Transvaal and Orange Free State, without the permission of a chief and magistrate. On top of all this, a number of town councils in Natal decided to introduce municipal beer halls and prohibit the domestic brewing of the African's national beverage. Incensed at this attack on their customs and an important source of family income, men and women called for a boycott of the beer halls.
Africans in Greytown, one of the places affected, gave vent to their anger in March by breaking tombstones in a white graveyard. This set off an outbreak of violence. some white hooligans, reported Champion's paper, 'have gone so far as to organize "Anti-ICU Leagues'' which in practice must be antiblack.' 42 The mobs invaded ICU premises at Greytown and Krantzkop, damaged buildings, looted and burnt property of branch officials. Twenty whites were reprimanded on a charge of resisting the police, and fined £2 each for burning and damaging the effects of the ICU. There was no proof, said the magistrate, that the union was behind the desecration. 43
This outrage, said the Communist party, was a definite link in the chain of ruling class policy'. Leading farmers' organizations cultivated racial hostility in order to camouflage the class struggle. A call should go out for working class solidarity to smash the disruptive policy of all racialists. 44 Champion sounded the same tocsin. The cause of all this misunderstanding is a starving worker of Africa.' Five-sixths of the population starved, 'while the sixth has so much that there are men who are drunk with their bank balances'. The day would come when workers would cry from one camp. There shall be no Trade Union Congress of Bill Andrews, neither Cape Labour Federation of Bob Stewart nor ICU of Comrade Kadalie, but there will be a camp of the starving workers vs. the big baas.' 45
The movement splintered instead. Kadalie was called to Durban to explain why he had ' dismissed , Champion and encountered a 'well organized, quasi military mob, that rushed him into the ICU hall at 2 a.m. to face a crowd 1,000 strong. When I rose to speak I realized that death was certainly hanging over my head in those small hours. The only person to offer protection was a white policeman, who escorted him out of Durban. When Kadalie returned to Johannesburg, he learned that Champion had hastily seceded and formed a rival organization, the ICU Yase Natal. This episode, writes Kadalie sadly, would appear to be the turning-point in the history of the ICU.' 46 He begged Champion to return to the fold, and assured him that the suspension was a temporary measure to pacify the discontented members in the other provinces', but the breach was final. 47 Recriminations followed. Champion was accused of playing 'the big boss' behind Kadalie's back. 'He became so conceited and confident about his own abilities that he allowed the Durban Branch funds to become inextricably mixed up with his own private funds.' 48
The ICU stood virtually alone in its hour of need, rejected also by the Catholics, who formed a rival Catholic African Union and threatened to refuse the sacrament to members of the ICU. Kadalie replied that the ICU allowed full freedom of conscience in religion. If, he added, Catholics claimed that their union could serve African interests without being involved in politics or clashing with employers and government, they were asking people to believe the impossible, ridiculous and untrue'. 49 His liberal adviser, the anti-communist Mrs. Ethelreda Lewis, rallied to his defence. She disapproved of the ICUs demand for 8s. a day. That idea never came from a black man, she said, and must have been put into the heads of the leaders. Not, presumably, by communists, however, since she claimed that the union had been cleansed of the elements of violence these past eighteen months. It had changed its original aims and should be treated fairly in the spirit of Geneva. 50
Kadalie had broken with the communists, quarrelled with the ANC, and repudiated strikes, all in vain. The white trade unions denied him the recognition that he needed to set the seal of constitutionalism on the ICU. Their colour prejudices stood in the way of unity, said Andrews in August 1926, when talking to a crowded meeting of ICU members. Most of the white unions still stood halfway between a white-collar and a working-class policy. It was for this reason that the TUC turned down the ICU's offer of joint action in response to Cook's appeal for an embargo on coal exports during the general strike of British miners. The TUC executive, though in favour, thought they could not carry their membership with them'. 51 Kadalie encountered a similar resistance when he applied in December 1927 for affiliation to the TUC on the basis of 100,000 members. This was an exaggerated figure and a tactical error. 'We were all scared that he would swamp us , recorded Ben Weinbren, a communist member of the TUC executive, ' so we rejected the application'. 52
It was examined at length by Andrews and Stuart in a memorandum submitted on 28 December to a coordinating committee of the TUC and Cape Federation of Labour Unions; and on 15 January to a meeting of trade union executives. All but two of the sixty delegates approved the memorandum and rejected the application. 53 Kadalie immediately communicated the refusal to the British TUC, LP, ILP and IFTU. The whites had made hardly any progress in their ideology, he complained, whereas the ICU sincerely rejected racial animosity and desired cooperation. 54
Andrews drafted the memorandum. It acknowledged that the application was important to all workers and should not hastily either be turned down or adopted. Africans, who were paid far less than whites in South Africa, Europe and America for identical kinds of work, had learned from the whites and had built an important industrial organization. Their political status was inferior to that of a citizen, they were at the mercy of every constable or petty official, and were excluded from collective bargaining. They therefore looked for self-expression to industrial organization and for recognition to the white worker their big brother so to speak'. Haunted by the fear of competition, the white worker demanded protection even sometimes at the price of gross injustice to those weaker than himself'. selfpreservation is the first law of nature.' The policy had failed, however, to prevent Africans from encroaching on these privileged positions' in mining and manufacturing. A section of workers took the long view that repression and segregation could succeed only in part and for a time. They recognized that sooner or later the movement 'must include all genuine labour industrial organizations, irrespective of craft, colour or creed. The question is when and how?' 55
'Not in our time.' This was the substance of the Andrews Stuart memorandum. Having conceded Kadalie's case in principle, the authors rejected it on grounds of expediency. If the ICU were to affiliate with 100,000 members, it might outvote all other unions. If its voting strength were reduced to the more realistic figure of 5,000, some big white unions might secede or continue to keep aloof from the TUC. In that event, the white unions would suffer while the ICU 'would again be as they were, isolated'. Therefore, nothing more could be offered than periodic consultations; and even this gesture seemed to require justification in terms of white interests. For, wrote Andrews and Stuart, 'the native masses will find friends in the enemy's camp, and be used 'to drag us down as nearly to their level as is possible', unless the white unions associated with their unions and gave them ' the benefit of their experience and superior knowledge'.
The two most powerful leaders in the movement, and also the most radical, rejected inter-racial solidarity at a crucial stage, when Africans were demonstrating their capacity for large-scale industrial organization. As secretary-editor of the ISL and CP, Andrews in particular had worked for nearly fifteen years to bring about unity. When the test came, he withdrew, and made his stand on the issue of white labour solidarity. It was a difficult decision. Of the seventy-eight registered unions in the country, only twenty-two had affiliated to the TUC. Its annual income from fees and donations amounted to a mere £600; and Andrews's salary was £25 a month. He wanted to strengthen the organization; and yet, wrote Bunting at the time, exposed himself to much opposition from both officials and members of white unions by associating with the ICU in protests against the Native Administration Bill. 56
Some of the delegates at a conference of affiliated unions in September 1927 criticized his stewardship. T. Brown, the ASW secretary, probably spoke for many present when he urged Andrews to be discreet in public discussions of the labour question. 'We have got to drop the Kaffir business,' he said; 'the organization of the native will come about, but the white trade unionists were not ready for this propaganda. We want to keep ourselves as pure as possible from the native and attend to the European.' 57
Andrews had reason to suppose that his executive would reject Kadalie's application. In spite of this, his proper course was to recommend acceptance and mobilize progressive opinion for a policy of opening the door to workers of all races. He would have had the support of communists in the movement, at least eight of whom attended the conference in September; and might have convinced African workers that a strong body of white trade unionists stood with them in their struggle for recognition. In yielding to white power without a protest, Andrews and Stuart isolated the ICU at a time when it desperately needed the backing of organized labour.
'We have no intention of allowing the TUC to patronize us as inferiors,' retorted Kadalie. 'We will have full and equal status or nothing. His spirited statement tore the Andrews-Stuart argument to pieces. They admitted that the white labour policy was unjust, yet recommended in effect that it should be maintained. They claimed to lead the white workers, yet succumbed to their blind anti-native prejudice. They professed faith in democratic rule, yet feared that the ICU might outvote the minority. They paid lip service to the idea of working class solidarity, but relied on racial antagonisms to keep their own ranks united. The ICU had offered friendship in all sincerity and suffered a rebuff. Condemned by the international labour movement as a 'narrow racialist body, devoid of any true working class spirit', the TUC would sink into the forgotten. The ICU, wrote Kadalie to the Natal Indian TUC, was more than ever determined to build the strongest trade union movement in Africa. He asked Indian workers, who had shown very little sympathy towards the ICU, to recognize that they had a common enemy in imperial capitalism. 58
Close on 10,000 Indians were employed in secondary industries in 1929-30, all but 7000 of them in Natal, the home of eighty per cent of South African Indians. Unskilled men who migrated from sugar plantations and farms to the town and competed with Africans, had the advantage of being able to use the statutory system of collective bargaining. This gave an impetus to trade unionism, which had declined after the pioneering efforts of Sigamoney and Lee in 1917-18. By 1928, unions had been formed for Indians in the printing, furniture, garment, leather, tobacco, liquor and catering trades. 59 Indian employers and workers had a common interest in negotiating wages lower than the rates acceptable to whites, and therefore wished to secure representation on industrial councils and conciliation boards. V. S. Sastri, the agent-general for India, recognized the pitfalls in the policy of equal pay for equal work when applied to a minority group with inferior political status and educational standards. He was largely instrumental in the decision of the Natal Indian Congress, a body of employers and property holders, to take an active part in promoting trade unions and the formation of the Natal Indian TUC in 1928. 60
The Indians ignored Kadalie's appeal and concentrated on 'securing the benefits, as the Indian Congress put it, of the Industrial Conciliation Act, Wage and Apprenticeship Acts for the Indian people'. They succeeded in persuading some white unions and the TUC itself to relax the colour bar; though the white labour movement remained hostile to the African's claims. Andrews acknowledged this when replying to a questionnaire prepared for the second British Commonwealth Labour Conference held at London in July 1928. Attempts to perpetuate a caste system were unwise, unworkable and certain to lead to disastrous consequences', he wrote. Since industrial segregation was impossible, political segregation must fail. Yet the movement's policy was to press for the substitution where possible of whites for Africans. The unions might not support, but would probably not try to stop, the disfranchisement of Africans in the Cape. If a referendum were taken, white workers generally would approve of further restrictions on the liberty of the non-Europeans.
Later in the year Andrews and Bob Stuart represented the workers, side at the Geneva ILO conference. It was indeed 'a strange turn of fortune, as Cope remarks, that brought Andrews to 'the thieves, kitchen' and 'assembly of Labour and Socialist prostitutes', as he and his fellow communists had described the conference when first Crawford and then Kadalie went to Geneva. 62 From there he went with R. McLean, president of the Durban Tramwaymen's Union, to the Commonwealth Labour Conference where, writes Cope, the British delegates 'adopted an essentially imperialist attitude'. 63 Some, like Lord Olivier, denounced South Africa's white labour policies. Andrews replied that his own views did not differ greatly from Olivier's. He was there, however, to express the opinions of his organization. Africans were encroaching on the white man's sphere and accepting lower wages, in spite of colour bar legislation. He did not say this policy was wrong; yet would insist that all sections were ruled by self-interest. McLean added that they did not intend to allow coloured people to reduce the white man's living standards. 64
The British ILP and Walter Citrine demonstrated their sympathies by sending William Ballinger, a Glasgow-born member of the Motherwell trades council, to advise the ICU. Kadalie looked with great hopes to his coming: he 'would tremendously help the ICU to save its ship from sinking'. 'An African is a shrewd observer of human beings,' claimed Kadalie over-confidently; and he confessed to being 'somewhat disappointed' when he met his adviser. 65 The ship sank, in spite of Ballinger's attempts at rescue. More splits took place, even before he arrived. C. D, ModiaKgotla and A. P. J. Maduna, the OFS provincial secretary who had moved the expulsions of communists in 1926, formed a 'Clean Administration Group' and agitated for Kadalie's own expulsion. He was said to be 'autocratic, Czarlike and despotic'. He had disregarded the decisions or authority of the congress and national council, appropriated ICU money to his personal use, monopolized the union's motor car for his private purposes, and addressed a Communist party meeting in defiance of official policy. 66
Ballinger's mission was to shape the ICU after the model of a standard British trade union. He soon found that white supremacists objected to an African union of any kind. The immigration authorities would give him only a three months' residential permit and treated him like a criminal although, he told a reception committee at Ferreirastown, Johannesburg, in July 1928, he was actually a very respectable Scot, who had served for several years on Motherwell's parish council. No white trade unionists attended the gathering, whereas Kadalie's liberal friends from the S.A. Institute of Race Relations and the Joint Council of Europeans and Natives came in full force. Ballinger hoped that the ICU would have an opportunity to assist in making the country's laws, and emphasized that a strike should be the last effort of any trade union, for it was a gesture of despair, as they had found in the Old Country'. If any rash action is taken it will throw back the whole of your course for many years, he told an audience at Marabastad, Pretoria. They should reorganize the ICU quietly on the lines followed by European trade unionists, and avoid the errors of their leaders who had made rash promises and wasted the union's resources. 67
The attacks undermined confidence in Kadalie and the ICU, yet failed to appease its enemies. Sampson, the minister of posts and public works, speaking at a banquet held to celebrate his twenty-fifth year as president of the printers' union, refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the ICU. He repudiated an organization of boys on the mines, kitchen boys, store boys, pastoralists, and all types of natives drain higgledy-piggledy into a union for the glorification of one or two leaders'. 68 Champion, on the other hand, taxed Kadalie with having ignored the wishes of many prominent officials of the ICU. They had objected to the presence of Ballinger, a private agent of an unnamed organization ' whose salary was being paid by mysterious people, perhaps not in Moscow but certainly in the ILP. 69 As charges were met with counter-charges, the ICUs finances deteriorated, a deficit grew to £1,500, the union's furniture was seized for a debt of £100, and Mrs. Ethelreda Lewis appealed to the ILP in England for funds to pay Ballinger. 70
Disintegration set in. Some branches in the Transvaal and western Cape broke away in October. At about the same time Maduna of the Clean Administration Group' joined Champion's union and accused Ballinger of having usurped Kadalie's place as 'dictator and autocratic ruler. Kadalie tried to restore his prestige by making fiery speeches, which brought him into conflict with his advisers and liberal friends in the Joint Councils of Europeans and Natives. They accused him of having vilified Hertzog in a speech at Lichtenburg and to his great humiliation, he complained, forced him to apologize in public. The final break came in January 1929 when he was either ousted from the leadership, according to his version, or given twelve months' leave of absence on half pay. He then resigned from what he used to say was himself incarnate: I, Kadalie, am the ICU. The union's main weakness, Ballinger told Africans in Cape Town, was to have set up a sort of chieftainship and embark on strikes. They should ask employers for a living wage; and to do this they needed education, both literary and political. 71
'I asked for an adviser,' retorted Kadalie, 'and received a dictator.' Ballinger was the ICU's secretary, president and national council all in one. It was essential for the union to be both political and industrial, and therefore it should free itself from the Joint Councils of Europeans and Natives, which had brought about his resignation. Africans would get their freedom by fighting, and not by begging, Kadalie told an audience of more than 1,000 in Johannesburg. 'Prepare yourselves to go to gaol, prepare yourselves to be hung if you want freedom.' They must stop work on the mines, railways and docks ' if the government insists on dragging the native question into the elections'. 72 He had canvassed votes in 1924 for Hertzog's party, yet it 'grossly violated' the promises it made to the people. 'We were fooled, but never again. 73 These were the opinions also of James Gumede, the ANC president. Speaking on the same platform as Kadalie, he urged the people to raise their voice 'so that we fill all the gaols. They must demand liberation, the franchise and seats in parliament; oppose Hertzog's imperialism; and secure a republic representing all nationalities irrespective of colour.
This was the language of the League against Imperialism, which Kadalie had denounced in 1927 as a tool of Moscow. Having fallen out with the liberals, he now moved to the left and recalled to mind his 'other European friends': the communists C. F. Glass, Bill Andrews who recognized no colour bar', Sidney Bunting and Edward Roux, who often addressed ICU meetings before the dangers and implications of Communism were generally understood'. 74 Kadalie formed a new union, the Independent ICU, in April 1929. He applied to the League for affiliation and £200 to enable him to build a huge militant trade union ' which would ' fight capitalism to the bitter end'. 75 The League turned down both requests, and the communists lectured him on the corrupting effects of bad company. There was no real difference between Kadalie and Ballinger; both were autocratic bureaucrats fighting for supremacy, while the rank-and-file were being bled for their support. Joint Councils, the Joneses, Pims, Ballingers and Brookeses', and their 'Native Damnation Societies' were but instruments for retarding the African's emancipation. Only by a revolutionary policy based upon organized strength and relying on direct action can this be obtained.' 76
Communists had earned the right to speak with some authority. Years of systematic work along the lines proposed in 1926 by La Guma for the ICU were bearing fruit, especially on the Rand. Kalk, Sachs, Fanny Klenerman (Mrs. Glass) and B. Weinbren, among other party members, had organized unions of furniture, garment, sweet, laundry, catering and distributive workers. A parallel movement was making headway among Africans. We are having big successes in our work up here,' wrote Wolton from Johannesburg in February 1928. Unions had been formed of Africans in the laundry, tailoring, engineering and baking trades. 'Membership of these Unions is leaping up and our comrades are holding key positions. Party branches were making steady progress, and the party school had eighty regular students. On every day of the week our Hall is crowded with Party members, potential members and close sympathizers.' 77 The school had been started in 1925 in the slums of Ferreirastown under the supervision of T. W. Thibedi, a communist from the ISL days. Among the pupils were leading ICU and party organizers: Stanley Silwana, Thomas Mbeki, Tantsi, Johannes Nkosi, Gana Makabeni and Moses Kotane.
Five African unions with a combined membership of about 10,000 drawn from furniture and clothing factories, bakeries, laundries and garages formed the S.A. Federation of NonEuropean Trade Unions early in 1928. With Weinbren, Kotane and La Guma as president, vice-president and general secretary, the Federation made no attempt to conceal its political sympathies. It affiliated to the Red International of Labour Unions in 1929, and was promptly accused of being a disruptive organization led by foreign agitators and financed by Moscow gold. 78 The stated aims were modest, however, and specified only a forty-eight hour working week and 'equal pay for equal work. 79 There was no reference to the colour bar or demand for equality of opportunity. For, Roux argued in Moscow at the sixth world congress of the Communist International in August 1928, it was sounder to stress the unity of all workers against capitalism than to expose 'the parasitical nature of the white workers'. 80
Roux, for one, thought that the new unions should press for affiliation to the TUC, the spokesman of the labour aristocracy which 'shares to a certain extent in the profits of the bourgeoisie. The RILUs fourth congress, meeting in 1928, agreed that the amalgamation of all unions into a single centre 'should be urged as the fundamental task of the revolutionary wing of the trade union movement in South Africa. Only a united front of white and coloured workers against capital would put an end to inter-racial hostility. To support its contention, the congress maintained that the condition of white workers had steadily deteriorated since 1922, 'in consequence of the attraction of ever larger numbers of cheap skilled coloured workers to the mining enterprises. 81 In fact, however, the labour aristocracy was then more firmly than ever entrenched behind statutory colour bars. African trade union leaders had every reason to reject the futility of knocking at a door which had been firmly bolted against the ICU.
The formation of a separate Federation of Non-European Trade Unions mirrored the white workers' racial exclusiveness, and represented a significant departure from the communist ideal of inter-racial solidarity. The aim of the Federation, it declared on 2 September 1928, was to promote a united front of all non-European' organizations, for equality 'in every sphere of industrial, economic and political activity', as a step towards non-racial unions. The white worker if not absolutely incorrigible,' wrote La Guma, must inevitably be forced to acknowledge the incorrectness of his myopic policy of aloofness.' South Africa was in a stage of transition to a modern industrial country, using techniques of mass production and drawing on the large reserves of semi-skilled and unskilled workers. The white man would be isolated on the labour market if he did not cooperate with the black. The African would not allow himself to be used as a catspaw' to pull strike chestnuts' out of the fire for the white worker, as in the strike of Germiston clothing workers in May. 82
Africans and Coloured had come out in sympathy with a strike of whites against victimization. White garment workers in Johannesburg failed to reciprocate two weeks later during a strike of 200 Africans for a similar reason. Seventy-five of the strikers were fined £1 each for being absent from work; Makabeni and five other leaders were charged with incitement under the Riotous Assemblies Act. 83 A more serious betrayal of solidarity occurred in the Johannesburg furniture industry towards the end of 1929. The white and African unions had signed a mutual defence pact, which the Africans loyally observed during a strike of white workers in October. 'This was a distinctly historic event,' declared the Federation; it would go far towards the shattering and ultimate abolition of the colour bar'. In November, however, when 200 African and Coloured mattress makers struck work to enforce a wage determination, and 160 of the Africans were prosecuted, the whites dishonoured the agreement, scabbed, and made no contribution to the strike fund. Embittered by the betrayal, the Africans gave no assistance when the whites repeated their strike, to remain out for ten weeks and fail to win their demands. 84
A real break through' was claimed in the laundry trade when Weinbren, the organizer, persuaded the white union to form a joint committee with the African union on condition that each retained its identity. Employers reacted by urging the whites to resign. Are you going to let niggers assist you in demands for more wages?, asked one. 'Youll only raise theirs and lower your own. The Federation continued to progress, reported Weinbren at the second annual conference in September 1929. Five new unions, representing dairy, meat, canvas, transport and engineering workers, had been added during the past year. 85 The membership was predominantly African, with a sprinkling of Coloured and Indians. The law, police, employers and racial privilege made unity between white workers and Africans almost impossible.
The obstacles to the association of whites with Coloured and Indian were less formidable. As members of the privileged 'employee, class, they could all make their voices heard on industrial councils and conciliation boards. In August 1928 the industrial registrar reported that he had received applications for registration from the Durban Hotel Employees, Union, which was predominantly Indian, and from the Witwatersrand Coloured Mine Workers, Union. The registration of parallel racial unions in a single industry or occupation, he pointed out, might lead to dual and conflicting wage agreements. As a safeguard, he suggested the adoption of a guiding principle: 'Wherever the formation of one union embracing all races in a given industry can be brought about, it should be encouraged. If this form of organization cannot be attained in certain trades, parallel unions might be registered.' The TUC replied in October that while all its affiliates recognized and approved the right of 'the Non-European worker, to organize industrially, they disagreed about their relations with Coloured and Indian workers. 86
The Coloured MWU was formed in 1911, before Smuts's colour bar regulations restricted a wide range of mining occupations to whites. The amendment of 1926 to the Mines and Works Act removed the statutory barriers against Coloured as distinct from Africans and Asians, yet few Coloured were employed in occupations for which certificates of competence were required. The union claimed a potential membership of 2,000 Coloured mine workers employed on the Reef as timbermen, waste packers, pipe fitters, track layers, lashers and trammers, winch drivers, pump attendants, and transport drivers - occupations which were also catered for by the white miners, union. 87 Since the union's constitution contained a 'Europeans only, membership clause, the Coloured insisted that they were legally entitled to register their union. They were told that the SAMWU would delete the word 'European' if they accepted the principle of equal pay. But, said the Coloured, 'to ask us to demand the same rate of wages as a white man is to ask us to remain permanently unemployed, because the employers would always give preference to the white man if he had to pay the same wage to both' 88
Nine out of ten mine workers on the Rand, claimed the Rev. R. B. Hattingh, belonged to the Nationalist party, and only one third to the union. 89 To keep its end up, the union launched a bitter racialist attack on the new regulations. The government, wrote Harry Day the secretary, 'had no right to rob us of our status as white men and compel us to compete with Cape boys. Since employers maximized profits by taking on cheap labour, 'all that will be left on the mines will be a few white bosses and cheap coloured labourers'. 90 While so protesting, the union did remove the colour bar from its constitution. This, declared George Brown, one of the Transvaal Labour members of parliament and president of the Boilermakers' Union, was the finest step so far taken towards open trade unionism. 91 In fact, the SAMWU never admitted Coloured as members. The sole purpose of the constitutional amendment was to block the registration of the Coloured union.
A fraternal embrace could be as deadly as isolation. Natal Indians made the discovery after being admitted to the S.A. Typographical Society early in 1929. White printers on strike in Durban had been kept out for six weeks because the Indians remained at work, said Albert Downes, the general secretary, and he urged an open door policy. At Cape Town, he claimed, 'the number of coloured people employed in the printing industry had decreased since they had been admitted to membership. 92 The Durban printers, reported Forward, wanted to eliminate Indians from the industry. About 250 of them refused to be eliminated; therefore they had to be absorbed. 93 This would deprive them of the right to undercut, their only defence against the colour bar. 'As a matter of fair play,' pleaded Sastri, Indians who submitted to the rule of equal pay for equal labour should be allowed to acquire the technical training that would fit them to survive in open competition. 94 Twenty-five years later, Tom Rutherford, the general secretary of the union and president of the SATUC, reported that 'one could count the number of skilled Indian printers in Natal on the fingers of your one hand. They have been almost eliminated. That happened because we took them into the Union. 95
Varying proportions of self-interest, racial prejudice and socialist ethics produced divergent practices on the Witwatersrand. Several unions of factory workers - garment, leather, furniture, canvas - found it expedient to admit Coloured and Indians. Some national unions, notably the printers and building workers, excluded them in the Transvaal and OFS but admitted them in Natal and the Cape. When able to monopolize their trade by means of apprenticeship restrictions or political influence, white workers enforced a colour bar, as in the unions of engineers, engine drivers, reduction workers, carpenters and tramwaymen. Life itself was full of inconsistencies, remarked Andrews. 'The relationship between man and man, to say nothing of woman, is complex and full of unsolved problems. This was a poor excuse, however, and the TUC was forced to take a stand against racial unions. It finally agreed, after a conference held in January 1929 with representatives of the labour department and Indian unions, Sastri, the Rev. Sigamoney and Ballinger, to urge the adoption of an open door policy. Trade unions should enrol all employees 'irrespective of race or colour'; or, when this was not acceptable, establish parallel branches for each racial group within a single union. 96
Much of the pressure came from the Cape Federation of Labour Unions, whose secretary Robert Stuart was stubbornly independent and unwilling to play second fiddle to Andrews. Their personal rivalries were closely bound up, however, with a long standing disagreement between the two centres over the Coloured worker's position. Formed in 1913 to forestall an invasion by the Transvaal unions, and affiliated at one time to the RILU, the Federation was in one respect the more radical body, even though Stuart firmly rejected ' party politics , in trade unions. It was committed by its constitution 'to strive for equality of status, rights and treatment of all workers regardless of colour or race'; and it therefore objected, Stuart said, to losing its separate identity in a unitary organization under the Transvaal's leadership. Charles Playfair, the Federation's chairman, maintained in 1927 that the greatest obstacle to unity was the colour differences as between the Cape and the Transvaal'. 97 Three years later Stuart pointed out that the Federation had consistently endeavoured to organize labour without regard to race', whereas the north opposed the entrance of non-Europeans into industry, or into the unions, no matter whether such a person be of mixed parentage or purely native'. This difference, he claimed, was the root cause of the Federation's preference for provincial autonomy within a federal constitution. 98
The Federation's attitude to African unions was more ambiguous than Stuart would acknowledge. He and Playfair thought that the ICU might be political or racial rather than a genuine trade union, and gave this as a reason for supporting the TUC's decision to refuse Kadalie's application to affiliate. 99 The ICU went on its way in isolation from the rest of the movement. In January 1930 at East London the union's annual conference decided to ask for a rise from 3s. to 6s. 6d. for railway and harbour workers. This led to a successful strike, which developed into a general stoppage of work by Africans and, claimed Kadalie, paralysed the whole industrial and commercial system of East London. 100 He and eight other leaders were then arrested. They stood trial on 116 counts of incitement to public violence, and were acquitted, except for Kadalie who was fined £25 on one count. Back in Johannesburg, he was banned by Oswald Pirow, the minister for justice, from attending or speaking at public meetings on the Witwatersrand. He thereupon made his home and headquarters in East London, where he used such influence as was left him to discourage any form of mass action against the regime.
The remnants of Kadalie's union in the Cape peninsula had meanwhile grouped themselves into the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Federation, an association of African and Coloured unions, instead of, like the ICU, one of individuals. It affiliated to the Cape Federation in June 1930 on the basis of an agreed voting strength, so limited as not to swamp the unions of skilled Coloured and whites. In spite of all that had been said about the 'reactionary' policies of the Cape Federation, declared Umsebenzi, the Communist party weekly, it was 'definitely ahead of the TUC in actual practice. Stuart might be a 'bosses man' but he had the courage to invite all Cape unions, regardless of race or status, to the all-in conference held at Cape Town in October. The TUC passed pious resolutions condemning racial discrimination, and limited its invitations to registered unions, to the exclusion of the FNETU and the factions of the ICU. Real working-class unity, the communists urged, could be achieved only by smashing the trade union colour bar and organizing the masses of unskilled workers. 101
Stuart turned the conference into a novel display of interracial solidarity. Of the eighty-six Cape delegates present, forty-two were Coloured or African. All the thirty-four delegates from national or Transvaal unions were white, except John Gomas, the communist tailor from Cape Town, who was included in the garment workers' delegation. The conference was far from being 'all-in', since there were no representatives from Natal, the OFS, or the great mass of Africans in the north. James Shuba, the communist secretary of the Cape laundry workers' union, lodged a protest on behalf of the Federation of Non-European Trade Unions. He attributed its exclusion to the 'chauvinist and reformist outlook of the white trade union', urged an abandonment of 'capitalist conciliation' for 'militant class struggle', and warned that the world economic crisis would result in an attack on the living standards of all workers. Conference should once and for all break sharply with the policy of resolutionism, conciliation, race superiority, and the cowardly policy of 'white South Africa'. 102
It was a new experience for white supremacists from the north to sit in the same hall, debate and drink tea with persons of colour on an equal footing. No more effective means could have been found to convince them that the old distinction between a white elite of artisans and hordes of peasant workers was breaking down under the impact of a rapid industrialism. Workers of all races, employed in factories and services, were being organized. Their unions had begun to change the balance of forces in the movement. Don't disparage the new unions by calling them 'mushrooms', advised Cousins, the secretary of labour and chairman of the conference. It should be remembered that Industry had changed, and was still changing its methods, and the workers' organizations would have to adjust themselves to new conditions. 103
The Cape delegates argued at length against racial divisions. Harry Evans of the bakers' union crystallized their views in a motion urging the TUC to ballot its members on the principle of equal opportunities and equal remuneration. The formation of a national centre, he suggested, should be made dependent on the removal of colour bars in the Transvaal. TUC spokesmen sidestepped the challenge and asked delegates to cut out questions of colour'. It became evident that there would be no unity on a basis of racial discrimination. The conference finally agreed to establish a S.A. Trades and Labour Council which would admit all bona fide trades and labour unions, and 'promote the interests of all organized workers'. It was a momentous decision. Trade unions in the north had for the first time agreed to admit African unions to their fellowship. The election of Shuba and two Coloured delegates to a national council of eighteen members strengthened the optimists' faith in the new venture.
Some communists were sceptical. It was a great mistake, argued Solly Sachs, to suppose that any good could come out of the conference, or from a spurious unity based on white patronage of down-trodden blacks. Leaders corrupted with reformism, racial chauvinism and capitalist conciliation' would never put up a fight against wage cuts. Let us get busy building a real trade union movement,' he urged. The CP, while agreeing with criticisms of the reformist leaders, thought that the conference should be credited with two accomplishments. It had set up a national centre without colour bars; and it had protested against oppressive legislation. These small gains represented the first 'class-war breach in the anti-Native front of white imperialism'. 'Militant trade unionists, black and white, must now concentrate on the task of building up strong unions among the unorganized and securing their affiliation to the SATLC.' 104
Afrikaner workers, threatened Pirow, would boycott the TLC if it persisted in championing the African's cause. 105 Deterred by the warning, the miners' union refused to affiliate. Andrews replied that only by cooperating could workers resist the incessant pressure from the employing class to reduce them to, or even below, the bare subsistence level'. All sections had fundamental interests in common, and should not allow racial or geographical differences to keep them apart. 106 J. H. Botha, an Afrikaner economist writing his doctoral thesis in Holland at about the same time, held a similar opinion. The economic factors that give rise to class consciousness and solidarity among workers,' he declared, are apparently too strong for the traditional divisions along lines of colour. The spirit of equal treatment and cooperation has taken a strong hold on the working classes.' 107 His assessment was to receive some confirmation in the next two decades. During this period Afrikaner nationalists attempted to penetrate the trade unions, suppress the communists, and isolate Afrikaner workers from the movement towards inter-racial class solidarity.