scholarly journals “Liberty or Death”: Working Class Agitation and the Labour Question in Colonial Freetown, 1938–1939

1995 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ibrahim Abdullah
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Critical Factors ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
The City ◽  
British Colonies

SummaryThis article examines the labour disturbances which occurred in Freetown, Sierra Leone (Figure 1), between 1938 and 1939. Contrary to the prevailing interpretation that the colonial state in Africa was faced with an alternative of either forcefully pushing the working class out of the city or moving towards some form of corporatism, this article argues that such an option was only feasible in situations where labour was relatively quiescent or where a casual labour problem existed. In Freetown, where a stable labour force existed, the choice was between accepting a militant labour movement over whom officials had little or no control, or creating a labour movement that would eschew militant protest and follow the path dictated from above. The existence of a militant organization committed to continous agitation and the use of strike weapons to force employers to acknowledge the presence of a working class were critical factors in shaping official response to labour disturbances in the British colonies.

The Colonial State and Wage Labor in Postwar Sierra Leone, 1945–1960: Attempts at Remaking the Working Class

1997 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 87-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ibrahim Abdullah
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Wage Labor ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
To Receive

The elaborate “remaking” of the African working class that took off in earnest in the period after 1945 has only recently begun to receive the attention of scholars working on African labor and working-class history. This process of remaking, as in nineteenth-century England, essentially involved the incorporation of the African working class into a system of industrial relations which would guarantee it a stake in society with regard to jobs, wages, housing, and general working conditions.

Labour, Society and the Drink Question in Britain, 1918–1939

1987 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen G. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
Moral Reform ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Working People ◽  
Progressive Reforms

The historiography of leisure has made considerable advances since the pioneering years of the early 1970s. Research into Victorian leisure has shown that some of the ruling elite attempted to fashion the life-style of working people in order to create a disciplined and reliable labour force which suited the needs of a maturing industrial and urban society, although it must be added that sections of the British public remained immune to attempts at moral reform and improvement. Professional labour leaders were also eager to control and regulate the amusements of the poor. According to trade union bosses like John Doherty, only a sober, industrious and thrifty working class could hope to achieve progressive reforms and some form of political and economic emancipation: workers who were intemperate would apparently stifle the opportunities and aspirations of the emerging Labour movement. Nowhere is this more true than in the Labour leadership's perception of and policy towards working-class drinking.

The 1922 Turin Massacre (Strage di Torino): Working Class Resistance and Conflicts within Fascism

Modern Italy ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Sonnessa
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Gain Control ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Residual Resistance ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Local Labour ◽  
Head Of Government ◽  
High Degree ◽  
The City

SummaryThis article explores the reasons why Turin's Fascists launched a violent offensive against the local labour movement two months after the Fascist seizure of power. The article demonstrates that the residual resistance of the working class to Fascism was the major reason behind the Turin massacre. However, it also investigates other decisive factors for the violence of December 1922: the conflict between the national Fascist leadership and Turin Fascism and within the Turin fascio itself. The article challenges the interpretation, best exemplified by Renzo De Felice, that the Fascist violence was spontaneous, carried out by undisciplined squadristi without the approval of Mussolini and the Fascist leadership. Rather, it argues that there existed significant levels of planning and a high degree of toleration by the Turinese and national Fascist leaderships and the local authorities. Using Turin as a case study, the article provides a clearer view of the tensions existing within the Fascist movement in the months after the seizure of power. It analyses how Turin Fascism was riddled by factional disputes and how its attempts to gain control of the major political and economic institutions of the city were frustrated by the opposition of the local authorities and industrialists, backed by Mussolini's government. The events of the months preceding and following the strage also afford insights into the conflicts within Fascism over the future role squadrism and violence was to play in the Fascist movement now Mussolini was head of government.

The Subcontracting of Cleaning Work: A Case in the Casualisation of Labour

1986 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 396-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Arab Women ◽  
Integral Type ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Specific Process ◽  
Wage Labour ◽  
Role Of The State

Casual labour is defined in this article as labour lacking security of income and employment. It is argued that such labour has remained an integral type of labour organization in modern capitalist economies, and has even been expanding both in advanced and declining sectors. The article studies in detail one specific process of casualisation-the transition to subcontracting in the case of cleaning work, as it took place in Israel. The major considerations leading to such a transition are specified – the desire to cut costs and to find new sources of labour. The basic differences between subcontracted labour and direct wage labour are discussed, focusing on the intensification of labour, the deterioration of wages and benefits and the obstacles to workers organization. The relation is then examined between subcontracted labour and the composition of the labour force, primarily the displacement of Jewish by Arab women workers and the differentiation which has developed between groups of subcontracted workers on the basis of gender, nationality and citizenship. The role of the state and the labour movement in this process of casualisation is highlighted throughout the discussion. Concluding with some final comments of the more general significance of casual labour for the highly organized Israeli labour force and working class.

Nation, Locality and Radical Identity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Petrie
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Control ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Political Left ◽  
National Model ◽  
Selection Of

Concentrating upon the years between the 1924 and 1929 general elections, which separated the first and second minority Labour governments, this chapter traces the rise of a modernised, national vision of Labour politics in Scotland. It considers first the reworking of understandings of sovereignty within the Labour movement, as the autonomy enjoyed by provincial trades councils was circumscribed, and notions of Labour as a confederation of working-class bodies, which could in places include the Communist Party, were replaced by a more hierarchical, national model. The electoral consequences of this shift are then considered, as greater central control was exercised over the selection of parliamentary candidates and the conduct of election campaigns. This chapter presents a study of the changing horizons of the political left in inter-war Scotland, analysing the declining importance of locality in the construction of radical political identities.

The Peer Group’s Agency in a Brazilian School

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-86
Author(s):  
Cinthia Torres Toledo ◽  
Marília Pinto de Carvalho
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
School Engagement ◽  
Peer Groups ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Brazilian Literature ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Educational Trajectories ◽  
Schooling Process ◽  
The City ◽  
Urban State

Black working-class boys are the group with the most significant difficulties in their schooling process. In dialogue with Raewyn Connell, we seek to analyze how the collective conceptions of peer groups have influenced the school engagement of Brazilian boys. We conducted an ethnographic research with students around the age of 14 at an urban state school in the periphery of the city of São Paulo. We analyzed the hierarchization process between two groups of boys, demonstrating the existence of a collective notion of masculinity that works against engagement with the school. Well-known to the Anglophone academic literature, this association is rather uncommon in the Brazilian literature. We have therefore attempted to describe and analyze here the challenges faced by Black working-class Brazilian boys to establish more positive educational trajectories.

Gentrification and neighborhood melancholy. Collective sadness and ambivalence in Dortmund’s Hörde district

2021 ◽  
pp. 147447402098725
Author(s):  
Susanne Frank
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Residential Area ◽  
Artificial Lake ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
The Core ◽  
Mixed Feelings ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
The City ◽  
The Phoenix

Since 2000, the City of Dortmund has pursued an ambitious flagship project in the district of Hoerde. On the enormous site of a former steel plant, and in the middle of an impoverished working class district, a large new upper-middle class residential area (Phoenix) has been developed around an artificial lake. Qualitative fieldwork suggests that the project has generated mixed feelings among longtime working class dwellers in the old part of Hoerde. Widespread enthusiasm about new lakeside living is interwoven with emotions of sadness and loss, reflecting a neighborhood transformation which unmistakably demonstrates their social, cultural, and political marginalization – feelings that were not allowed to become part of the jubilant official discourse which has marketed the Phoenix project as a shining example of the City’s successful post-industrial structural change. Ever since its announcement, the project has been blamed for triggering gentrification processes – despite the fact that there are still no empirical signs of rising rents or displacement. I argue that the concept of gentrification has been taken up so readily because it is popular, polyvalent, polemical, and critical, enabling citizens to find a language to denounce the blatant social inequalities and power imbalances that competitive urbanism has fostered in Dortmund. However, I also claim that the core of the prevailing sadness – the loss of the familiar neighborhood which could not be grieved over – remains under the radar of standard gentrification discourse. The article thus proposes neighborhood melancholy as a concept to account for the unclear, subconscious, and deeply ambivalent ways in which long-established residents experience their neighborhood’s transformation, expressed within the rubric of gentrification.

scholarly journals Women’s empowerment and female genital mutilation intention for daughters in Sierra Leone: a multilevel analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Kwabena Ameyaw ◽  
Seun Anjorin ◽  
Bright Opoku Ahinkorah ◽  
Abdul-Aziz Seidu ◽  
Olalekan A. Uthman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Psychological Health ◽  
Female Genital Mutilation ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Women's Empowerment ◽  
Wife Beating ◽  
Women’S Empowerment ◽  
Genital Mutilation ◽  
Female Genital

Abstract Background Female genital mutilation is common in Sierra Leone. Evidence indicates that empowering women provides protective benefits against female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). Yet, the relationship between women’s empowerment and their intention to cut their daughters has not been explored in Sierra Leone. The aim of this study was to assess the association between women’s empowerment and their intention to have their daughters undergo FGM/C in the country. Methods Data for this study are from the 2013 Sierra Leone Demographic and Health Survey. A total of 7,706 women between the ages of 15 and 49 were included in the analysis. Analysis entailed generation of descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages), and estimation of multi-level logistic regression models to examine the association between women’s empowerment, contextual factors and their intentions to cut their daughters. Results A significantly higher proportion of women who participated in labour force reported that they intended to cut their daughters compared to those who did not (91.2%, CI = 90.4–91.9 and 86.0%, CI = 84.1–87.8, respectively). Similarly, the proportion intending to cut their daughters was significantly higher among women who accepted wife beating than among those who rejected the practice (94.9%, CI = 93.8–95.8 and 86.4% CI = 84.9–87.8, respectively). A significantly higher proportion of women with low decision-making power intended to cut their daughters compared to those with high decision-making power (91.0%, CI = 89.0–92.8 and 85.0% CI = 82.2–87.4, respectively). Results from multivariate regression analysis showed that the odds of intending to cut daughters were significantly higher among women who participated in labour force (aOR = 2.5, CI = 1.3–4.7) and those who accepted wife beating than among those who did not (aOR = 2.7, CI = 1.7–4.5). In contrast, the likelihood of intending to cut daughters was significantly lower among women with high than low knowledge (aOR = 0.4, CI = 0.3–0.7), and among those aged 45–49  than among those aged 15–19  (aOR = 0.2, CI = 0.0–0.6). Conclusion The findings underscore the need to align anti-FGM/C policies and programmes to women who have undergone FGM/C, those with low knowledge, women who support wife beating and young women. Such interventions could highlight the adverse implications of the practice by stressing the psychological, health and social implications of FGM/C on its survivors.

Profitable partnerships: The Chinese business elite and Dutch lawyers in the making of Semarang

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-245
Author(s):  
Peter Post
Keyword(s):  
Law Firm ◽  
Business World ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Housing Projects ◽  
Business Elite ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Chinese Business ◽  
Coolie Trade ◽  
Economic Imperialism ◽  
The City

This article examines the collaboration between the law firm of C.W. Baron van Heeckeren from Semarang and the Oei Tiong Ham Concern (OTHC). From the 1880s this Dutch law firm became the centre of a close-knit group of Dutch lawyer-entrepreneurs who through interlocking business directorships developed important sectors of the Javanese economy and the city of Semarang. In doing so Van Heeckeren and his associates teamed up with the Chinese business elite of the port-city. In particular they worked with the foremost Overseas Chinese capitalist, Major Oei Tiong Ham, developing profitable partnerships. The Dutch lawyers acted not only as his legal advisors, but developed his sugar empire as directors-shareholders, held major stakes in his shipping business and coolie trade, and profited from his opium trade. They moreover helped Oei Tiong Ham to acquire real estate and enterprises formerly belonging to powerful Chinese opium farmers and collaborated with him in developing infrastructural and housing projects. This article provides new and revealing details about how the business world of colonial Java worked during the early phase of Dutch economic imperialism and how the Chinese business elite seized the opportunities provided by the Dutch colonial state to advance their business interests.

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