Maritime labour, transnational political trajectories and decolonization from below: the opposition to the 1935 British Shipping Assistance Act

This article uses a discussion of struggles over attempts by the National Union of Seamen to exclude seafarers from the maritime labour market in the inter‐war period to contribute to debates at the intersection of maritime spaces and transnational labour geographies (cf. Balachandran 2012; Høgsbjer...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Global networks (Oxford) 2019-10, Vol.19 (4), p.539-562
Main Author: FEATHERSTONE, DAVID
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activism
Alliances
Colonialism
DECOLONIZATION
Labor market
MARITIME LABOUR
Political activism
POLITICAL TRAJECTORIES
Politics
Seamen
Shipping industry
SUBALTERN AGENCY
Subaltern identities
TRANSNATIONAL SPACES
Transnationalism
Unionization
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This article uses a discussion of struggles over attempts by the National Union of Seamen to exclude seafarers from the maritime labour market in the inter‐war period to contribute to debates at the intersection of maritime spaces and transnational labour geographies (cf. Balachandran 2012; Høgsbjerg 2013). By focusing on struggles engendered by the British Shipping (Assistance) Act of 1935, I explore some of the transnational dynamics through which racialized forms of trade unionism were contested. I argue that the political trajectories, solidarities and organizing spaces constructed by the alliances formed to oppose the effects of the act shaped articulations of ‘decolonization from below’ (James 2015). In this way, engaging with the political trajectories and activities of activists from organizations like the Colonial Seamen's Association can reveal new ways of understanding the spatial politics of decolonization and new accounts of who or how such processes were articulated and contested. I conclude the article by arguing that engagement with these struggles can help assert the importance of forms of subaltern agency in shaping processes of decolonization.
ISSN:1470-2266
1471-0374
DOI:10.1111/glob.12228