Seminar about international activism by dockworkers organised by the research group History of Labour and Social Conflicts. With Peter Cole.

Solidarity: Dockworkers and International Activism
Peter Cole (Western Illinois University)

I describe and compare the history of dockworkers in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area in the 20th century, highlighting efforts to express working class and racial solidarity as well as anti-fascist ideals. In both ports, each vital to their nations, militant dockers exerted shocking power—for overtly political ends. In San Francisco, dockworkers joined the global fight to overthrow apartheid by, on several occasions, refusing to unload cargo from apartheid South Africa. Durban dockers, in 2008, refused to unload military supplies intended for the neighboring Mugabe regime in solidarity with the Zimbabwean opposition, spearheaded by the labor movement. Dockers in both cities, thus, have long committed themselves to social justice beyond their immediate workplace interests. While workers and unions in many places have been decimated by changes in technology, organized dockworkers preserve some of their power right up to the current moment.

FREE ENTRY

About the speaker:
Peter Cole is a professor of history at Western Illinois University (USA). He is the author of Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area (2018) and Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia (2007). He edited Ben Fletcher: The Life & Times of a Black Wobbly (2007) and co-edited Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW (2017). Cole also is a Research Associate in the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP), University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.