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

This paper uses a discussion of struggles over attempts by the National Union of Seamen to exclude seafarers form the maritime labour market in the inter-war period to contribute todebates at the intersection of maritime spaces and transnational labour geographies (cf Balachandran, 2012, Hogsbjerg, 2013). Through a focus on struggles over the British Shipping Assistance Act of 1935 it explores some of the transnational dynamics through which racialized forms of trade unionism were contested. I argue that the political trajectories, solidarities and spaces of organising constructed through the alliances which were produced to oppose the effects of the Act shaped articulations of ‘decolonisation from below’ (James, 2015). Engaging with the political trajectories and activity of activists from organisaions like the Colonial Seamen’s Association can open up both new ways of understanding the spatial politics of decolonisation and new accounts of who or how such processes were articulated and contested. The paper concludes by arguing that engagement with these struggles can help assert the importance of forms of subaltern agency in shaping processes of decolonisation

Black Books

Review of Carol Polsgrove , Ending British Rule in Africa: Writers in a Common Cause, Manchester University Press, 2009; xviii + 186 pp., £60; ISBN 978 0 7190 7767 8

Brixton Riots, 1981

From April 10 to 12, 1981, about 1,000 Londoners, mainly black youth, fought the police in the Brixton Uprising. The Brixton Riots brought violence to Britain's capital on a level unseen for a century, and saw the first use of petrol bombs against the British state on the streets of Britain. They were the most explosive events in an arc of black‐led but multiracial riots in anger at unemployment, poor housing, and institutional police and state racism that had begun in Bristol in 1980, and would soon spread to engulf Liverpool and other towns and cities of Britain

Notting Hill Riots, 1958

Summer 1958 saw mass racial violence perpetrated by whites against black people in two areas of Britain, the city of Nottingham and, more seriously, in the area of “Notting Hill” in west London. The underlying causes were many and complex, but critical in working‐class areas of London was a housing crisis due to “Rachmanism,” unaccountable racketeering slum landlords. Besides overcrowded, poor quality housing, black immigrants to Britain faced a “color bar”– racist discrimination in employment and public places. When the threat of unemployment raised its head in 1958, newly arrived migrant workers trying to make homes for themselves provided an easy scapegoat for racists

Non-contractual legal institutions of the use of a copyright work

- English The theme of my dissertation is non-contractual institutes of usage of author's work. These are cases where it is permitted to use copyrighted work without a contractual arrangement with the author. Specifically, I am talking about the use of free work, the free usage of work and lawful use of a legal license. Statutory licenses are analyzed in detail - the two major sub-sections are chargeable and free-of-charge statutory licenses. Also I pay attention to a so-called three-step test. Of course I do not forget to state the issue of copyright law in general

Harry O'Connell, maritime labour and the racialised politics of place

This article explores the forms of activism forged by seafarers’ organisers from the Caribbean in interwar Britain to problematise dominant ways of thinking about ‘race’, labour and place. It focuses on Guyanese Harry O’Connell, who was to become one of the most prominent organisers of Cardiff’s multiethnic seafaring community in the 1920s and 1930s. He was influential in struggles against the forms of ‘white labourism’ adopted by the National Union of Seamen. A committed Communist, O’Connell drew on the networks of the Comintern-affiliated International of Seamen and Harbour Workers (ISH) and International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW) to contest such white labourism, whilst simultaneously negotiating the racialised forms of internationalism constituted through Communist networks. The piece contributes to a broader ‘reparative’ approach to history which explores the terms on which labour, space and place are articulated