Cut the roots of racism — editorial plus video
The origins of racism in Britain
Black Lives Matter and the labour movement
"Black youths were able to bring along the rest"
Robert Cuffy is a member of the Socialist Workers Alliance of Guyana, currently based in New York, where he is a public sector worker, trade unionist, and member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He spoke to Daniel Randall from Solidarity on BLM, unions, the November election and Guyana.
Black culture and resistance: the Harlem Renaissance
One hundred years ago, an arts movement was forming in a mainly-black district of New York City. Later known as the Harlem Renaissance, it was primarily cultural but also inescapably political. Literature, poetry, jazz, theatre, sculpture and more articulated the lives and demands of African-Americans no longer willing to be grateful that they were no longer enslaved.
How Transport Workers Beat the Colour Bar
This story of colour bars in the UK railway and bus industries begins after the Second World War, when Britain had a labour shortage and people moved to Britain in increasing numbers from Caribbean countries and elsewhere.
The National Union of Railwaymen (NUR, predecessor of the RMT) declared in 1948 that: “we have no objection to the employment of coloured men in the railway industry” and that “coloured men had been satisfactorily employed on the railways over a long period”.
But although the top of the union was getting it right, in some areas the grassroots was not. In 1950, white workers at King’s Cross goods depot complained to the NUR through their branches that coloured men were being recruited above the entry grades and they would not stand for coloured men having seniority or authority over white men.
To his credit, Jim Campbell, Assistant General Secretary of the NUR (who later became General Secretary), went to the workplace and convinced a meeting of workers from six London depots to get behind the union’s opposition to the colour bar.
Making Anti-Racism a Union Issue
Two years ago, activists in the Lambeth branch of the public services union Unison launched a campaign to fight institutional racism at Lambeth Council.
We knew our employer had a huge race pay gap. We were hearing from our members that they were experiencing more racism at work, since the Brexit vote. We launched a survey and our black workers told us about their experiences of discrimination at work.
Rail Workers Say: Black Lives Matter!
Off The Rails supports the global protests against police brutality and racism.
The issues raised by the protests are not just problems in the USA. They affect us too. Britain has its own history of police violence against people of colour, with campaigns like the United Families and Friends Campaign highlighting deaths in custody. And just as America must reckon with its history of slavery and segregation, so must Britain confront a history of slavery and colonialism.
Shapurji Saklatvala: a series of articles
A series of articles in Solidarity about Shapurji Saklatvala (1874-1936), the revolutionary socialist activist and fighter for Indian independence who became Labour's first "BAME" MP.
The Black Jacobins: The Haitian Revolution Against Slavery
This is a speech by Dan Davison, a labour activist and sociology PhD student at the University of Cambridge, for a talk on C.L.R. James and the Haitian Revolution held in July 2020.
Coronavirus: Six Demands To Defend Migrants — Video
Rise of the Far Right In Europe: How to Fight It — Video
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