White Workers and the Production of Race in Southern Rhodesia, 1910-1980
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White Workers and the Production of Race in Southern Rhodesia, 1910-1980 Nicola Ginsburgh Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of History The University of Leeds September 2017 1 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement © 2017 University of Leeds and Nicola Ginsburgh 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the ESRC whose White Rose scholarship which funded this research. I am immensely grateful to have benefitted from the incredible supervision of Will Jackson and Shane Doyle. Their encouragement, kindness and understanding enabled me to develop and articulate my ideas with confidence and overcome a seemingly relentless multiplicity of personal and intellectual crises. It would have been physically impossible for me to carry out this work without the support of my family, who deserve special praise for telling me to chill out and forgiving my more erratic working habits. I was supported and helped by numerous people during my fieldwork in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Often I would have been completely out of my depth without their advice and knowledge. In particular the Blakes, the Elliots, Munya and Tafadzwa, Ushe, Nicky Brown, Elliot, the Bulawayo National Railway Museum and the Zimbabwe Amalgamated Railwaymen’s Union, who welcomed me and enabled me to carry out my research. The Katrina Honeyman Room squad, but particularly John, Joshy, Jethro, and Oscar, have been a constant source of joy, reassurance and inspiration. And to Dan, Jen, Roy, Emily, Paz, Tom, Katie for providing me with an ample source of love, food, booze and memes. 3 Abstract Scholarship on lower class whites, the worlds of white labour and poor whites in African settler states have been dominated by a geographical focus on South Africa, Algeria and to a lesser extent Mozambique and Angola. Research on the Southern Rhodesian settler population has tended to focus on middle class and rural whites. Wage labourers comprised a significant part of the Southern Rhodesian settler population and offer the opportunity to redress these current imbalances and challenge orthodoxies concerning white workers in racially-stratified labour markets. Through examining the struggles over the racialisation and gendering of particular categories of work, this thesis unearths the ways in which race, gender, ethnicity and nationality were differentially understood and performed. It examines white workers outside of the typical temporal and thematic parameters which have been pursued by labour historians of Southern Rhodesia by interrogating the neglected realms of culture and identity and extending the chronological focus from the first decades of settlement through the Second World War, the Central African Federation and Rhodesian Front period to the end of minority settler rule in 1980. Through analysing women as part of the formal labour force it reveals the diverse experiences of white women in the colonies, examines how work was gendered, and corrects a longstanding omission in existing labour histories. Its originality lies not only in its focus on under-researched aspects of female wage labour, white identity and class experience in Southern Rhodesia, but in its methodological and theoretical synthesis of work on gender, whiteness studies, settler colonialism, emotions, the New African Economic History, space and borders. 4 Contents Acknowledgements......................................................................................................... 3 Abstract ........................................................................................................................... 4 List of Tables .................................................................................................................. 8 List of Illustrative Material ............................................................................................. 9 List of Abbreviations .................................................................................................... 10 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 11 A Brief Overview of the Historiography and History of Rhodesian Settler Colonialism12 Radical History ............................................................................................................. 18 Extending the Thematic and Temporal Focus of Research on White Labour .............. 21 White Women in Rhodesia ........................................................................................... 25 For a Critical Application of Whiteness........................................................................30 Wages of Whiteness in the Settler Colonial Context .................................................... 32 Imperial Flows of Labour ............................................................................................. 35 Whiteness and Settler Colonialism ............................................................................... 37 Sources .......................................................................................................................... 40 Chapter One: The Making of White Worker Identity ................................................................. 44 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 44 Political ideals: Socialism, Imperialism and Patriotism ............................................... 48 White Socialism and Racialised Radicalism ................................................................ 50 Imperialism and Nationalism ........................................................................................ 55 Divisions ....................................................................................................................... 60 Pride, Shame, Respectability and Attempts to Regulate White Worker's Behaviours . 63 Transgressing Pride and Respectability ........................................................................ 72 Attitudes to African Education ..................................................................................... 74 Coloureds and Racial Categorisation ............................................................................ 79 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 82 Chapter Two: The Great Depression and the Reworking of White Worker Identity ................. 84 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 84 Assessment of the Problem ........................................................................................... 87 Perceptions of White Poverty ....................................................................................... 90 Contesting White Poverty ............................................................................................. 97 Shifting Boundaries of 'White Male Work' ................................................................ 101 Shifting Attitudes towards Women's Formal Employment ........................................ 107 Backlash ...................................................................................................................... 109 The 1934 Industrial Conciliation Act: The Effortless Incorporation of White Workers? .................................................................................................................................... 112 5 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 113 Chapter Three: The Second World War and Challenges posed by Non-British Whites, White Women and Africans to the White British Male Worker .......................................................... 116 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 116 Part One: Nation, Ethnicity and Immigration ............................................................ 119 White Workers’ Nationalism ..................................................................................... 119 Allies, Enemies, Refugees and the Presumed Loyalties of Racial Others ................. 124 Part Two: Women at Work ........................................................................................ 134 Attempts to Keep Women in the Home ..................................................................... 134 Women as Wage Labourers ....................................................................................... 138 Effects of the War on Female Labour Patterns .......................................................... 143 Women, Trade Unions and Struggles for Improved Conditions ................................ 145 Part Three: The Threats of African Presence and Agency ......................................... 150 The Growth of the African Middle Class ................................................................... 150 African Urbanisation .................................................................................................. 155 African Labour