Class Contradictions and Class Alliances: The Social Nature of ICU Leadership, 1924-1929

ICU

An examination of the class character of the leadership of the ICU by Helen Bradford.

'(The ICU) differed from the ANC in one other important respect: Its leaders were not drawn from the "respectable classes". They had come straight from the ranks of the workers themselves, and they had a ruggedness and militancy that men accustomed to making obeisances before authority found outrageous.'

Attachments

ICU.pdf (1.25 MB)

Comments

The South African Wobblies: The Origins of Industrial Unions in South Africa - John Philips

John Philip’s pioneering, hard-to-get study of syndicalism in South Africa,…

The First Globalisation and Transnational Labour Activism in Southern Africa: White Labourism, the IWW, and the ICU, 1904–1934

Lucien van der Walt on transnational labour activism in Southern Africa in the…

The Women's Riot in Cato Manor, Durban, 1959

South Africa: Land Expropriation from Below Faces Brutal Repression

As the ruling African National Congress promises, with an eye on a coming election and the collapse…

A Brief History of South Africa’s Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (1919-1931)

The Industrial & Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) – a trade union, rural peasant movement, and urban…

The Rise and Fall of the ICU: a Case of Self-Destruction? - Phil Bonner

This essay, which first appeared in the South African Labour Bulletin, sought to draw the lessons of…