Document 5 - “Trade Union Notes”, The Bolshevik, March 1920 (Extract)

From: South Africa's Radical Tradition, a documentary history, Volume One 1907 - 1950, by Allison Drew

Document 5 - "Trade Union Notes", The Bolshevik, March 1920 (Extract)

The action of the Executive of the Mine Workers' Union in calling upon the miners to scab upon the striking native workers is the limit of treachery to the working class. It is craft unionism in excels is. The recent struggle along the reef was not a racial struggle but a proletarian one', not a conflict of black versus white but of capitalist versus wage-workers: If the white mine workers had come in line and supported the natives, the proletarian character of the revolt would have been beyond dispute. As it is their action in scabbing is driving the native to look upon his fight as between black wage-workers on the one hand and white workers and capitalists on the other. Were the white workers to adopt the principle of solidarity of labour irrespective of colour or race the spectre of racial warfare would be banished from the land. If we do not open our unions to them now, when "The Day" arrives we shall find the natives fighting for the boss out here as they have already done in France, and Mesopotamia.

We need their assistance to win our industrial fights now; we shall need them when we are establishing the workers councils; we shall need them to assist in building up the workers common-wealth. Within a sane social system sufficient of the necessaries of life can be produced to enable all in South Africa, whether white or black, to lead a decent and comfortable existence. Let the workers on the Rand celebrate the forthcoming May Day, as they have never done before; not with their feet on the native worker but standing shoulder to shoulder with him in their industrial organizations.