Coming of Age : 1976 and the Road to Anti-Racism

Economic and social context of the riots
The onset of high unemployment in the merchant navy as the industry contracted to suit
peacetime conditions posed problems for Britain’s large trading seaports during and after 1919.
Falling strategic demand when combined with four years of disruption of traditional markets
and routes meant that many British ships were being laid up just as thousands of merchant
sailors who had joined the armed forces were returning to home ports in search of their former
employment. In the meantime, many of the thousands of job vacancies created when British merchant
sailors left for war service and seamen from enemy and non-allied nations were barred from
British vessels had been filled by black, Arab, Chinese and South Asian colonial British workers.
The post-war decline in the merchant shipping industry affected British sailors, of varied
ethnicity; those recently demobilized and the currently employed. All feared for their future
and came to believe that British workers were being squeezed out of the shipping industry as
employers increasingly turned to cheaper overseas workers to reduce their wage bill and preserve
profits. This fear of fair foreign competition was a long standing one in the merchant navy.
In fact, the leading seamen’s unions had conducted a campaign to keep black, “Arab and Asian
sailors off British ships since the Edwardian period. The move was designed to preserve white
British workers jobs and did not distinguish between British and foreign black, Chinese, and
“Arab sailors. Re-invigorated in 1919 after a period of enforced quiescence during the war, the
attempt to enforce a union ‘colour’ bar was one of the chief sources of contention in the ports.
Although the riots were triggered by the specific economic circumstances of the large
seaports, it is important to place these riots within the wider wave of rioting and social protest
across Britain during and in the months immediately after the First World War. Widespread
anti-German riots occurred around Britain throughout the war. These peaked in the ‘Lusitania’
riots of May 1915 following the German submarine sinking of the Cunard cruise liner RMS
Lusitania for the loss of hundreds of civilian lives. Some of the wartime anti-German protests
became more broadly anti-alien in their focus. In addition, there were anti-Jewish riots in
Leeds and the east end of London during 1917 as sections of the local white British populations
took to the streets in the belief that Jewish families in these areas, including eastern
European immigrant settlers, were reluctant to “do their bit by sending their sons to war. 2
Rioting and street protest continued beyond the Armistice. Months of violent mass protest
across Britain led Jerry White to label 1919 ‘ a troubled year.’ 3 Mass violence was often triggered
by the difficult transition from war to peacetime conditions. For example, in January 1919 soldiers
awaiting demobilisation went on strike all over Britain, demanding speedier release from the
armed forces. There were also at least three riots involving many of the thousands of Canadian
service personnel who were stationed at army camps around Britain in 1919 awaiting repatriation.
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