campaigns in the Labour Party are today fighting defensive battles. But the Labour Party Black Section and Labour Women's Action Committee continue to be on the offensive and increasing their support and weight. In parallel with this development in the Labour Party women's and black organisation in the unions is continuing to grow. continues to discuss the fight against racism and sexism and support for the demands of women and black people. 'Class', 'race' and 'gender' are often discussed as though they related. This allows a false debate to be set up where 'class issues' and 'issues of race and gender' are counterposed — wing, and the Militant and Morning Star, using a phoney 'class' rhetoric to attempt to justify not taking up the specific demands of women and the black community. sion of women and black people, which naturally can only be done by women and black people themselves, but to look at certain ways in which the positions of women and black people are intertwined with class in its most strict sense — and to show that this intertwining has become increasingly close. As we will see the particular acuteness of the struggle of women and black people in the last decade and a half, and the weight of these issues within the labour movement at the present time, has not arisen because of developments external to class but on the contrary is totally integrated with class shifts if society.
IN ORDER to consider the relation of class, race and gender let us consider how their intertwining has shifted since World War II - which in turn means considering the way in which capital, as it has expanded, has shaped the class relations of society.
If we go back to the nineteenth century then statistics for the number of employees, the nearest approximation we can get to the working class, do not exist.
However the social and class processes taking place as capitalism expanded are still easy to trace. Figures for the total working population, that is including the self-employed and employers as well as workers, do exist. As, prior to the Thatcher period, there was a steady tendency for the number of self-employed and employers to decrease as a proportion of the labour force, then using figures for the total working population shows the process of development of the working class — simply understating the degree of proletarianisation of society.
Table 1 shows the development of the total employed population from the middle of the nineteenth century to date. The process it shows is clear. From the middle of the nineteenth century until the end of World War II every period of capitalist expansion showed the same pattern. As capital expanded it created an enlarged labour force. In the entire century from 1851 to 1951 this demand for an increased labour force was met overwhelmingly by white men. Of the 73.3 million crease in the workforce between 1851 and 1951 over 9 million, that is 68 per cent, represented an increase in the number of white men in the workforce.
This structure ot new white male labour entering the workforce exactly paralleled the existing division within the working class. Over the entire century from 1851 to 1951 the structure of the workforce stayed almost constant at 69 per cent white males and 31 white women. Prior to World War II there was no substantial black section of the working class in Britain. Capital reproduced this existing sexual and racial composition of the working class. It remained a working class in which white men outnumbered others by more than two to one.
From the point of view of socialism, or even elementary human justice, labour movement mainly oriented to taking up the demands white male workers was of course an abomination.
But at least from a crude organisational point of view it could sustain itselfthat it would produce increasing However there is still an ambiguity in the way that sections of the left were parallel and not inextricably interwith the soft left and The aim of this article is, therefore, not to analyse the specific oppresnumbers of trade unionists and an increasing number of votes for Labour. It was a policy that had nothing to do with socialism, but at least it did orient itself in a crude sense to some 70 per cent of the working class - although not to the wider working class community.
As may be seen, capitalist expansion after World War Il and the slump which followed in the 1970s and 1980s, was totally different from anything. that preceded it. The period after World War Il forms a radical watershed in the history of working under capitalism The sexual structuring within the working class, in short, is clear. Not all white male workers are in the best paid and most privileged sections of the working class. Nevertheless virtually the entire best paid and most privileged section of the working class is made up of white males. Virtually no women workers are part of these best paid and most privileged groups. Indeed more than 6u per cent of all women workers are in clerical jobs, catering and cleaning, or non electrical or metal manutacturing.
Turning to the black community and employment the chief features are clear. The oppression of the black community in the workforce is different to that of women in number of important respects — although the sexual structure of employment is replicated within the black community itself. The relation of these structures of oppression is that black men are more oppressed than white men and black women more than white The entire black community is pushed 'below' the white community by the institutionalised racism of society.
The first feature of the black community is its geographical concentration.
The proportion of women in employment is spread almost evenly across all regions of the county — the highest proportion of women employees, per cent, is in North West England and the lowest, 43 per cent, is in East Anglia. In contrast to the relatively even spread of women in work the proportion of the workforce which is black ranges from under 1 per cent in Scotland and the North of England, and only marginally over 1 per cent in Wales, to 6 per cent in the West Midlands and 14 per cent in London. Over 46 per cent of the entire black workforce is in London, and more than 80 per cent is in London, the South East and the Midlands.
This •differentiation with all almost totally white working class in the North and North East, Scotland and Wales, and a major black workforce in the North West, Midlands and, above all, London • - is undoubtedly a major problem in establishing communication between different sections of militants in the labour movement. It points to the urgent necessity of the white working class in the north creating links with the black working class community in London -and the black community in London establishing principled links with the white working class in the north. The pivotal role that can be played in this by a link up between the Black Section, the NUM and Campaign Group is obvious The second feature of the black community, and a grotesque sign of the institutionalised racism of British society, is unemployment. The black community suffers a level of unemployment which is not even remotely suffered by any section of the white population. Taking the average of the last three years the average of unemployment among whites was 11 per cent and among the black community it was 20 per cent. North West, the of highest joblessness, unemployment among whites was 13 per cent, for West Indians 24 per cent and for Asians 32 per cent.
For those in work, the black community is exceptionally concentrated in manufacturing industry. Both black men and black women are significantly higher proportions of those in manufacturing industry than their white equivalents -this particularly affects black women who are almost twice as likely to be in manufacturing ; jobs as white women The black population is also significantly more concentrated in hotels and catering, in education, and in catering and cleaning that the white population. It is almost totally excluded from energy and water supply and agriculture The black population, in short, is concentrated in manufacturing, least highly paid and privileged service sectors, and has a level of unemployment not matched by any sector of the white working class. Institutionalised racism oppresses the black working class at every complete the picture we may turn to trade apprenticeships as an indication of the division between skilled and unskilled workers. The pattern is clear. Of white male workers 1,510,000, that is 21 per cent, have served an apprenticeship Of black male workers only 9 per cent (40,000) have served an apprenticeship Of white women 4 per cent, (298,000) have served an apprenticeship. Of black women only 1 per cent, that is 4,000, have done so. In short 82 per cent of workers who have served apprenticeships are white males - - showing the white male domination of the skilled working class.
The structural pattern is therefore clear. Men, in particular white men, are heavily concentrated in management, adbeen brought into the worst paid and least privileged jobs.
During the period of post war boom from 1951-1873 the number of white men in the labour force did not increase, as in previous periods of capitalist expansion but actually declined marginally. It ther fell rapidly when recession set in after 1973 and mass unemployment began to rise. For the first time in history instead of the expansion of capital being accompanied by an increase in the number of white men in the labour force the entire expansion of the workforce after 1951 was accounted for by bringing womer and black people into work. For the first
gender Socialist Action 23 Jan 1987 |
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'Eurocommunists' then attempting to use this counterposition to claim to support demands of women and black people while not taking up 'classical' class questions such as unemployment or wages, and the right