Faith in Unions: Racism and Religious Exclusion in the Faith Workers Branch of Unite the Union 2017-2020

Faith in Unions is a personal account, representing a critique of Whiteness and Black marginality in the Faith Workers Trade Union. In short, it is a Black theology critique of the way Muslim and Hindu faith workers have been treated in the British Labour movement. This book clearly has things to say about discriminatory practices, which puts the discussion about Englishness and Britishness into a wider context. I am suggesting a political agenda associated with English ethnicity as the mode of involvement to explain policies that are likely to result in racialised religious exclusion. Faith in Unions gives focus to Muslim and Hindu workplace groupings within the Faith Workers Branch and the opposition to their formation from Anglican and Methodist Christian members. I am concerned with the struggle for faith recognition within a discriminatory and institutionally racist union structure. This book offers an explicit exploration of what I mean by “the racialised other” in the context of the British Labour movement. In this we need to understand the ways historical Christianity has defined Black identities. My conclusion hopefully will start a wider discussion of Englishness and English exclusivity.

David Isiorho, a contextual theologian and Church of England rector, was born in Windsor, studied at Liverpool for his first degree, and worked as a social worker in London before ordination. He completed a masters' degree at Warwick followed by a doctorate at Bradford. Isiorho previously published Faith in Unions: Racism and Religious Exclusion in the Faith Workers Branch of Unite the Union 2017-2020 (Wipf & Stock, 2022).