Workers of the Empire, Unite: Radical and Popular Challenges to British Imperialism, 1910s-1960s

In most studies of British decolonisation, the world of labour is neglected, the key roles being allocated to metropolitan statesmen and native elites. Instead this volume focuses on the role played by working people, their experiences, initiatives and organisations, in the dissolution of the British Empire, both in the metropole and in the colonies.

How central was the intervention of the metropolitan Left in the liquidation of the British Empire? Were labour mobilisations in the colonies only stepping stones for bourgeois nationalists? To what extent were British labour activists willing and able to form connections with colonial workers, and vice versa? Here are some of the complex questions on which this volume sheds new light.

Though convergences were fragile and temporary, this book recapture the sense of uncertainty that accompanied the final decades of the British Empire, a period when radical minorities hoped that coordinated efforts across borders might lead not only to the destruction of the British Empire but to that of capitalism and imperialism in general.

Exploiting rare primary sources and adopting a resolutely transnational approach, our collection makes an original contribution to both labour history and imperial studies.

Yann Béliard is a Senior Lecturer in British Studies, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3.

Neville Kirk is Emeritus Professor of Labour and Social History at Manchester Metropolitan University. His publications include Labour and Society in Britain and the USA (1994), Comrades and Cousins (2003), Custom and Conflict in 'The Land of the Gael' (2007, 2009) and Labour and the Politics of Empire (2011, 2014). He is editor of Liverpool University Press's series Studies in Labour History and a member of the executive committee of the UK Society for the Study of Labour History.