How the Labour Party’s first leaders laid the ground for relations with South Africans, black and white

The British Labour Party was a key partner in the Anti-Apartheid movement, supporting the fight against racism. But few appreciate that this relationship was first established a century earlier: by the first Labour leader, Keir Hardie.

Martin

Keir Hardie’s 1908 trip to South Africa re-assessed

Martin Plaut

Introduction

The Labour Party’s first leader, James Keir Hardie, was a man who loved travel. He had a thirst for adventure and the unknown, but his extensive travels were also designed to serve a purpose: to reach across international boundaries to build a world-wide socialist movement.[1] While Hardie visited many countries in his time, none of his voyages were as extensive as his world tour, which lasted from July 1907 to April 1908.  In that time he visited Canada, Japan, New Zealand and Australia; but it is the final leg of the journey, to South Africa that this article will focus on.

Keir Hardie landed in Durban on 11th of February 1908, disembarking from the SS Narrung. He immediately encountered controversy; the critical remarks he had made about British rule in India had preceded him in reports in the South African press. Although Hardie attempted to re-assure the journalists who came to interview him in Durban that he was not in the country to stir up a revolution, he had little success. Hardie’s South African journey was dogged by bitter criticism and violent demonstrations, from which he was lucky to escape without serious injury. Most of this has been admirably recorded by Jonathan Hyslop, who provided vivid details of the challenges Hardie faced from the white trade union movement whom he attempted to win over to a more non-racial perspective.[2] But Hyslop’s narrative runs out of steam after the notorious attacks on the Labour leader in Pretoria, when a mob, 3,000 strong effectively ran him out of town, singing ‘We’ll hang Keir Hardie from a sour apple tree’. Although Hyslop mentions that Hardie went on to visit the renowned author and early feminist, Olive Schreiner in De Aar before travelling on to Cape Town, these elements of the visit are only sketched out. The aim of this article is to fill in some of the detail.

Hardie’s South African connections

South Africa was far from being a tabula rasa for Hardie when he came ashore. He had been a passionate opponent of the British war on the Afrikaners in the Second Anglo-Boer War. Most socialists and a faction of the Liberal party were members of a movement in Britain known as the ‘Pro-Boers’.[3]  When the Labour Party was formed in 1900 it contained many who had been part of this movement. Hardie was not the first member of the Labour Party to visit South Africa when the war was over. Ramsay MacDonald, who became the party’s first general secretary and later (1924) its first Prime Minister, took a trip to South Africa in 1902 just three months after the Boer war was over. He said that he made the journey “…for my own pleasure and information…”[4] During the visit he went to see some of the Afrikaners he had supported during the war, as well as members of the Trades and Labour Council, and various unions, which were organising white labour.[5]

MacDonald spent four months travelling extensively across the country with his wife, Margaret, recording his observations in a series of letters to the press. These he eventually published in book form.[6] MacDonald saw the battlefields of Natal and the ostrich farms of Oudtshoorn, meeting editors, former soldiers and Boer generals. Smuts, in particular, corresponded with the Labour leader while their wives swapped family information by letter for years.[7] MacDonald was a shrewd observer. He concluded in his notebook that Afrikaners might have been forced to sign the Treaty of Vereeniging, but they were far from being a spent force: “…(1) No sense of defeat (2) No sense of beginning anew with us but rather with themselves – a united Africanerdom (sic).” In the Transvaal MacDonald met the white unions. He observed that differences between English and Afrikaners – so prevalent before the war – had largely been overcome.  He believed that whatever their residual differences there was now unanimity on one topic:  “The English and the Dutch have now practically agreed upon the treatment of the natives.”[8]

A few years later MacDonald proceeded to write a more thoughtful and well considered book on the whole question of Empire, as a guide to the emerging Labour party on this critical foreign policy issue.[9] MacDonald reviewed native policy across the Empire, arguing that it had “settled itself by exhaustion – except in New Zealand.” But he concluded: “It is not so in South Africa, where it will be a menace to Imperial harmony for some time to come, because the propinquity of different races and civilisations in South Africa is to remain, and is to be an element in Imperial policy.”[10] 

Having laid out the problem, he immediately described the fears of 1.1 million whites of being “swallowed up in a sea of 5,000,000 blacks” as “irrational”. MacDonald forcefully rejected suggestions of using “brutal force” to put down native unrest and distanced himself from the views of whites – or, as he puts it the “man on the spot.”

“The querulous pleas that you cannot trust the native till you have flogged him; that he is constantly thinking of some rising or other, and that you must therefore shoot him occasionally; that you must not allow him to express opinions about your rule because criticism on his part cannot be differentiated from treason, only require to be tested in order to be exposed. They are the doctrines of domineering Imperialists who come not to educate and develop but to rule and exploit.”[11]

Ramsay MacDonald then described the Cape’s non-racial franchise and gave his unequivocal support to the proposal that it should be implemented for the whole of the territory then controlled by London, which would be incorporated into the proposed Union of South Africa. At the same time he was realistic about how difficult this might be. “To extend the Cape system throughout British South Africa would no doubt meet with much opposition; the racial prejudices and the parochialism of the Natal majority would oppose it, so would the majority of Rhodesians, and so would a majority of the Dutch in the new Colonies. Nevertheless the Imperial authorities ought to make a point of persuading the Federation” [as he called the proposed Union] “that this is its best policy, and should not hesitate, if need be, to retain in a very definite and effective way sovereignty over all native affairs unless the franchise is granted.”[12]

One other conclusion that he came to is worth quoting. It was that London could not trust whites with the conduct of ‘native affairs.’ “Only on one South African matter might Downing Street advantageously interfere; I mean this native question. It is not safe to allow the people on the spot the sole decision on the native policy…. Sooner or later the country will have to face the problem of how to deal with the enormous native population, but I found nobody who had any very clear idea as to how that difficulty was to be met.”[13] MacDonald went on to suggest that ‘native policy’ should be discussed at every Colonial Conference, which London held to consider policy across the Empire.[14]

MacDonald’s position was not without its difficulties. He saw the Empire as being built, ideally, on democratic elements. After all, the Dominions were already self-governing.  It was a point MacDonald made at the 1907 congress of the Second International in Stuttgart, to the evident surprise of some of the delegates.[15] But he clearly believed that there were limits to which this could be allowed.

Ramsay MacDonald’s colleague, Keir Hardie, had also campaigned actively for a variety of South African causes both during and after the Boer war ended.  These included the ‘Bambatha rebellion’ of 1906, during which Zulu protests against British taxation led to a ruthless repression of the Zulu nation.[16] The MP for Merthyr Tydvil repeatedly raised in the House of Commons reports that Zulus had been killed after surrendering, to the discomfort of the then Under Secretary for the Colonies, Winston Churchill.[17] Hardie also corresponded with the leader of the Cape based African Political Organisation, Dr Abdullah Abdurahman, who visited London in 1906 to protest against the exclusion of Coloured people from the franchise when self-government was granted to the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony. Abdurahman wrote to Hardie on 30th of July 1906 from the Bedford Hotel, Southampton Row, London WC.[18]

“I am convinced that the possession of the franchise by the Coloured people is not only consistent with the performance and security of the States as component parts of the Empire, but without a due recognition of our rights and liberties and by placing power in the hands of one section, and denying to others the constitutional means of self-defence, a system will be established which will end in servitude and bring ruin to us all.

Our chief aim is to become durable Citizens, to work harmoniously with others; and by fulfilling our obligation assist in making South Africa a powerful member of a mighty Empire. To withhold from the Coloured people the franchise would be inflicting upon a self-respecting and intelligent section of men a most disastrous wrong.”

Abdurahman enclosed a lengthy printed letter, outlining his argument. It is not clear how Hardie responded, but he did not raise the subject when self-government for the Colonies was discussed in parliament. Instead he called for all issues relating to the black population to be reserved to Britain, rather than entrusting them to the local white population.[19]

It was not the last time Abdurhaman and Hardie would collaborate on the South African franchise, since the former was part of the deputation W. P. Schreiner led to London in 1909 to fight for the right of all South Africans to vote and stand for Parliament; a deputation that was hosted by Hardie at a meal in the House of Commons.[20]  But these events lay ahead.

Olive Schreiner meets Hardie

When Hardie left Pretoria in 1908 he had experienced the worst South Africa could offer; his meeting with Olive Schreiner and his reception in Cape Town were to be far more to his liking. Jonathan Hyslop explains what happened next.[21]

“The Pretoria incident marked the end of Hardie’s South African travails. Moving south to Basutoland, he met the Resident Commissioner and Basuto chiefs, and in the Orange River Colony, Bloemfontein’s miniscule Labour Party mounted a surprisingly large and enthusiastic public meeting for him. Heading down the railway line into the Cape Colony, Hardie stopped at the town of De Aar, where he visited the writer Olive Schreiner, who gave him a gloomy and prescient view of the South African future as one of intractable racial oppression.”

It was no accident that Hardie went to see Schreiner in what was no more than a modest railway town between Johannesburg and Cape Town. He had been – as Schreiner acknowledged “…the strongest Pro-Boer in England; sometimes almost facing death at the hands of mobs in the pro-Boer cause.”[22]  The links between the Schreiners and Hardie went back to this period. In February 1900, at the height of the war, when Olive’s husband, Samuel ‘Cron’ Cronwright-Schreiner visited England in an attempt to bolster the Pro-Boer cause he made a point of meeting the Labour leader.[23]

Certainly Olive Schreiner was enraptured by the opportunity of meeting Hardie and went out of her way to secure his visit. She wrote to him while he was in the Transvaal, even though she had no address to which to send it, in the hope that it would reach him. Schreiner clearly longed to see Hardie, writing to a friend: “I don’t believe they’ll deliver my letter as I could put no address. If you can let him know he must come to see us here. Oh I do long to see some of my own people so. I mean those who belong to me.”[24] It seems that she had written via General Smuts, with whom the Schreiners were also friendly. Cronwright-Schreiner wrote too.[25] His letter, sent on 15th February 1908, did reach the visitor, since it remains in Hardie’s correspondence. “Just a hurried line to welcome you to S. Africa,” Cronwright-Schreiner writes. “My wife has written to you co. General Smuts, who will no doubt see that you get the letter. Let us know your movements, & do try to spend a day here as my guest when you pass. It will indeed be a pleasure to my wife and myself to see you.”

To Olive’s joy, the meeting took place on 25th of February.  She was later to describe it to the British suffragette, Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, as “the most red-letter day in my life since you and your wife were at Hanover.”[26] Olive Schreiner used the time she spent with Hardie to good effect – briefing him on what had happened during the war and providing a gloomy prognostication about the future of South Africa. Writing to her husband she summed up the day.

“It has been such a glorious wonderful day here. Even a bit of white wall with the sunlight falling on it, or a stone, has been beautiful, & a trail of smoke for the chimney I see from my window, has been long. Anything more beautiful there could not be on earth… Just as no one who didn’t live through the horror & oppression of Martial Law in this country can dream what it was; so, no one who did not live  through it can ever know the joy, & hope, & passion of enthusiasm with which we worked in those years in the Eighties. I was talking about it with Keir Hardie & tears came into both our eyes when we spoke of it. But it was not for nothing. The solid, stolid (call it sordid if you will), but real advance in the condition of the working classes in England is the result of that movement, begun & carried on almost entirely by a small handful of men & women mostly of the “upper” classes & all of ability. It was the brilliant sunrise, without which there could not have been any day.”

Olive Schreiner did not just engage in this rather romantic nostalgia and prognostication; she also did her best to smooth Hardie’s path on the next leg of his journey. Although he apparently turned down a letter of introduction to her brother, the former Prime Minister of the Cape, William Phillip (W.P.) Schreiner, she nonetheless wrote to him, asking him to take Hardie out for a meal and assist him during his time in Cape Town.[27] Unfortunately, this meeting never materialised, despite the best intentions of both men. W. P. Schreiner got the date wrong, and they missed each other.[28]

Cape Town

The city that Hardie arrived in in February 1908 had recently experienced both boom and bust. Cape Town had been a re-supply point for European powers on the way to the East for centuries, but it had really come into its own during the Boer war. As the capital of the Cape Colony and one of the main ports through which supplies travelled to support the British war effort, the city prospered as never before. The harbour was bursting at the seams to cope with the influx. New cranes were purchased and the facilities could barely keep pace as the tonnage of goods passing through the port trebled. Capital investment doubled between 1899 and 1904, as did the number of workers in factories, reaching nearly 12,000 in 1904.[29]

It was an auspicious time to celebrate Cape Town’s status, and in 1905 a brand City Hall was unveiled, constructed of golden Bath stone and embellished with a neo-classical façade and ornate clock tower. The prosperity that followed the Boer war reinforced the Cape gentry, who marked their new stature by establishing organisations such as the Guild of Loyal Women, founded in 1901, to maintain and foster ‘the spirit of loyalty to the Queen and fidelity to the British Empire’.[30] Some women’s organisations, inspired by the ideas of Olive Schreiner, began to seek the vote.  The Cape Town Women’s Enfranchisement League was formed in 1907, although it had little success in influencing the Constitution of the Union of South Africa, which came into being just three years later, reserving the privilege of voting exclusively for men.

If the war had been good for the community, it had also seen many attracted to its streets from the rest of South Africa, as well as from across the seas.  By 1904, Cape Town had a population of 170,000. It had more than doubled in size in just thirteen years. The influx included 34,000 European immigrants; mainly British, but including around 9,000 East European Jews. The city was predominantly a white, English speaking town, but it was also home to 21,000 Coloured people 9,000 Africans, 2,000 local Afrikaners, 2,000 Indians, and a small black community from outside South Africa.[31] 

Cape Town had a long history of militancy. It had seen the first recorded strike in southern Africa (1752) as well as slave uprisings and mutinies.[32] White workers, whose numbers had being reinforced during the Boer war, were mainly organised as extensions of British unions. It was in December 1881 that the British Trade Union of Carpenters and Joiners established its first South African branch in Cape Town.[33] Nor was it alone. The Amalgamated Society of Boilermakers had ten branches in South Africa, which remitted £1,000 a year to its London based executive council.[34] Some unions exclusively organised white workers, but others did not. The tailors’ union, for example, could not have survived if it had excluded the Malay community, whose forebears had arrived from the Dutch East Indies as slaves or political prisoners. They were well established in the industry and could not be excluded. This did not prevent some  white members complaining that they were being undercut by Malays and ‘Polish Jews’ who were ‘living cheaper’, and working longer hours for  very little money.[35]

During the Boer war the increasing demand for labour gave ordinary men and women the confidence to adopt new forms of organisation. In 1901 a Coloured businessman, John Tobin, started regular Sunday meetings at the ‘Stone’.[36] The small African population living in Cape Town at the time also played a part in the civil life of the city. Among them was F.Z.S. Peregrino (1851–1919).[37] Born in Ghana (then the Gold Coast) he had lived in England and the United States before coming to London in 1900 for the first Pan-African Conference that was held in July of that year. By mid-November 1900 he had moved to Cape Town, and within a few weeks he had ‘edited, published and entirely financed’ a monthly pan-African journal, the South African Spectator. Peregrino used his paper to build the pride of the ‘Coloured’ people. It was a term that he sometimes used to refer to anyone who was not of European extraction, while at other times distinguishing in his writing between Coloureds and black Africans.[38]

In September 1902 Tobin and five others established the African Political Organisation (APO), to defend Coloured rights.  Soon branches were being formed across the Cape colony. By 1904 the APO could boast 2,000 members in 33 branches.[39]  The following year the party found a new leader in one of the most remarkable men to ever enter Cape politics: Dr Abdullah Abdurahman. The British trained doctor already had a place on the Cape Town City Council, having been elected in 1904 – the first black person to serve on the body.[40] Dr. Abdurahman was to mobilise the Coloured community with great skill. In 1914 he became the first Coloured person to be elected to the Cape Provincial Council and served on the City and the Provincial Councils until his death in 1940.

Yet Dr Abdurahman and the APO could not take their popular support for granted. They were in competition with a range of left wing movements and parties that flourished in Cape Town in the first decade of the twentieth century.[41] The trade union movement, together with the immigrant community and the Cape’s educated Malay and Coloured populations, allowed a diverse range of parties to flourish, challenging the prevailing racism of the age.

Among these parties was the Social Democratic Federation, which was founded on May Day in 1904. Initially linked to the British movement of the same name, it soon lost these ties. It was led by Wilfred Harrison, a British soldier who had been demoted for fraternizing with Afrikaner prisoners during the Boer War. He was a carpenter, trade unionist and skilled organiser. The Federation ran its own newspaper, Cape Socialist, and built an impressive meeting place, predictably called the Socialist Hall, which held up to 600 people. The Social Democratic Federation’s founders were mostly white immigrants, but it went out of its way to recruit across the colour line. The historian Lucien Van der Walt points out that the party did more than just talk about winning black recruits: “…the SDF set up a propaganda commission to reach Africans, gave talks in Afrikaans, English and Xhosa (the main Bantu language in the Cape), drew people of color into its committees, reached out to the APO, and even influenced Abdurrahman to employ socialist class rhetoric.”[42]

As the funds injected by the war into Cape Town came to an end the city experienced something of a slump. [43]  By 1903 jobs were being lost and hunger followed in its wake. A Citizens’ Employment and Relief Committee was established by the government to assist the unemployed, but it dealt only with  British artisans and did little for the Coloured unemployed. The Social Democrats established their own committees and systems of assistance, as did Peregrino. The municipality attacked these informal bodies as being “noisy agitators of the so-called unemployed” whom they accused of being “loafers.”[44] Tensions grew and in August 1906 mass meetings were held on the Parade outside the City Hall. This was followed by a march on parliament. Despite a long meeting with the prime minister and assurances of jobs for hundreds of men on a distant ‘farm colony’, the unrest continued. There followed “hooligan” riots, during which the windows of bakers of were smashed and bread hurled to the crowd. For two days mobs roamed the centre of the city, to the chagrin of respectable radicals like the Socialists and the APO, both of which distanced themselves from the rioters.[45]

At this time Cape Town was predominantly a Coloured and white city. Most black Africans were restricted to the docks. Recruited from the Willowvale district of the Transkei, they were housed in bleak barracks and controlled by a system of ‘native foreman’ or indunas.[46]  Conditions were grim, but in 1901 they became even worse. The Africans were forced to move out of the docks after an outbreak of bubonic plague and into ‘locations’ on the outskirts of the city, where they had to pay rent as well as train-fare to get to work.[47]

Their grievances were articulated by a young Zulu from Natal, Alfred Mangena, who had arrived in the city in 1898. Mangena was not only articulate and intelligent, he was also ambitious; studying to become a teacher and saving to train as a barrister in London. Mangena took up the dockers’ cause and in October 1901 three tribal leaders or headmen wrote to Harbour Board spelling out their grievances and stating “that Mr Alfred Mangena has now been appointed by the natives at the Dock Location to act as the senior secretary, to whom further correspondence, if necessary, may be addressed.”[48]  Mangena was clearly effective. By the end of the year the location Inspector was ascribing the dockers’ grievances to: “…the undue influence exercised over them by that arch-aggitator [sic] Alfred Mangena, who, I learn, receives a consideration from each of these people for concerning himself on their behalf.”[49]

In May and June 1902 Mangena helped organise a series of meeting in the locations which were addressed by aspiring white politicians who supported their demands for lower train fares. On 29th of June Mangena addressed a dockers’ meeting for the last time. He told them to take action: “if you are prevented from travelling on the trains you must not go to work. I will see that you come off all right. I am leaving for England shortly; you must not think that I am leaving you alone. Your legal advisers will take care of you and will take an interest in any restrictions on your behalf.” The following day the workers staged a mass boycott of the trains and there were disturbances during which some windows were broken. Mangena left for England, with several hundred African labourers coming to wish him well as he sailed out of the harbour.[50] He had left South Africa, but was to continue playing a considerable role in the country’s politics from London.

Hardie’s arrival in Cape Town

Hardie must have looked forward to his arrival in Cape Town. Not only was it the final stop on his very long journey, he was also assured of a warm welcome from W. P. Schreiner and Dr Abdurahman. The city also was considerably more progressive than the rest of the country. Despite this his arrival caused yet another controversy.  The Trades and Labour Council and the Labour Representation Committee, almost certainly aware of the trouble his views had caused at his previous meetings, decided they would not host his visit.  It was left to the Social Democratic Federation to rise to the challenge.  Its leader, W. H. Harrison, wrote to the Cape Argus, expressing his disgust.[51]

“It is not altogether surprising though pitiably nauseating, to find that semi-capitalist mixture, styled the ‘Labour Representation Committee’ passing a resolution refusing to participate in the reception of Keir Hardie. Such an insult to one of Labour’s greatest leaders adds to the chagrin of such bodies in the eyes of true sympathisers.”

An alternative meeting was arranged at the Social Democrat’s Socialist Hall on the edge of District Six.  It must have come as a considerable relief to Hardie that the welcome he received was so warm; in fact, if anything it was too warm! Three to four hundred people packed into the hall, including some women, the reporter noted. It soon became stifling.[52]  “The ventilation of the hall was most unscientific, and some time before the meeting started the atmosphere was abominable,” the reporter declared. “Many of the audience wore red ties, and buttonholes of red ribbons were hawked about the hall. The red banner of the Social Democratic Federation, bearing the white letters of the words ‘Socialism, the Hope of the Age,’ made a background for the platform, and the chairman (Mr Needham) addressing the audience as ‘Comrades,’ requested that on Mr Hardie’s arrival they would rise and sing ‘The Red Flag’.”

Perhaps the newspaper’s readership was not too familiar with the socialist anthem, so the paper reprinted a couple of verses, including its promise to bear the socialist flag ‘onwards’, whatever the cost.  Hardie was more than an hour late, which cannot have improved matters. “Mr Hardy’s small, piercing eyes at once attract attention,” the reporter noted. “He is a much shorter man than most had expected to see. He is a comparatively slow speaker. His words are characterised by an intense earnestness, and his sentences, though simple, are models of good composition. He had a very hearty greeting.”

The Socialist Hall meeting was not the main event of the visit, so after a rousing chorus of the traditional Welsh song, ‘Men of Harlech’,  Hardie spoke for just fifteen minutes, promising he would give a fuller talk the Sunday, 1^st of March. Using his brief time to outline the growth of the Labour party in Britain, he called for the “…holding of a Socialist and Labour Conference in South Africa, and promised to persuade one or two leaders to come from England. He hoped the time would come when the land and wealth of South Africa, instead of being exploited for the advantage of individuals, should become the property to be used for the good of the entire community.” At this point, Keir Hardie sat down, lighting his pipe to loud cheers.

Hardie was as good as his word. On the Sunday, at the more spacious Good Hope Hall, he spoke to a “large” crowd, which had packed in.[53] This time they were not all socialists, but although at the beginning… “a small hostile element made its presence known, the assemblage was well disposed towards the speaker, and gave him a cordial reception.”

The meeting was chaired by the Rev. R. Balmforth, a remarkable man, who had come to the Cape from a background in the London Fabian Society, which he had joined in 1884.[54] Maintaining a correspondence with leading Fabians, including the Webbs and George Bernard Shaw, he would go on to call publicly for a non-racial constitution of South Africa, when the matter was before the Imperial Parliament, in 1909.

Hardie used his Good Hope Hall speech to appeal to the self-interest of white workers; urging them to make common cause with their black brothers, as the Cape Times reported:

“Now, Socialism stood for the rights of humanity as human beings, and if the white working people of South Africa countenanced the exploitation of the coloured races, then they (the white workers) themselves must expect to be exploited. Freedom could not be limited by geographical lines or racial lines, and the time would come when unless something were done speedily in South Africa, they would find the coloured man ousting them from their places; because he was a cheaper worker than the white man. Let a strike take place, and they would find then where the blacklegs were drawn from… I don’t want to see, and I shall not be silent and stand by, and see our white civilisation dragged down by the capitalist class employing coloured labour for the purpose. (Cheers)”[55]

He concluded with a theme that was commonly held among British liberals at the time: that although black and white were not yet equal, both had an equal right to receive the human rights that they were due.

“And so the Socialist movement stands flat-footed for equal rights for every race. We do not say all races are equal; no one dreams of doing that, but I do say most emphatically that the coloured man, the native of South Africa, within his own civilisation, has as much right to have his freedom respected as any have within our civilisation. We stand, I say, for equal rights. (Cheers)”

Having won over Cape Town’s lively, organised working class, Hardie went on to hold a very friendly meeting with Cape Town’s Indian community, which had sent him a telegram inviting him to address them.[56] After his speech Hardie was presented with “an engraved rhinoceros horn walking stick, mounted in silver” and a plea for his continued support of the Indian cause.

Keir Hardie’s time at the Cape was at an end. He returned to Britain in April 1908 and was given a tremendous reception and a great public meeting organised at the Albert Hall by the Labour Party.[57] Hardie later explained in the Labour Leader what he had learnt in South Africa. Certainly he believed the Cape’s property-qualified, but non-racial franchise might provide a model for the democratisation of Britain’s other South African colonies. In his reflections on his southern African stay, he wrote:

“Is [‘the native’] to be recognised as a human being and allowed to vote and own property, or is he to be treated as being part wild beast and part child? Shall the Cape take from the natives the rights they possess or shall Natal, Orangia [sic] and Transvaal adopt the Cape Standard?”[58]

There was no doubt where he stood on this issue and Hardie remained engaged with the rights of black South Africans in the years ahead.

Conclusion

Keir Hardie returned to Britain a changed man. He had experienced the racism and the venom of the white working class in Natal and the Transvaal at first hand. The Union Jack that he seized as he fled from the hall in Johannesburg, remained on display at his flat in Nevills Court as a proud souvenir.[59]

No longer would he refer to the Afrikaners in the terms he had used in 1900. Then he had spoken of the Afrikaners in terms that were nothing short of romantic: “Try to imagine what the free Yeoman of England were like two hundred years ago and you have some idea of Boer life. Hardie told his supporters in 1901. “Their Republican form of government bespeaks freedom…while their methods of production for use are much nearer our ideal than any form of exploitation for profit.”[60] Hardie’s South African visit had opened his eyes to the harsh realities of white racism and made him much more sympathetic to the plight of the black majority.

At the same time the Labour Party leaders remained in touch with Afrikaner leaders, including Jan Smuts.[61] This posed something of a challenge as the years went by and the nature of their rule became clear – first in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, and then, after 1910, in the Union of South Africa. By 1909, when the new Union Constitution came before the British Parliament, the Labour Party had moved firmly away from supporting white South Africans in general and the Afrikaner leaders in particular. Rather, the Labour Party drew on the experience and expertise that Hardie and MacDonald had gained from visiting the country. Labour sided with W. P. Schreiner and the non-racial delegation that he led against the official South African deputation, which included men like Botha and Smuts. The Labour Party listened to what Schreiner’s deputation had to say, as well as men like Mangena[62] (now well established as a London lawyer).  

Schreiner and his colleagues were entertained by the Labour Party in Parliament and the party supported their case to the end of the debates.[63] When the Bill came before the House of Commons, Hardie was scathing in his attack on the racial bar that it was introducing into a constitution approved by the Imperial Parliament.[64] He concluded his speech with these words:

“…it is of the utmost importance that the last word should not be spoken in the way of washing our hands of responsibility, either towards the people of South Africa, or the Empire as a whole, and that the House of Commons should not assent to the setting up of the doctrine that because of a man’s misfortune in having been born with a coloured skin he is to be barred the possibility of ever rising to a position of trust.”

Ramsay MacDonald was even clearer. “This is not a South African question only, but it is a great Imperial question, and one which is probably going to have more to say in shaping the future of this Empire than any other single question which is before us now.”[65] But the Liberal government of the day had set its face against making any concessions to the argument. In reality the die had been cast in the terms of the Treaty of Vereeniging, which ended the Boer war. The British establishment was enormously relieved that it had ended its battles with the Afrikaners. By 1909 all the goodwill in the world was not going to rupture this new-found relationship between London and Pretoria, a relationship which had little to offer the majority of South Africans.

Keir Hardie’s trip set the tone for a growing relationship between the Labour Party and southern Africa. His travels together with the visit by Ramsay MacDonald meant that the emerging party had first-hand experience of the situation in South Africa. This helped form the background to the party’s stand during the debate on the Union constitution in 1909. It might have resulted in a more active engagement, had not the First World War intervened, consuming international attention.[66]

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[1] Kenneth O. Morgan, Keir Hardie; radical and socialist, Phoenix Giant Paperbacks, London 1997 (first published by Orion Books 1975) p. 178 – 199

[2] Jonathan Hyslop, The world voyage of James Keir Hardie: Indian nationalism, Zulu insurgency and the British labour diaspora 1907–1908, Journal of Global History (2006) 1, pp. 343–362

[3] Kenneth O. Morgan, Keir Hardie, (1997), p. 105 – 124. Arthur Davey, The British pro-Boers, 1877-1902, Tafelberg, Cape Town, 1978

[4] Ramsay MacDonald, What I saw in South Africa; September and October, 1902, The Echo, London 1902, Forward.

[5] MacDonald’s South African address book, reveals that he had only one black contact – John Tengo Jabavu – and even this was only a ‘care of’ address in Cape Town. National Archive, Kew. PRO 30/69/1203 I 1897 – 1909 South Africa: Correspondence JRM & MEM

[6] Ramsay MacDonald, What I saw in South Africa; September and October, 1902, The Echo, London 1902

[7] David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald, Richard Cohen Books, London, 1997, p. 76- 77

[8] Ramsay MacDonald, What I saw in South Africa, p. 118

[9] Ramsay MacDonald, Labour and Empire, Routledge/Thoemmes Press, London, 1998 (first printed 1907)

[10] Ramsay MacDonald, Labour and Empire, op. cit. p. 54

[11] Ramsay MacDonald, Labour and Empire, op. cit. p. 55-56

[12] Ramsay MacDonald, Labour and Empire, op. cit. p. 59

[13] Ramsay MacDonald, What I saw in South Africa, p. 118 – 119.

[14] Fourteen Colonial Conferences were held between 1887 and 1937. From 1907 they were renamed ‘Imperial Conferences.’ After that they became Commonwealth Summits. See Stuart Mole, ‘Seminars for Statesmen’: The Evolution of the Commonwealth Summit, The Round Table, Vol. 93, No. 376, 533–546, September 2004

[15] John Callaghan, The Labour Party and Foreign Policy, A history, Routledge, Abingdon, 2007, p. 16

[16] Shula Marks, Reluctant Rebellion: An Assessment of the 1906-08 Disturbance in Natal, Clarendon Press, London, 1970

[17] See, for example, Hansard, House of Commons debates, 05 July 1906 Vol. 160 cc214-6, 214

[18] London School of Economics (LSE) Archive: ILP 4/1906: 284. 30 July 1906. A. Abdurahman to Hardie (London).

[19] Hansard, House of Commons debates, 15 March 1906 Vol. 153 c1402

[20] Martin Plaut, A menu for change, Quarterly Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa, Vol 67, No. 2, April to June 2013, p. 64-68

[21] Jonathan Hyslop, The world voyage of James Keir Hardie, p. 360

[22] Olive Schreiner BC16/Box4/Fold1/1908/10

‘Olive Schreiner to William Philip (‘Will’) Schreiner, 26 February 1908, UCT Manuscripts & Archives, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’.

[23] LSE, ILP/4/1900/ 66A, A C Cronwright Schreiner to Hardie (Bedford). Postcard

[24] Olive Schreiner: John & Mary Brown MSC 26/2.2.10. ‘Olive Schreiner to Mary Brown nee Solomon, 1908, NLSA Cape Town, Special Collections, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’.

[25] LSE. ILP/4/1908/62 15 February 1908. A.C. Cronwright-Schreiner to J. Keir Hardie. (De Aar, Cape Colony).

[26] Olive Schreiner BC16/Box8/Fold4/MMPr/AssortedCorres/FredPL/9

Olive Schreiner to Frederick (‘Fred’) Pethick-Lawrence, 27 February 1908, UCT Manuscripts & Archives, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’.

[27] Olive Schreiner BC16/Box4/Fold1/1908/10. ‘Olive Schreiner to William Philip (‘Will’) Schreiner, 26 February 1908, UCT Manuscripts & Archives, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’.

[28] LSE. ILP/4/1908/89. 2 March 1908. W.P. Schreiner to J. Keir Hardie. (Capetown).

[29] Vivian Bickford-Smith, Elizabeth van Heyningen and Nigel Worden, Cape Town in the twentieth century, David Philip, Cape Town, 1999, p. 26

[30] Vivian Bickford-Smith, Elizabeth van Heyningen and Nigel Worden, op cit. p.30

[31] Lucien van der Walt, Anarchism and syndicalism in an African port city: the

revolutionary traditions of Cape Town’s multiracial working class, 1904–1931, Labor History, Vol. 52, No. 2, May 2011, p. 141

[32] Worden, Nigel. ‘Artisan Conflicts in a Colonial Context: The Cape Town Blacksmith Strike of 1752’. Labor History 46, no. 2 (2005): 155–84. Nicole Ulrich, Counter Power and Colonial Rule in the Eighteenth-Century Cape of Good Hope: Belongings and Protest of the Labouring Poor, PhD Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011

[33] Ernest Gitsham and James Trembath, A first account of Labour Organisation in South Africa, E & P. Commercial Printing Co. Durban, 1926, p. 14 – 15

[34] Andrew Thompson, The Empire Strikes Back? The impact of Imperialism on Britain from the mid-nineteenth century, Pearson Education, Harlow, 2005, p. 69

[35] Vivian Bickford-Smith, Ethnic pride and racial prejudice in Victorian Cape Town, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995, p.174

[36] The Stone was, in reality, a series of stones, more or less in a circle, with the largest one used to stand on to address the crowd. Vivian Bickford-Smith, Elizabeth van Heyningen and Nigel Worden, op. cit. p. 27

[37] David Killingray, Rights, Land, and Labour: Black British Critics of South African Policies Before 1948, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol 35 No 2, June 2009, footnote 55, p. 385. Peregrino described the aims of his Pan-African Association as being ‘to secure to Africans and their descendants throughout the world their civil and political rights; to ameliorate the conditions of our oppressed brethren in the continents of Africa, America, and other parts of the world, by promoting efforts to secure effective legislation; to encourage our people in educational, industrial, and commercial enterprises; to foster friendly relations between the Caucasian and African races [etc.].’

[38] Vivian Bickford-Smith, Ethnic pride and racial prejudice in Victorian Cape Town, op. cit. p. 204

[39] Vivian Bickford-Smith, Ethnic pride and racial prejudice in Victorian Cape Town, op cit. p. 204

[40] http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dr-abdullah-abdurahman [Accessed 23 July 2013]

[41] This section draws on Lucien van der Walt’s path-breaking work in re-interpreting Cape history. Lucien van der Walt, Anarchism and syndicalism in an African port city: the revolutionary traditions of Cape Town’s multiracial working class, op cit.

[42] Lucien van der Walt, Anarchism and syndicalism in an African port city: the revolutionary traditions of Cape Town’s multiracial working class, op cit. p. 145

[43] Vivian Bickford-Smith, Elizabeth van Heyningen and Nigel Worden, Cape Town in the twentieth century, op cit. p. 33

[44] Vivian Bickford-Smith, Elizabeth van Heyningen and Nigel Worden, op cit. Cape Town in the twentieth century, p. 33

[45] Vivian Bickford-Smith, Elizabeth van Heyningen and Nigel Worden, op cit. Cape Town in the twentieth century, p. 35

[46] Vivian Bickford-Smith, Elizabeth van Heyningen and Nigel Worden, op cit. Cape Town in the twentieth century, p.26

[47] David Killingray, Significant Black South Africans in Britain before 1912: Pan African Organisations and the Emergence of South Africa’s First Black Lawyers, South African History Journal, Vol. 64, No. 3, September 2012, pp. 393 – 417, p. 410

[48] David Killingray, Significant Black South Africans in Britain before 1912, p. 409 – 410

[49] David Killingray, Significant Black South Africans in Britain before 1912, p. 409 – 411

[50] David Killingray, Significant Black South Africans in Britain before 1912, p. 409 – 411

[51] Cape Argus, 29 February 1908

[52] Cape Argus, 29 February 1908

[53] Cape Times, 2 March 1908

[54] Frederick Hale, Public issues perceived from the theological left flank: the social ethics of Ramsden Balmforth in the Union of South Africa. Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, 1912, vol 38, no 1, pp 235-251

[55] Cape Times, 2 March 1908

[56] LSE. ILP/4/1908/85. 24 February 1908. South African Indian Association to J. Keir Hardie. (Cape Town)

[57] Kenneth O. Morgan, Keir Hardie: Radical and Socialist, op. cit., p. 198

[58] Labour Leader, 5 May 1908, in Jonathan Hyslop, The world voyage of James Keir Hardie: Indian nationalism, Zulu insurgency and the British labour diaspora 1907–1908, p. 361

[59] Kenneth O. Morgan, Keir Hardie: Radical and Socialist, p. 197.  There is a photograph of Hardie’s study in the National Library of Scotland which shows the Union Jack.

[60] Kenneth O. Morgan, Keir Hardie: Radical and Socialist, p. 104 – 105

[61] There are a number of letters between Smuts and Ramsay MacDonald in the National Archive at Kew. PRO 30/69/1203 I

1897 – 1909 South Africa: Correspondence JRM & MEM

[62] David Killingray, Significant Black South Africans in Britain before 1912, p. 31

[63] Martin Plaut, A menu for change, p. 64

[64] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 19 August 1909 vol 9 cc1553-605

[65] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 19 August 1909 vol 9 cc1553-605

[66] The South African Labour Party, a member of the Second International, opposed the war, passing resolutions against it in December 1914 and January 1915, although many of its branches took the opposite view and it supported the war in Parliament. See Hew Strachan, The First World War in Africa, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004, p. 61-62