ABSTRACT
To a major extent, violence and open confrontation between what I call the black masses in the United Kingdom and the British state tend now, and in the recent past, to involve what might be called the cultures of the black masses.1 That might be surprising. The explanation might be that we are not confronted by the British state, or involved with the British state significantly in a physical confrontation, or violenceproducing context, in our other areas of existence, i.e. at work, precisely because there are already pre-existing forms of control there. The forms of control at work are obviously the organization of the work pattern: the role of supervision, the use of the notion of ‘skill’, and the trade unions. These are at least some of the significant control mechanisms at work. And they function more or less satisfactorily as control mechanisms for black workers except when the latter rise up against the direct effect of racism in the place of work, which has happened in a substantial number of cases, where you get specifically black industrial action.
