ABSTRACT
Exploring the labour history of Cape Town is of interest and importance for numerous reasons. Studying the actions and attitudes of organised groups of workers from the late nineteenth into the twentieth centuries reveals a lot about the tensions and contradictions inherent in Western Cape society. Such tensions were manifold. There were the struggles between immigrant white artisans and white employers in the rising manufacturing and building industries of Greater Cape Town. There were the beginnings of organisation among coloured artisans and the evolvement of a pattern of trade-union organisation which, after a period of reluctance on both sides, came in many cases to comprise both white and coloured workers. Then there were the first attempts of unskilled coloured and African workers to improve their wages and working conditions, and subsequently, similar attempts by new strata of semi-skilled workers. In studying these developments, people are faced with conflicts and contrasts on various levels.
