ABSTRACT
In December 1934 as thousands of dockers disrupted imperial trading that passed through the Port of Calcutta, the question of legitimacy of the strike as a “genuine” labour dispute dominated the official and public discourse. Such reactions reflected the deep anxieties of the colonial state faced with a militant labour movement, which was charged with revolutionary symbols and was associated with a range of self-identified revolutionaries in communist, socialist and nationalist traditions. This chapter assesses the responses of the colonial state and how these shaped the labour movement in Calcutta’s docklands.
Taking a microhistory approach this chapter focuses on the dock strike of 1934 and the modus operandi of dockers’ unions. In the strike’s aftermath the colonial government and shipping agents collaborated with Muslim Nationalists. The efforts at quelling a red-flag trade union born out of popular collective mobilisation opened the way for politics of patronage of the powerful communitarian parties, abetting the building of popular base for the Muslim League in the docklands. The chapter draws attention to the consequent acceleration of communalisation and criminalisation of labour politics in the name of “constitutionalism”. Notwithstanding the highly militant record and revolutionary claims throughout the period red-flag trade unionism proved vulnerable to pressures of its political climate as access to channels of emergent nation(s) became crucial, and the violence of few became a determining factor in labour politics.
