NEIL AGGETT LABOUR STUDIES WEBINAR

SPEAKER AND TOPIC: Peter Cole, Western Illinois University, "Dockworker Battles on the Global Waterfront: Unions, Boycotts, and Mary Louise Hooper, against Apartheid"

WEBINAR: Wednesday 7 May 2025 4pm (SA standard time), online via Zoom (details below)

THE PAPER: In the early 1960s, dockworkers around the world stood on the frontline of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. This included workers in Australia, Sweden, Trinidad, the United States of America, and in other countries refusing to handle South African cargo or ships. Like other workers, dockers have organised and unionised to defend their rights and win gains -- and have also sometimes deployed their collective power in larger struggles for justice. But, standing at the centre of global trade and supply chains, dockworkers have extraordinary leverage. 

This paper examines this important internationalist battle on the global waterfront. It tells the story, in part, by focusing on Mary Louise Hooper. An American woman, friend of ANC President Albert Luthuli and the movement in exile, she played a leading role in building the anti-apartheid movement in the USA, and partnered with US dock unions in the early 1960s.

SPEAKER: Peter Cole is a Professor of History at Western Illinois University (USA) and Research Associate in the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) at the University of the Witwatersrand. He also writes on contemporary politics, especially labour, race, and social movements. Author of Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia (2007) and the award-winning  Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area (2018). He edited Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW  (2017, with David Struthers and Kenyon Zimmer), Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly  (2021, revised), and Herb Mills' Presente: A Dockworker Story (2024).

JOINING: Please register in advance at
https://tinyurl.com/5hcpu5cu  
(After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining).
 
HOSTS: Based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) is engaged in policy, research, and workers' education, has a democratic, non-sectarian, non-aligned, and pluralist practice, and active relations with a range of advocacy, labour, and research organisations. We draw strength from our location in a province where the legacy of apartheid and the cheap labour system, and post-apartheid contradictions, are keenly felt. We are named in honour of Dr Neil Hudson Aggett, a union organiser and medical doctor who died in 1982 in an apartheid jail after enduring brutality and torture.