Example research essay topic: World War Ii Labour Movement - 1,585 words

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Running head: THE ROLE OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT IN THE CAMPAIGN FOR DECOLONIZATION IN FRENCH WEST AFRICA The Role of the Labour Movement in the Campaign for Decolonization in French West Africa July 21, 2008 The Role of the Labour Movement in the Campaign for De colonisation in French West Africa Introduction It is very difficult to consider the campaign for de colonisation in French West Africa with no mentioning the role of labour movement. The victory of independent movement over colonial rules in French West Africa is one of the most important issues to be rethought. The present paper examines French West Africa (Afrique occidental francaise (AOF), a federation consisting of eight French colonial territories, namely, Senegambia, Mauritania, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Cote d'Ivoire, Niger, French Sudan (now Mali), Dahomey (now Benin), and French Guinea (now Guinea) ) and the campaign for de colonisation focusing on few important issues, namely nationalist and labour movements and their impact on the campaign for de colonisation in French West Africa, placing emphasis on labour social movement, and the transition of labour movement from an internationalist and class-centred organization to a nationalist organization that encouraged people to subordinate their interests, own concerns, and identity to the emerging national struggle. Colonialism, De colonisation and Labour Movement In the late 19 th century, European countries virtually divided Africa as well as its resources into political partitions. This division took place at the Berlin Conference during 1884 - 1885 (Away & Crowder, 1987, pp. 45 - 48). Few decades later, by 1905, merely all African continent was under control of European countries.

Liberia and Ethiopia were the only exceptions. France and Britain controlled the largest parts, however, such countries like Spain, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Belgium also had their holdings. In result of the colonialism period, the continent was subject to numerous negative and sometimes even destructive consequences, such as economic devastation, the loss of valuable natural resources (for example, rubber and gold, to mention a few), geopolitical division, cultural confusions, etc. Yet, European powers considered these negative effects as inevitable consequences of what they called the White Man's Burden. Before we begin examining the role of labour unions, it is important to dwell on decolonization. So, during World War II, the colonies were forced to help their authorities to lead the war against the unknown enemy.

Due to Japans conquests in the Far Easy, there was a shortage of raw materials, and African countries had to compensate for it. To a certain extent, it was very helpful for Africans, as they transported less law materials to the European countries, and, therefore, were conductive to creation of the local industries in the African countries. In its turn, as far as local industries were created, they prompted creation of new villages and towns and the towns that had already existed almost doubles in size due to necessity to local all new workers. Logically, as far as the number of workers consistently increased, trade unions also grew very quickly. Moreover, urbanization encouraged increased literacy, and, in its turn, more educated workers began to publish pro-independence newspapers. In 1941, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and United States President Franklin D.

Roosevelt discussed the post-war world at one of the meetings. Their discussion resulted in creation and adoption of the Atlantic Charter, according to which, there was proclaimed the autonomy of imperial colonies. In such a way, when World War II was ended, Britain was forced to abide by the terms of this document. However, when Churchill presented the document to the Parliament he pronounced "the colonies" as the recently captured countries by Germany in order to get the Atlantic Charter passed. When the war was ended, African colonies were treated like immature countries, and due to this, democratic government existed only at the local levels. As it was already mentioned, by the 1930 -ies African colonial powers led to creation of leaders who were educated in Western universities and whose knowledge enabled them to begin struggle for independence.

The names of these leaders were Nkrumah (Gold Coast, Ghana), Houphouet-Boigny (Cote d'Ivoire), Senghor (Senegal), and Kenyatta (Kenya). It should be also mentioned that in the vast majority of French African territories the transition to independence was smooth and mostly peaceful, with little exceptions. Only few colonies were not satisfied with the democratic rule. After decolonization, African continent was almost ruined as there were economic crises, dept dependence, political instability, and other hardships. In addition, these so-called by-products of decolonization are faced by Africa to the present. While examining West French Africa and decolonization, it should be also noted that social mobilization logically relates to the resistance to colonial rules that have been obvious since the conquest of African territories.

This resistance was directed into a unified anti-colonial labour movement occurred in the period after World War I. The leaders of this movement mobilized people by means of various organizations and communities, ranging from trade unions to various associations and groups, thus uniting them in parties and creating a movement able to destroy the colonial state. The second important thing to be mentioned with regards to labour movement and its role in the campaign for de colonisation in French West Africa is the idea that was perfectly expressed by Franz Fanon: "the anti-colonialism of western-educated intellectuals - and indeed of wage workers, aspiring only to become a labour aristocracy - was false, and the revolutionary dynamic lay in a peasantry and a lumpen proletariat willing to face up to the absolute denial of identity that colonialism necessarily entailed and to use violence to throw over the colonial regime (Andrew, 1981, p. 81). Yet, it is very difficult to understand colonialism and colonial violence with no mentioning the fact that the power of colonialism and colonial states heavily depended on alliances.

To put it differently, the colonial state depended on the way how the authority was displayed and constructed. The phenomenon of trade unions was familiar to Africa. Trade unions were authorized and were quite successful under the Popular Front, before they were banned again during World War II. At the end of the war they were legalized, and African workers (predominantly those, who lived in Dakar), began organizing themselves into trade unions.

However, it should be mentioned that the 1944 - 1946 -ies was quite a difficult period for African workers, because their wages were very low, while the inflation was too high (Foot, 1965, p. 57). The supply situation also remained bad, especially regarding imported commodities. However, at the same time, there was a Provisional Government that tried to keep wages down, because it was thought that it will be very favourable for the revival of production and recovery of the economy. All these hardships and sufferings experienced by African workers during the war and during the post-war period served as favourable conditions for formation of trade union organizations. From the very beginning, African unionists were not alone.

In their first steps to formation of trade union organizations, they were getting help from the part of members of trade union federations, or so-called metropolitan centrals. The members of metropolitan centrals offered organizational support and advice, when it was necessary. Yet, it should be also noted that the most important function of the metropolitan unions was to perform recruitment of European workers, and trade union branches were very often formed on a racial basis. Also, as far as the structure of these unions was centralized, it allowed almost no or little autonomy to the unions. Therefore, in fact, the unions experienced lack of financial support and training.

The most important people, leading trade unionists trained by the Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT) who later played crucial role in French West African politics were Djibo Dakar (Niger), Abdoulaye Diallo and Modify Keita (Soudan), and Sexo Toure (Guinea) (Abdul-Redeem, 1996, p. 115). Yet, despite all these modest efforts of the Popular Front, it hardly can be claimed that there was a labour movement in French West Africa before World War II (Ansprenger, 1989, p. 93). Although there were few strikes (with the first strike that took place in Dakar in 1919) and there were so-called amica les (different professional associations), which were existing in the Four Communes and also from 1929 on the Dakar-Niger railway, yet, it was almost impossible to create a trade union movement due to the reason that labour unions were banned, and all citizens of Africa were subject to forcer labour conscription (Chafer, 2002, p. 68). However, immediately after labour unions were granted authorization and the authority of the French became weaker due to war events, Africans "were quick to exploit the new opportunities the situation afforded" (Chafer, 2002, p. 68). Soon, there were many strikes in 1945.

Few months later, in December 1945, a group of French teachers became the first group of French citizens, who organized a strike in AOF (Afrique occidental francaise French West Africa) (Hargreaves, 1996, p. 229). The results of their strike were overwhelming. First, they succeeded in getting a pay increase, but, moreover, their success served as an example of the African employees. To a certain extent, the results achieved in this strike introduced the idea of independence, and the strike itself, "as a popular movement, gave thousands of people a sense of collective strength; the strike - as a process carried out through certain kinds of institutions - defined the terrain of contestation in a narrower way. (Sueur, 2003, p. 157) As it is claimed by...

Research essay sample on World War Ii Labour Movement