Cross-Frontier Class Solidarities in Gibraltar and the Campo, 1880–1928 and Beyond

Abstract

This chapter examines the cross-frontier relationship between Gibraltar and the Campo de Gibraltar from the perspective of industrial relations and labour organisation. Taking the period 1890–1928 and beyond, we chart, and seek to explain, the way in which Gibraltarians engaged with Spanish anarchist ideas and organisations. Prior to the Great War, the exclusion of Gibraltarians from British political institutions on the Rock served to retard the development of a constitutionalist form of labour organisation along the lines of trade unions in Britain. Rather, labour organisation on the Rock focussed around anarchist collectives, with strong links to other anarchist groups in the surrounding region. Developments during the Great War, and, in particular, the arrival of a reforming governor in 1918, served to open up political spaces for the working class. The arrival of a representative of the Workers’ Union in 1919 was therefore welcomed as an opportunity to establish industrial relations and political activism along British lines. However, we speculate that identification with Spanish politics was subverted but not erased. The failure of a general strike in 1928, followed by the events of the Spanish Second Republic and the Civil War, saw workers in Gibraltar once more seek solidarities with workers in Spain.