Hooks down! Anti-apartheid activism and solidarity among maritime unions in Australia and the United States

Abstract

Our research compares and contrasts the transnational activism of maritime unions in Australia and the United States in what became the first and longest example of global solidarity in the post-World War II era – the anti-apartheid movement. Dockworkers, with a deep history of solidarity, occupied a strategic position to exert real influence on the South African state by refusing to unload South African cargo. We analyze the actions of the Waterside Workers’ Federation (WWF) in Australia and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in the US, namely by exploring notions of solidarity and political unionism among marine transport workers, ideological motivations for solidarity activism, ethnic and race relations among workers, and labor connections these maritime unions made beyond the waterfront. We find and account for similarities and differences in Australian and US labor activism that often is underrepresented and incompletely explained in the literature.