The Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union was formed in Cape Town in 1919 and, although we are in the year of its centenary, it is an anniversary that has been met mostly with silence.
CLR James, the great Caribbean intellectual, published two books in 1938. The first, The Black Jacobins, is an account of the Haitian Revolution that is now widely considered a classic. The second,It looks at black struggles for freedom in Africa, the Caribbean and the United States from 1739 to early 1938. It includes a section on the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union in South Africa.
While walking down Darling Street on a Saturday afternoon, he was pushed off the pavement and then assaulted by a white police officer. A white socialist intervened; the two got talking and decided that the moment was ripe for political action. They called a public meeting in Buitengracht Street on January 17 1919 to discuss working conditions on the docks and the ICU was formed with 24 members.
At a time when women couldn’t join the South African Native National Council — the forerunner of the ANC — as full members, it is striking that one of the central aims of the ICU was to take a position in favour of equal pay for men and women and to “see that all females in industries and domestic services are protected by the organisation, by encouraging them to enrol in all branches of the union and to help them obtain a living wage”.
He did not always separate his own finances from that of the organisation, but he was a charismatic and effective organiser. Within 18 months of his arrival in Durban the local ICU employed 58 secretaries, clerks and organisers. But, at the end of 1928, Champion was suspended pending an investigation into claims of financial irregularities. Most of the Natal branches followed Champion when he left the national ICU to form a breakaway faction . It was vigorously opposed by the Zulu monarchy and the sugar barons.
Champion was initially hostile to the idea but, in the end, had to lend his support, as did Josiah Gumede, the ANC president. Gumede had visited Moscow in 1927 for the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution.
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