by Lynn Schler
RACISM AND THE EXCLUSION OF “COLOURED” SEAMEN IN BRITAIN
The massive recruitment of “coloured” seamen for British shipping enterprises during the colonial period ultimately had far-reaching repercussions for British society, as many of these colonial seamen chose to abandon their ships and settle in the United Kingdom. Some were seeking higher wages as seamen contracted out of British rather than colonial ports, while others took up residence and sought out new opportunities beyond seafaring. While these seamen enjoyed the right of free entry into British ports as British colonial subjects, tensions with local populations grew along with the numbers of these new immigrants in port cities such as Cardiff, Liverpool, and London. The presence of colonial subjects on British soil fueled antagonism among local populations, who opposed their growing numbers as potential competition for employment and for the perceived social and cultural threat they posed to local societies. From the outset, white seamen were leading agitators against black seamen, as they feared the competition for seafaring jobs. But the periodic riots that broke out against “coloured” seamen in ports throughout Britain, such as those in 1919, were fueled by angry mobs sometimes numbering in the thousands.7 Particularly in the post–World War II era, the issue of colonial immigration to Britain became increasingly contentious within the political sphere, as emigration from the colonies began to rise at what were seen as alarming rates.8
Following the riots of 1919, the British government began making moves to limit the rights of seamen to settle permanently in the UK. The first proposed solution was legislated in the form of the Coloured Alien Seamen Order of 1925, a law mandating all “coloured” seamen to register with local police, and requiring them to carry documentation proving their status as British subjects. All those unable to produce documentary evidence could be declared aliens and deported. As seamen generally lacked this kind of official documentation, most found themselves in a compromised position following the passing of the Order of 1925. The law also required that colonial seamen be hired for round-trip voyages and receive their salaries back in their colonies of origin, thus helping to ensure that most would not stay in the UK. While many seamen were able to avoid or work around the law, the order has been identified as a crucial turning point in the British government’s efforts to redraw the lines of nationality along the lines of race. Laura Tabili noted, “In the space of a few years, Black seamen went from welcome additions to the empire and particularly to the seafaring workforce, with or without ‘proper passports,’ to undesirables barred from entry to British ports or deported when destitute, whether British subjects or aliens, to presumptive aliens illegitimately in Britain.”9
Within British port cities, the deepest anxieties around the presence of colonial seamen were linked to the social and sexual liaisons between white women and black seamen. These relations were thought to compromise the morality of white women, and spawn half-caste children who threatened the colonial racialized order. Mixed-race couples thus became a lightning rod for moral and social policing efforts both in Britain and back in the colonies. According to Carina Ray, anxieties over interracial sexual relations were at the root of a massive repatriation campaign for black seamen in the interwar era.10 The dilemma posed by mixed-race couples became evident in this campaign, as officials were highly reluctant to repatriate those who requested to be returned home with their white wives. The reasoning was that the arrival of these couples in the colonies would threaten the stability of colonial race relations, and thus authorities attempted to limit the number of these couples allowed to repatriate.11 Ray found that the repatriation of interracial couples was tolerated only in cases of wealthy African businessmen married to European women, as they could guarantee that their wives would be maintained at a standard of living fitting for a white woman. Mixed-race couples of lower classes, on the other hand, aroused “deep-seated anxieties” of colonial officials, who feared that European women would be forced to live the destitute lifestyle of the native populations. The panic of British officials led to “bureaucratic strong-arming” to prevent these couples from “violating the racial geography” of colonial rule by returning to the colonies.12
The ferocity of British official opposition to racial mixing is perhaps best exemplified in the writings of Muriel Fletcher, a social scientist who conducted research on black seamen in Liverpool in 1928–1930. Fletcher wrote in the report of her findings: “In their own country they are not allowed to mix freely with white people or have relations with white women. Once having formed unions with white women in this country, they are perhaps loathe [sic]to leave England. . . . In this country [the black seaman] is cut adrift from [tribal restrictions] before he has developed the restraint and control of Western Civilization. In Liverpool there is evidence to show that the negro tends to be promiscuous in his relations with white women. [Their] sexual demands impose a continual strain on white women.”13 Fletcher’s deepest fears, and indeed those of the British public at large, were linked to the “half-caste” children born out of these unions and raised in an environment characterized by immorality. Far from being a marginal view, Fletcher’s findings have been identified as both constructive and representative of “systematic social and political disempowerment of Black people” in Liverpool until the present.14 According to Jacqueline Brown, “It would be hard to state emphatically enough how thoroughly racial politics in Liverpool/Britain reflect the legacy of the Fletcher Report.”15 Indeed, studies from the 1980s and beyond confirmed the ongoing marginalization and stigmatization of the black and mixed-race community in Liverpool.16
Popular opposition to the growing presence of colonial subjects in Britain did not translate into official changes in immigration policies until the period of decolonization. Prior to this time, there was an official commitment to keep borders open to all citizens of the Commonwealth. This open-door policy was intended to enable Australians, Canadians, and New Zealanders to immigrate to Britain freely, but the policy extended these rights to all citizens of the New Commonwealth as well. According to Randall Hansen, British officials wanted to avoid placing overtly racist restrictions on some Commonwealth citizens, and until the late 1950s, no one could imagine the threat of mass immigration of colonial subjects, who remained, in British consciousness, inherently fixed in traditional and premodern natural settings.17 This was all to change in 1962, when popular fears over the colonial presence in Britain were turned into tightened restrictions on immigration, and several legislative measures were taken to officially close the door on former colonial subjects. Beginning with the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962, those Commonwealth citizens seeking to immigrate had to apply for a work voucher, which were limited in number, before being permitted to settle in the UK. The 1968 amendment to this act denied citizenship to Commonwealth citizens who did not have parents or grandparents born in Britain, and was aimed specifically at stripping East African Asians of their British passports. Finally, the Immigration Act of 1971 ended the distinction between “aliens” and Commonwealth citizens.18 The act served to restrict the entry of people from the New Commonwealth by decreeing that only those with connections of descent, such as white South Africans or Australians, would be granted unrestricted entry.19
Nigerian seamen entered the colonial shipping industry many years before the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1971. But already in the post–World War II era, popular antagonism toward African immigrants converged with official policies, creating an environment that was increasingly hostile to the presence of colonial subjects in local societies. Thus, Nigerian recruits began arriving at a time when British society was becoming progressively more unaccepting of the presence of African seamen. These grievous realities of colonialism and racism were certainly not unique to England, and seamen were exposed to varying degrees of discrimination and disempowerment beyond Britain in their travels to the United States, South America, and Asia.20 Yet this broader political and social context is curiously downplayed in many seamen’s acc
ounts of their years as colonial seamen. On the contrary, seamen’s testimonies of their lives at sea reflect an unexpected sense of empowered agency and opportunity in their transnational travels. In what follows, it will be seen that while seamen’s lives resonated with these encounters with exclusion, they also represented a powerful resistance to the subjectivities constructed and imposed upon black working-class men in colonial and postcolonial contexts. Seamen’s testimonies reflect an unexpected sense of empowered agency and opportunity in their transnational travels. The border crossings they experienced exposed them to circumstances, resources, and knowledge that enabled them to cross and disrupt bounded identities and embrace a vision of themselves as citizens of the world, thus circumventing both official policies and popular practices of racial exclusion.
A SEAMAN’S WAY OF LIFE
Q: Why did you become a seaman?
R: It was because I like to travel all over the world to see what is happening.21
The stories that seamen told about how they became seamen are very revealing for what they can teach us about seamen’s sense of autonomy and agency. Seamen gave a variety of responses when asked how and why they became seamen, but nearly all of the answers they provided reflected a strong belief in their own self-fashioning. Over and over, men explained that they became seamen because the job attracted them personally, and this led them to sign up. As one man explained, “I saw the type of job and I liked it, and later I joined them.”22 Another simply explained, “For the purpose of adventure, nothing more.”23 Many claimed that they were drawn to the job after seeing other seamen around Lagos. One seaman replied, “I used to see seamen coming from abroad to Lagos then. When I saw how they dressed and their actions, I was attracted to these things.”24 Another man gave a similar response: “When I was in school, I used to see the seamen from Freetown. Their manner of dress attracted me to become a seaman. Really, their clothes and shoes made me want to join seamen.”25 Some got the job through connections to Europeans with links to the shipping industry. One man explained that he had fought as a soldier in World War II, and when he returned to Lagos and looked unsuccessfully for a job, his British military colonel suggested that he go to the Elder Dempster offices to sign on as a seaman.26 Another man explained that he was working in a shoe store in Lagos when a British manager from Elder Dempster came in to have his shoes repaired. The two men began talking, and according to the seaman, “He said he was teaching people on how to travel all over the world. From there, I developed an interest in what to know about the whole world. So, I asked how he could help me. He said I am too small. I was fifteen years old at the time.”27 Despite his young age, he soon began working as a greaser on Elder Dempster ships. Some men relied on personal connections to local friends or family who helped them to get the job. But even with these connections, men’s responses implied that going to work as seamen was a decision rooted in their own desire for travel and adventure. As one man explained, he secured the job through a connection with an Urhobo friend he knew from back home in the Delta State, but his personal interest in becoming a seaman was peaked when he moved to Lagos and heard a lot of talk of travel abroad: “It was because it’s only in Lagos that people talked about England. They say, ‘I want to go to England,’ and from this urge to travel, I went to England.”28
Travel to distant corners of the globe opened up a myriad of opportunities for seamen to create social bonds that challenged and transcended cultural, social, and ideological boundaries of both their home communities and those abroad. Seamen were often able to negotiate and redefine the cultural, racial, class, and national landscapes they inhabited within the contexts of their travels. Through the bonds they formed, seamen nurtured a sense of alterity and cosmopolitanism, and imagined a sense of belonging in a myriad of volatile, and sometimes hostile, social and cultural landscapes.
For many seamen, Pan-African connections provided an important basis for community. This was particularly true in Liverpool, which, as the headquarters for Elder Dempster shipping and the point of departure and return for most voyages, was the perceived home base for seamen. It was therefore not unusual that seamen visiting Liverpool found a large community of former seamen from across West Africa as well as Liverpool-born blacks to socialize with.29 Seamen’s testimonies revealed the central importance Pan-Africanism played as the antecedent for forming social, cultural, and economic alliances.30 Histories of Pan-Africanism from the postwar era are usually concerned with the intellectual movements of the political elite in their anti-imperialist struggles. Barbara Bush wrote, “By the First World War this intellectual black nationalism, which had been concerned with establishing a racial and cultural bond between Africa and its diaspora, had embraced more directly political objectives.”31 By contrast, the Pan-Africanism of seamen was a popular, working-class expression of black solidarity and affiliation. Rather than a political or intellectual movement, seamen’s experiences reflected a lived Pan-Africanism.32 As one seaman recalled the scene in Liverpool: “We were really welcomed and we made new friends. . . . There were a lot of Africans, whether Ghanaians, Togolese, Liberian, or Sierra Leoneans—we were treated as brothers.”33 Descriptions of the social scene in Liverpool in particular revealed the extent to which seamen identified with the Pan-African community. Nightclubs bore the names of ethnic and national groups originating in Africa, but seamen claimed that all the clubs welcomed mixed populations. One reported, “Sometimes I stayed in Liverpool with my European girlfriend for three months whenever I dropped from the ship. I know the Yoruba, Igbo, Ghanaian, and Freetown Clubs in Liverpool. . . . At night, after the day’s work, we went round the clubs and that was a seaman’s life.”34 Liverpool-born blacks and emigrants from the Caribbean frequented the same social clubs, creating many opportunities for social and cultural mixing among blacks of the diaspora. The Stanley House, a community center in Liverpool, also served as an important meeting point for local blacks and visiting seamen.35
The same attraction and affiliation to local black communities could be identified in seamen’s recounting of their experiences in South America, Canada, and the United States. Several recounted their satisfaction over seeing Africans in Brazil, and the discovery of close affinities between blacks there and back at home. As one said, “South America is also good. In fact, in South America you will see Africans; it is just like Africa where you will see some of them working barefoot.”36 Particularly for the Yoruba seamen, the meeting with local communities in Brazil was deeply moving, as they found an unexpected familiarity among Yoruba descendants. One recalled, “I had a peculiar experience in Brazil. I was in Santos for the first time, I was in the black community and the people are predominantly Yoruba. These people called me ‘a fresh brother from home.’ They spoke Yoruba language but they spoke more in Portuguese language. They never wanted me to come back to Nigeria again, but I told them that was not possible.”37
At the same time that seamen made strategic use of Pan-African and black diaspora relations, their mobility and resourcefulness led them to construct alliances that also cut across boundaries of race. Perhaps the most outstanding tribute to seamen’s defiance of racial, class, and national boundaries was the romantic partnerships they formed abroad with European women, and the children born of these unions. According to seamen’s testimonies, the taking of a “wife” or “wives” in one or several foreign ports of call was commonplace. While these were not official marriages in the legal sense, seamen referred to these women as wives because they relied on them to provide a sense of home, community, and belonging in foreign countries.38 Retired seamen spoke with pride of their families abroad, and some claimed to have several “wives” and children spread over a few countries. When asked if he had girlfriends abroad, one seaman claimed, “Definitely, there should be.”39 A seaman interviewed claimed that he had a wife and two children in Holland, as well as a wife and two children in Brazil.40 Another informant boasted that in addition to his two wives and seven children i
n Nigeria, he had a wife and children in Liverpool, and a wife and children in Spain.41 A former captain told the following story of one of his crew:
There was a case when we traveled to Freetown. When we got to Freetown, this guy said, my wife is coming to greet us with the children and also bring some local Sierra Leonean food for us. Of course, we got to the port and she came and we ate and met the wife with two children and thanked her very well. The second day we left, sailed for Tema and when we got to Tema, this same man says his wife is bringing food for us. So, this woman came with one child. And of course, we came to Lagos and this guy told us he wants to go and greet his family. But it is no longer like that because now you spend less than a day in a particular port.42
Many seamen kept pictures of their wives and children abroad hanging in their homes in Nigeria, and pointed them out during interviews. When asked about children abroad, one informant explained, “Well, the fortunate ones had [children]. Look at my wife in that picture on the wall. For the fortunate ones, they had children, but because they could not afford to bring them back to Nigeria, their wives stayed over there.”43
Seamen’s partners abroad were drawn from among the economically and socially marginalized underclasses of white societies in England and elsewhere. Testimonies revealed that many of the Liverpool wives were of Irish descent, but one seaman claimed his wife was an Egyptian immigrant to England.44 As noted above, these relationships drew criticism from both local populations and government officials throughout the period under question. It is therefore significant that seamen’s descriptions of their marriages abroad made little or no reference to official disapproval of interracial sexual relations. Quite the contrary, the narratives that seamen constructed around these relationships flew in the face of political and social constraints, and revealed a surprising sense of agency and entitlement. This is particularly evident in seamen’s characterization of these women as wives. This classification is a significant indicator of how seamen viewed these relationships, and the role they played for them in their lives outside of Nigeria.