by the ruling class to justify the exploitation of black people's land and labour from the 16th century onwards, As Earl Grey wrote, in the 19th century, of British imperialism in Aftica: Throughout this part of the British Dominions the coloured people are generally looked upon by the whites as an inferior race, whose interests ought to be systematically disregarded when they come into competition with their own, and who ought to be governed mainly with a view of the advantage of the superior race. And for this advantago two things are considered to be especially necessury; first, that facilities trade unions The ideal of the 'universal brotherhood of man' to which the labour movement subscribes is in sharp contradiction to the reality of deep divisions within the working clasa. Behind the amply resolutions against racial discrimination passed by the ThiC and other trade union conferences since the 1950s, lies the reality of frequent capitulation to the racialism embedded in the working class. Workers and unions too often react to their real problems with attacks on the potential victims of the employers, rather than the employers themselves. Thus in the 19th century it was the fear that immigrant workers, then mainly Jewish and Irish, would be used to cut wages or cause dilation in the skilled trades which led to such incidents as the anti-Irish riots in Liverpool and Birmingham. The discrimination against Jewish workers led them to form their own breaka way unions in the garment trade at the turn of the ventury. In 1919, fears of unemployment by white seamen in a decliniog industry led to the riots aginst black seamen in Cardiff, and to che imposition of quotas for blacks by the National Union of Seamen in the 1920s. Quotas were again imposed in the 1950 and 1960s against black workers. At the Mansfield Hosiery Mills in Loughborough, white workers reacied to real threats of unemployment by attacking black workers in the factory. In London in 1968, it was redundancy fears which underlay the big turnout of dockers in support of Enoch Powel!
TRADE UNION RESPONSE Is general, the response of trade unions to racialism among their members has been to turn a blind eye. At Manslield Hostery Milks, officials of the National Union of Hosiery and Knit wear Workers refused to condemn white workers who carzied on working after their fellow black trade unionists had come out. The NUHKW officials had previously failed to help black workers challenge a system of union organisation which denied ndequate representa