Description
This paper considers the relationship between trade unions and British imperialism using the case study of the National Agricultural Labourers' Union (NALU). In the late nineteenth century NALU emerged as a key union defending the interest of immiserated land-workers and did so by confronting the power of landowners, promoting emigration and campaigning for the vote. However, little has been said about the racial politics which underpinned this praxis. Situated in the literature on racial capitalism, it is argued that the NALU leadership used political subjectivities of 'white slavery' and imagined geographies of 'Greater Britain' to help integrate rural working classes into the prevailing imperial order, showing how trade unions also contributed to the evolving social differentiation at the heart of empire.
