Petticoats and pickhandles: suffrage and socialism in gendered resistance to empire and mining capitalism

abstract

I recount the story of Mary Fitzgerald, a working-class Irish immigrant whose feminist and socialist identity emerge in the contest with capitalism on the Witwatersrand following the Boer War. Her life story in the early 20th Century reveals the specific nature of colonialism and mining hegemony on the Rand and the reasons for women's presence in organised working-class resistance. Hyslop (2009) has noted that white labour's confrontation in 1913 and 1914 with mining capitalism influenced other marginalised colonial subjects to challenge empire and that this was partly due to the importance of transcontinental ideas. The article turns attention to the gendered map of empire and Mary's trial on charges of public violence in 1913 to suggest that women's participation in the public sphere found impetus as much from transcontinental ideas as just grounds that the crisis of industrial health conditions on the mines posed for white working-class men and women in this period.

keywords:

• gender
• colonialism
• empire
• Mary Fitzgerald
• Miners' Phthisis

Notes

1 ‘Whiteness’ holds contradictory meanings and particularly in South Africa is often invested with denial and guilt. The variety of meanings which ‘whiteness’ held in this period reflect different and shifting positions of power and identity rather than homogeneity. The extent to which ‘white’ can be understood as a categorisation has been largely in terms of class differentiation and class antagonism (Freund, 1992).

2 British women who were encouraged to take up the offer of domestic work in the Transvaal, where Mary was ultimately to live, were advised that in this colony there were no class barriers; life offered possibilities for advancement for women looking for employment, even if it was in a dusty, dry mining town where there were more tents than houses to be found (Lowth, 1903).

3 Over time, white workers were required to supervise larger and larger numbers of rock drillers during one shift. In addition, to speed up production and profits, mining companies increased the number of shifts underground in a day, both of which dramatically increased exposure of workers to silicon dust (Katz, 1979).

4 A London newspaper The Sketch (July 29, 1913) ran a photograph of Mary with a caption which claimed she was the chief reason for the riots on the Rand. She sued the newspaper for libel and extracted an apology and retraction (Fitzgerald, n.d.). The Strike Album (1913) published in Johannesburg described her in similar terms.

5 The contestation of skills and progressive redundancy culminated in the 1922 strike which was put down with military force by Smuts, ending white unions in the form in which they had existed. Mary was not involved in the 1922 strike and it falls outside the scope of the article.

6 Brink’s research found women garment workers were often sole breadwinners in families where male members of the household were incapacitated and unable to work as a result of Miners’ Phthisis (Brink, 1987;1990).

7 Formed in Chicago in the United States in 1905 by Daniel DeLeon and Eugene V Debbs, the IWW organised unskilled and semi-skilled labourers, seasonal and migrant workers and women who were the most vulnerable to exploitation when the right to form trade unions was not recognised. It had branches in Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and several South American countries (Renshaw, 1967).

8 Women tailoresses made the demand that where women performed the same work as men in the industry they be paid the hourly rate.

9 At Mary Fitzgerald’s funeral in September 1960, Anna Scheepers, a leader of the Garment Workers Union paid tribute to her as one of the first to get garment workers to stand together to demand better working conditions (Interview Margaret Mountjoy, 7 April 1984; 21 June 1984, Johannesburg).

10 See Vuyo Mkhize, ‘National awards: The great and the good’, Daily Sun, 30 April 2018’: “Mary Fitzgerald: Order of Luthuli in Silver, which recognises South Africans who contributed to the struggle for democracy, nation-building and human rights, justice and peace as well as for the resolution of conflict.”

11 See Katz (1979) and Marks (2004) whose research has interrogated the notion that Miners’ Phthisis incidence among black workers was negligible during the period. It was only in 1940 that technology made it possible to clearly distinguish between Miners’ Phthisis and Tuberculosis, raising questions about the real numbers of workers who were afflicted and died of Miners’ Phthisis in the early 20^th Century.

12 The recent successful conclusion of a class action in which agreement was reached to pay compensation for the deaths and disability of workers from Silicosis and Tuberculosis dating back to 1965 are evidence of the continuing long-term vulnerability of miners to silicon dust and the negligence of mining companies and government to implement regulations, as well as to compensate thousands of miners from rural communities and neighbouring African countries. See: ‘Settlement of the Silicosis and TB class action’, 26 July 2019, available at: https://www.silicosissettlement.co.za/about (site accessed 3 November 2019) and Jacques Coetzee ‘The scale of silicosis, the data behind South Africa’s largest class settlement and the lives it seeks to change’, Mail & Guardian, n.d., available at: https://silicosis.mg.co.za/ (accessed 3 November 2018).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lou Haysom

LOU HAYSOM is a media practitioner who has worked in community media and as a professional journalist. Following from her interest in feminism, women’s history and race, class and gender in social struggles in South Africa, she completed a Master’s thesis on Mary Fitzgerald and graduated with a Master’s degree in Gender Studies. Email: [email protected]