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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Joe RedmayneORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
The article explores the social characteristics of South Shields and the interactions of inhabitants to illustrate how political, maritime, and urban changes reshaped its community between 1914 and 1922. Predominately a coal port with links to mining and shipbuilding, South Shields’ waterfront and industrial hinterlands were sites that witnessed entangled processes of empire, commerce, and political action.[1] Moreover, the First World War and the years that followed saw broader tensions in working class, race, and gender politics in the town, which fuelled debates about British colonial subjects. The article uses the lens of the South Shields Labour Party and Trades Council (SSLP&TC) to contribute to the discussion about workers’ intellectual engagement regarding solidarity, patriotism, internationalism, imperialism and racial issues.[2] This research adds to the literature on port towns and their distinctive global dynamics across themes of radicalism, urban identity, and forms of political action.[3] It follows a three-stage structure to reveal the intellectual turning points and workers’ spatial practices in South Shields. Firstly, attention is initially afforded to the British maritime trade and the commodity of coal, with an appraisal of its importance to the town’s economy, followed by an analysis of occupations and social movements. Secondly, it considers the cultural changes and the protean nature of South Shields with the migration of British colonial seafarers. Finally, the article situates the immediate and long-term impacts that these changes of migration and political action had on the identities of the port town, considering their wider ramifications and the extent inhabitants transcended occupational, political, and racial differences.[4][1] For an assessment of the accompanied changes in European ports during this period see, Josef W. Konvitz, “The crises of Atlantic port cities 1880 to 1920,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 36 (1994): 293-318.[2] Yann Béliard and Neville Kirk, Workers of the Empire, Unite: Radical and Popular Challenges to British Imperialism, 1910s-1960s(Liverpool: LUP, 2021), 1-24; Current research on SSLP&TC overlooks workers’ interaction with race and colonialism, see David Clark, We do not want the Earth: The History of the Shields Labour Party (Tyne & Wear: Bewick Press, 1992).[3] John Barzman, “Introduction: Travailleurs de la mer,” Cahiers d’histoire. Revue d’histoire critique 154 (2022): 11-30; Alice Mah, Port Cities and Global Legacies: Urban Identity, Waterfront Work, and Radicalism (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014), 1-24.[4] Frank Broeze, “Militancy and pragmatism: an international perspective on maritime labour, 1870–1914,” International Review of Social History 36 (1991): 165-200.
Author(s): Redmayne J
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Le Mouvement Social
Year: 2025
Volume: 287
Issue: 2
Pages: 69-94
Online publication date: 27/01/2025
Acceptance date: 14/10/2024
Date deposited: 18/10/2024
ISSN (print): 0027-2671
ISSN (electronic): 1961-8646
Publisher: Editions La Decouverte
URL: https://doi.org/10.3917/lms1.287.0069
DOI: 10.3917/lms1.287.0069
ePrints DOI: 10.57711/asr0-9h89
Notes: English Language Manuscript: "Worker Mobilisation, Spatial Practices, and Contested Ideologies in the Port Town of South Shields (England, ca. 1914-1922)". Special Issue “Port Identities”.
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