Thinking Beyond the Workplace: Unions, Logistics and International Solidarity in a British Port

该项目将调查码头工人通过工业行动参与国际事业的程度，以及推动或阻止他们这样做的力量。为了做到这一点，我将使用档案和人种学研究的结合，重点放在英国萨福克郡的费利克斯托港。从历史上看，码头工人和他们的工会一直是围绕国际问题斗争的基础。这是由于他们在全球物流系统的关键节点中所处的位置，使他们作为工人具有独特的权力，可以通过使一个国家的供应链脱轨而有意实意地参与国际政治。彼得·科尔（Peter Cole）在他对旧金山国际码头和仓库联盟（International Longshore and Warehouse Union）的分析中记录了这一点，以及他们拒绝处理来自种族隔离的南非的货物。最近，意大利热那亚和利沃诺的码头工人组织拒绝处理来自以色列的货物。在英国，码头工人和他们的工会已经开始罢工，以支持国际事业，就像他们在1920年那样，在波苏战争中拒绝为波兰军队装载武器。他们也做了相反的事情，比如20世纪20年代，全国海员工会（NUS）与政府勾结，确保印度海员不能在英国定居。正是这种多样化的历史使英国成为一个有趣的案例研究，而费利克斯托——英国最繁忙的港口，拥有大量工会工人——是这个项目最重要的地点。

This project will investigate the extent to which dock workers engage with international causes through industrial action and the forces that either propel or prevent them from doing so. To do this, I will use a combination of archival and ethnographic research, focusing on the Port of Felixstowe in Suffolk, England. Historically, dock worker sand their unions have been fundamental to struggles around international issues. This is due to their positions within key nodes of a global system of logistics, giving them a unique power as workers to meaningfully engage in international politics through the derailing of a nation's supply-chains. Peter Cole documents this in his analysis of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in San Francisco and their refusal to handle goods from apartheid South Africa. Recently, dockworkers' organisations in Genoa and Livorno, Italy, have refused to handle goods from Israel. In Britain, dockworkers and their unions have gone on strike to aid international causes as they did in1920, refusing to board arms for the Polish army in the Polish-Soviet War. They have also done the opposite, as when the National Union of Seamen (NUS) colluded with the state to ensure that Indian sailors could not settle within the United Kingdom in the 1920s. It is this variegated history that makes Britain an interesting case study, and Felixstowe - the busiest port in the United Kingdom with a largely unionised workforce -the most vital site for this project.