 |
|
|
 | | |  |
Culture wars? Bristol's colour bar dispute of 1963 |
 |
Students' protest against the bus company in Bristol |
Yet Hodge's admission that there was a labour shortage on the buses undermines the union's very argument that job insecurity rather than racism motivated white busworkers. (It is worth remembering that women conductresses were themselves a relatively new innovation and that male drivers were then the norm).
Authoritarian management and poor conditions for white workers were obvious factors in the racial antipathy generated during the bus boycott campaign. More general factors were also at work in the 'canteen culture' of Bristol's tightly-knit community of busworkers. An intense localism, informed by the casual racism implicit in the culture was also evident.
One conductress told me it was commonly thought that Bristol's new Black migrants 'ate Kitticat'. But most busworkers didn't see themselves as racist and were oblivious of the hurt they could cause by racial
'joshing'. As another bus conductress, who was one of the first willing to work with a black driver in the mid 1960s, told me: "There were darkies there but I don’t remember any ill feeling at all, not really." Her choice of terms speaks volumes.
Headline reporting the acceptance of Asian and Afro-Caribbean workers on Bristol's buses
© Courtesy of Bristol United Press |
So what can we learn from Bristol's bus boycott of 1963? Certainly one thing is that injustice can be effectively resisted, at least up to a point, by individuals determined, skilled and inspired enough to try. Another is that the 'political correctness' so derided today, grew out of a real need to challenge the racist views that were once so unquestioned.
Finally, we discover that no situation can be understood merely by demonising one group instead of another -exploitation has many faces and can take on many colours. Class, race, and gender all helped to determine the situation of Bristol's busworkers in the 1960s, and they still do today.
Words: Madge Dresser
Your comments
| |
 Print this page |
|
Archive
Look back into the past using the Legacies' archives. Find nearly 200 tales from around the country in our collection.
Read more > |
| | |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
| The 大象传媒 is not responsible for the content of external Web sites. |
| | | |
| | |
| |
|
