Their eyes had become so accustomed to gazing at the sea through the coruscation of air and water that they picked up small boats that were, for some reason, too small for radar
In Kuwait, after the 1956 Suez War, workers at Ahmadi port brought oil transport and loading of British and French tankers to a halt, and protests and sabotage were so extensive that a nightly curfew was instituted.57 In Aden the same year, when Antonin Besse made a large donation to Oxford Univers…
Oblique accounts offered in the archives show that workers were deeply aware of the strategies of racialisation and hierarchies of labour meant to keep them in place. In Aden, during an Aden Port Trust dockers’ strike, the workers demanded paid transport to Britain once every five years. While the …
What distinguishes many strikes at docks on the Arabian Peninsula is not only the depth of worker grievances about workplace conditions (as in the story that opens this chapter), but also the weaving of these workplace protests into political demands. Whether mobilising against colonial masters or …
Undoubtedly, the casualised and subcontracting nature of the labour regime was the primary factor in the low productivity.9 A 1953 report from the docks of Kuwait clearly recognised that a better-managed port could not depend entirely on subcontracted labour. The report added that ‘with the growth …
