The Dialectics of Colonial Labour Control: Class Struggles in the Nigerian Coal Industry, 1914-1949

This paper is a case study of the labour movement at the Enugu Government Colliery, Nigeria from its opening in 1914 until a massacre of 21 striking miners in 1949. It focuses on the emergence of worker consciousness in a context of overlapping ethnic and class-based affiliations and its expression in acts of collective and individual protest. The workers struggled against a complex system of labour control emanating from both inside and outside the industry. Through confrontations with the state, they came to understand their own importance to the national and regional economy.