1935 Copperbelt strike
A major strike broke out among African mineworkers in the Copperbelt Province of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) on 29 May 1935 in protest against taxes levied by the British colonial administration.
Although it failed, the strike was the first organized industrial agitation in Northern Rhodesia and is viewed by some as the first overt action against colonial rule.
The unrest gave missionaries a chance to respond to the "Watchtower movement",[a] joining the mining companies to provide a Christian education and create a disciplined workforce.
The colonial administration, foreseeing a future drop in copper prices, also created social-service schemes for rural relatives of the urban workers.
[7] Rhodes brought British influence into the region by obtaining mineral rights from local chiefs through questionable treaties.
[6] The Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1891, signed in Lisbon on 11 June 1891 by the United Kingdom and Portugal, fixed the boundary between territories administered by the British South Africa Company (BSAC) in North-Eastern Rhodesia and Portuguese Mozambique.
The tax was high (in some cases, six months' wages), and intended to create a system of debt bondage and generate income for investment in other mines.
[17] In 1935, the Northern Rhodesian administration doubled urban taxes and reduced them in rural areas to counter the depression and related losses incurred by the closure of one of the region's four mines.
[19] At the other two mines, the strike was less spontaneous than at Mufulira (where the tax increase was received with disbelief) and police arrested leaders as a precautionary measure.
On 29 May, a large crowd gathered around the compound containing police, officials, clerks and elders; protesters began throwing stones and shouting slogans.
The commission reported that industrialization and de-tribalization were the most important problems in Northern Rhodesia,[23] and the tax's abrupt implementation led to the strike.
[23] After the enquiry, Hubert Winthrop Young, governor of Northern Rhodesia from 1935 to 1938,[24] established a tribal leaders' advisory council for Africans in the Copperbelt similar to the one at the Roan Antelope mine.
[a] The London Missionary Society and the Church of Scotland worked together after the strike, saying that the lack of education and religious instruction were contributing factors.
[25] The missionaries and the mining companies said that a Christian education would create a disciplined workforce, a belief which was called the spiritual wing of industrial capitalism.
The actions by British authorities led to five years of prosperity for the mining companies; European miners struck for higher pay and were rewarded.
