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TRANSVAAL MINERS STRIKE 1914

INDUSTRIAL VIOLENCE IN JOHANNESBURG

Jeff Woolgar

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‘THE GENERAL STRIKE,     JOHANNESBURG 1914.’

W.M. Berlin published the following picture postcard following the 'General Strike of 1914'. The four picture postcards illustrated here are each headed, ‘INCIDENTS OF THE GENERAL STRIKE.     JANUARY 1914.’. These are printed letterpress, and captioned at the foot in black. The backs are left blank, and I have not seen any that entered the postal system as postcards, although three of the cards illustrated here have messages. I have given each card a number; in order to establish each card a catalogue number, as I am unaware they have been catalogued before.

They were purchased in the green envelope illustrated above. It has ‘Passed by the C.I.D.’ [Criminal Investigation Department] at lower left and double underlined ‘Postcards of the .. / General Strike.’.

This envelope is also manuscript in black ink, “For Jess” and “10^th to 20^th January 19¹⁴". This is not in the same hand as those messages recorded below.

Postcards, have an imprint and have been censored: ‘Passed by the C.I.D.’ and ‘W. M. Berlin, P.O. Box 2262, Johannesburg.’

No. 1. 'Dispersing the crowd after the Arrest of the Leaders.’
No. 2. ‘Trades Hall Captures being marched to Marshall Square.’
No. 3. 'Commando of Burghers in the Neighbourhood of Trades Hall’
No. 4. 'Crowd Waiting for Permits Outside the Lawcourts.’

Messages from the backs of these cards were sent from, Lieutenant George A. Eliot, Civilian Defence Force, to his Mother.

Postcard No. 1. Is blank and has no message.

Postcard No. 2. "I am sending a packet of Strike Postcards - the only ones I can get; they would not allow photograph to be taken of anything, but these four were taken, & were allowed to pass."

Postcard No. 3. "Johannesburg. 14.1.1914. My detest Mother Here’s a fine state of things – Martial Law again & by the end of the week we will have 60000 troops under arms. I think we shall show these Agitators that Striking can't pay out here. … I luckily am posted to my own district at present & have sole charge of inlet and egress to the municipality & have 24 men, mostly patrolling 7 keeping the natives I check.”

Postcard No. 4. “Johannesburg, 29.1.1914. I have only just got back after a very trying fortnight under Martial Law, & I am sending you two 2 papers, one with a few pictures & both quirt good descriptions of the’ Strike. We deal with these things out here rather better than you do at home, & if the authorities there would do as we do here, & recognise that the only way to break a strike & avoid bloodshed, is to bring up an overwhelming force, there would in a short time be no more strikes: this is the only way to protect the workmen from himself, & to prevent their families being a burden to the State, for who are the people who suffer most – why, the men who strike & their families. We recognise here, that the men must be protected against their leaders & against themselves. I had lots of real hard work to do, only arrested a few people, mostly natives, but of course did all I had to do with discrimination & without violence, nor did I hurt anyone. I had to be up every night visiting my various patrols, pickets etc. Ec.”

The 'Martial Law' postcard with a standard divided back (address side) is on a cream board and printed in brown, in English and Dutch. The printing took place before the date of the Proclamation was known, as the date “14” has been added twice in manuscript before the card received a varnish finish. Regrettably the ‘finish’ has made the small type difficult to read. There is no message on this postcard.

The photographic postcard has a divide back (address side) printed brown, There is no publisher noted on this postcard. Written in black ink on thr back: “This is a portion of the famous drive on Thursday afternoon Jan 15^th 4.0pm when everyone on the streets of Benoni were rounded up & marched to the Park . from thence some goo were marched to Boksburg & quite a number were sentenced to 21 days for striking without notice of 24 hours."

It is always worth reading messages on postcards posted during the first month of 1914 to see if they mention ‘The General Strike’ on the Rand. Two messages I have seen of late, are given below. They were written whilst sending New Year greetings to relatives:

“… All the Railway men at Jeppe are on strike …” and “… I shall come the end of next week if the strike is not on. …”

CONCLUSION

For the bloody 1914 General Strike, the messages' cited above were not written by miners, or railway workers, or any others who were on strike. Nonetheless, the strike effected every one living on the Witwatersrand, and probably for miles around which including at least one writer, Lieutenant George A. Eliot.

These strikes that took place in the years before the Great War were long remembered. The next large strike on the Witwatersrand came in February 1922. In a two mile procession which followed three coffins was a banner of the Industrial Federation ‘Remember Our Comrades Murdered in 1913’.

Acknowledgments
I thank the late Joan Matthews for scans of postcards that formed part of her outstanding collection.

Bibliography
Newsletter, Southern Africa Postcard Research Group [Also called 'Newsletter, S.A.P.R.G.'], Isle of Man, December 1991. p.1, 6, 7? and, June 1995, p.7.

Millin, Sarah Gertrude, (1936), General Smuts, Faber and Faber Ltd., 2 Vol., London.