Nation on Board

by Lynn Schler

  Our Union first of all, wants to express its concern for the continued denial that there is no discrimination whereas actual fact everyone realizes that it is there. If the shipping companies refuse to recognize that discrimination exists, then they cannot see the need to ask white crews to stop the habit. It will be very difficult for you to enjoy the confidence of African crews when you dismiss the reality of discrimination, which occurs almost in every ship, when many white crews are well known for their attitudes towards Africans. You must admit that we are not in a position to gain anything by manufacturing imaginary stories which have not happened, you will also agree that the situation must be so desperately disappointing that special emphasis is always placed by the Union about it whenever we approach you. This problem is daily becoming more complex. The treatment is so miserable that it is now psychologically resulting in conflict, quarrels, near-tension which finally are put in other forms as delinquency on part of African crews.84

  These impassioned pleas made little impact on Elder Dempster officials. General Manager Glasier came to Lagos in late 1959 to demand that “all talk about racial hatred must cease.” According to notes from a meeting between the union and management, Glasier complained that over the last two months, difficulties had culminated with “certain letters.” The shipping company official rejected their contents, as the meeting notes read: “Mr. Glasier said that never in all the years of his experience with Trade Unions had he ever received or read such letters from a Union and he was very gravely disturbed as they created an atmosphere in which the Lines would find it very difficult to maintain their usual harmonious relations with the Union; he was quite sure that the letters did not express the feelings of the seamen.”85 Glasier claimed that disputes on board ships were routine affairs, both between crews and officers and among crews themselves, and these occurrences were not the result of racism, even if they erupted between whites and blacks. He threatened that continued allegations of racism would result in a change of Elder Dempster hiring practices, and he warned the union: “Seven years ago there were 400 Nigerian seamen, now the three lines employed 1700. We will continue to employ Nigerian seamen for preference at Lagos as a convenient port of changing crews, but if there was not an immediate cessation of the demonstration and other commotions which had been current in recent months, the Lines would be compelled to consider engagement of further Freetown crews.”86 The intimidation apparently worked, because at another meeting two days later, the union leadership backed down from their previous allegations. The notes from this meeting demonstrate the success of Glasier’s strong-arm tactics: “As Mr. Glasier had nothing further to add, Mr. Ekore went on to say that his Union wished to cooperate peacefully.” Mr. Glasier asked if what Mr. Ekore wanted to say was that the question of race hatred had been dropped for good. Mr. Ekore agreed and mentioned that at the first meeting he had said that race discrimination was not a company policy.87

  POWER AND POLITICS IN THE NIGERIAN UNION OF SEAMEN IN THE COLONIAL ERA

  The ineffective efforts of union officials to reshape the terms of the debate between seamen and shipping companies reveal the limits of power of the seamen’s union. Despite the rhetoric of demands, throughout the 1950s the Nigerian Union of Seamen did not pose a serious threat to the shipping companies’ designs of maintaining the status quo. This was partially because union leaders in Lagos were preoccupied primarily with internal political struggles for control over the organization rather than agitating for seamen’s rights. The infighting that characterized the union in the 1950s engrossed both the leadership and dissenting factions, and left little time to effectively challenge the shipping companies. According to Hakeem Tijani, leadership of the seamen’s union continually changed hands, as “existing officials were thrown out of office through the same methods of intrigue which they themselves had employed to get into power.”88 The shipping companies and the colonial government followed the conflicts almost with amusement. One government review from the period stated, “The record of the Union’s activities over the years makes a most pathetic reading. Almost from its inception, there have always been instances of endless strife, distrust, intrigues, tribal discrimination, police arrests, litigation, rifts of members into factions, one faction trying at one time or the other, and often quite successfully, to overthrow the other from office, and to install itself into power. No set of officials of the union would appear to have held office happily together for any reasonable length of time.”89

  The self-serving practices of the union leadership created additional obstacles standing in the way of effective organizing among seamen. Union officers routinely attempted to leverage their proximity to the shipping company in order to advance their own interests. This could be seen in a report from an Elder Dempster official in 1958 following his meeting with President Ekore. According to the report, President Ekore complained of his low salary from the union, and claimed that he would be far better off back at sea. Ekore asked the shipping company if he could be allowed to supply chickens to Elder Dempster vessels as a ship chandler, thereby earning more income. The conflict of interest was noted by the local official: “We think this was the most important point of the meeting so far as Ekore was concerned. We pointed out that, under the present circumstances, this would not be desirable and that we already had an efficient Ships’ Chandler.”90

  The focus of the leadership constituted a colossal divide between the concerns of union officials and the everyday experiences of seamen on ships. This divide was partly unavoidable, as the unique nature of seamen’s work took them away from Lagos and union headquarters for most of the time they were under contract. On the other hand, officers based in Lagos were either Westernized elites posing as professional trade unionists and never actually employed as seamen, or seamen who had been denied work due to disciplinary actions taken against them on board or criminal activity such as smuggling or drug trafficking. Thus, the gap separating the rank-and-file seamen from the leadership and decision-making organs of the union was exceptionally wide. In a May 1959 address to the union, President Ekore described the problematic situation: “The Seamen’s Union is not like any other and why trouble always finds a way easy, is because when a resolution has passed and [been] adopted by a handful of members ashore without the knowledge of members at sea, on arrival they will declare their stand of ignorance and thereby seek to oppose the adopted resolution which actually is right.”91

  The internal conflicts in the union were attributed time and again to tribalism, as competition for leadership positions and resources often fueled ethnic tensions between members. As Ekore said in his address, “From its origin, there had been no time of peace and understanding among [the union’s] members. . . . [A] fact that lay low the glory and reputation of the Union is a Tribal Hatred and discrimination among its members. The daily struggle is, I want me Tribe’s man in the office.”92 According to the chief steward of the MV Aureol, the conflict was mainly between coastal groups originating in eastern and western Nigeria, as he reported to Elder Dempster officials: “The bone of contention in the Union is Tribal rivalry of who are to hold Office, at present it is dominated by Eboe and Ejaw tribes who come from the Eastern region, and it would appear that the Warri and Calabar people are objecting to all the officers being from these two tribes. . . . I do not anticipate any upset with the men, it is just that being mostly illiterate, they can be so easy led up the Garden Path, and that would seem what is happening.”93

  While union officials busied themselves with power struggles and political intrigue, everyday seamen continued to confront the tough realities of onboard discrimination and poor working conditions. It has been seen that seamen endured grueling, and at times perilous, working lives on board colonial ships. They worked long hours in jobs that were demeaning, physically difficult, and dangerous. They suffered from wage discrimination in the colonial shipping industry, and lacked the organizational means for effectively improving their conditions of work. Journeys t
ook them away from their families for months or years, and their wives back home had to endure the challenges of maintaining a household in their husbands’ long absences. In addition, Nigerian seamen suffered from racism on board ships and in ports of call, but their protests against this mistreatment fell on deaf ears. The union leadership, preoccupied with Lagos-based politics, remained largely useless and irrelevant in organizing and initiating seamen’s protests, and did little to address the sources of their discontent.

  But as will be seen, seamen did not wait around for the union to address their needs. Rather, they employed a full range of options and leveraged the skills that were available to them in their unique position as seamen in order to improve the conditions of their lives. Instead of accepting their disempowerment, seamen continually exploited the various opportunities that presented themselves on each voyage across the sea. The next chapter will examine entrepreneurial efforts, cultural alliances, and social ideologies of resistance that seamen mobilized to meet basic needs and better their lives.

  2

  Seamen and the Cosmopolitan Imaginary

  The social imaginary is not a set of ideas; rather it is what enables, through making sense of, the practices of a society.*

  —Charles Taylor

  WHEN COSMOS NIAGWAN was a youth in the village of Shendam in northern Nigeria during the colonial era, he dreamed of becoming a truck driver. As he recalled, “My idea was to do something manly,” and he envisioned himself behind the wheel of a larger trailer truck. This plan for his future quickly changed one night while he was still in secondary school. The colonial Information Service arrived in Shendam with a mobile cinema, and he went along with the rest of the village to watch a film projected onto a makeshift screen set up in front of the local chief’s house. During the newsreels, he saw images of new trailer trucks arriving in Nigeria and being unloaded from a large cargo ship. As he recalled, he was suddenly struck with the realization that a ship is much larger than a truck. Impressed with the immense size of these seagoing vessels, he told himself, “Now THAT is what I am going to drive!”1 As soon as he finished secondary school, he set out on a journey that indeed culminated in his commanding of ships. Niagwan began his career as a seaman with the Nigerian Port Authority (NPA) in 1963 as a marine officer cadet. That year, he was sent by the NPA for study and training at the King Edward VII Nautical College in London, and he worked with Elder Dempster until he earned his second mate certificate of competency in 1967. Following his formal studies, he worked for seven years with the Black Star Line of Ghana and then moved to the Bangladesh Shipping Corporation for two more years before returning to work for the Nigerian National Shipping Line (NNSL) in 1987.

  Captain Niagwan’s journey to becoming a seaman began with a set of social imaginaries that organized his view of the world and grounded his course of action. His recounting of the process that brought him to seafaring began with a clear vision of his own potent masculinity and an unhindered sense of possibility. When considering the obstacles that might have stood in the way of the son of a farmer born eight hundred kilometers from the sea in northern Nigeria under the shadow of British colonial rule, his recounting of how he came to command ships appears all the more extraordinary. The sense of empowerment and opportunity revealed in his story is a crucial starting point for any investigation into Captain Niagwan’s life trajectory. Indeed, for most of the Nigerian seamen whose stories are presented here, the journey to seafaring began with an anticipation of opportunity and an openness to adventure. Although many had never left Nigeria before becoming seamen, they were keenly attuned to the prospects that transnational migrations might bring, and they were quick to exploit the economic, social, and cultural opportunities that presented themselves along the way.

  This is not to suggest that these men were not confronted with obstacles and injustices that barred them from carving out their lives in the image of their idealized imaginaries. Without doubt, the Nigerian seamen recruited by the British shipping industry in the 1950s entered a world of colonial hierarchies and biases, a hostile landscape of intersecting geographies of race, class, gender, and nation that converged on and limited the opportunities seamen had for navigating transnational spaces at their own will. Decolonization did not improve Nigerian seamen’s standing abroad. On the contrary, the 1960s and 1970s were marked by increasing hostility toward the presence of former colonial subjects in England in particular, and Africans faced increasing restrictions on their movement and settlement in the United Kingdom. Nonetheless, in their testimonies, Nigerian seamen celebrated transnational migrations as potential opportunities for unrestricted agency and freedom. Journeys beyond Nigerian borders were sometimes harsh confrontations with multiple methods of exclusion in both the colonial and the postcolonial eras, but they also held the potential for reaching new social and economic horizons. Seamen’s ability to circumvent or overcome exclusionary or racist practices and policies began with their capacity for imagining and then implementing countering strategies. Here, Charles Taylor’s notion of “social imaginaries” is very useful. Taylor’s theory refers to “the ways in which people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations.”2 Social imaginaries are the background and foundation of social practice; indeed, they enable certain actions and collective “self-understandings” that are constitutive of a society.3 Nigerian seamen’s experiences and the stories they tell about themselves overcome cultures and politics of exclusion by embracing a brand of cosmopolitanism as an organizing principle of their lives.

  We must be careful not to overstate seamen’s power to fully resist all or even some of the hegemonic forces they confronted in their social and cultural encounters. As will be seen in subsequent chapters, the turn to nationalist ideologies and policies in the era of decolonization was a calculated response to confrontations with racism and exclusionary practices of colonialism. But while keeping this final outcome in mind, we have much to gain from a close examination of how African seamen described their ability to rearrange and redefine social and political forms in specific times and specific locations. Our understanding of seamen’s experiences would not be complete without a consideration of the role cosmopolitanism played in their self-imaginings. Seamen’s cosmopolitan imaginaries enabled them to first envisage, and later construct, alternative forms of association and alliance that challenged hegemonic notions of identity and community, even if only temporarily.

  The idea of cosmopolitanism has been increasingly invoked to describe worldviews and identities emerging in globalized spaces. As we seek out ways to describe the fluidity and hybridity resulting from transnational migrations, the notion of cosmopolitanism can help capture the kinds of aspirations and transitions that characterize experiences in these transnational spaces. But we must identify just what is intended by the term, “as many competing and contested claims are being made under the banner of cosmopolitanism.”4 In the case of seamen, Stuart Hall’s definition is applicable: “It means the ability to stand outside of having one’s life written and scripted by any one community, whether that is a faith or tradition or religion or culture—whatever it might be—and to draw selectively on a variety of discursive meanings.”5 In crossing nation-state boundaries, seamen were able to “articulate complex affiliations, meaningful attachments, and multiple allegiances to issues, people, places, and traditions that lie beyond the boundaries of their resident nation-state.”6

  This chapter will focus on the cosmopolitan imaginaries and practices of Nigerian seamen as they made their way across the globe in the context of their work. As many scholars have argued, cosmopolitanism is an outlook that is often born in enduring circumstances of prejudice, discrimination, and exclusion. Thus, the discussion will begin with a brief review of popular antagonism toward the presence of colonial seamen in British port citi
es throughout the twentieth century, and the gradual process by which widespread racism was translated into reforms of British immigration policies toward colonial subjects. This will provide the necessary background for evaluating the ways in which seamen in fact defied or circumvented exclusionary practices. We will review the ideological and cultural attitudes of seamen and highlight the ways in which Nigerian seamen who began working on British vessels in the late colonial era saw themselves as “workers of the world.” Special attention will be paid to the social lives of seamen abroad, and particularly the romantic relationships seamen established with European, Asian, and Latin American women in the course of their travels. We will then turn to an investigation of the independent trade conducted by seamen in secondhand goods. In establishing these individual trading enterprises, seamen rejected their proletarianization by colonial shipping companies, and used their position as seamen on board colonial ships to develop their own autonomous transnational trade networks. Taken together, this review of the social, cultural, and economic networks that seamen created in the context of their transnational travel offers us a view of the cosmopolitanism that defined and shaped seamen’s experiences beginning in the late colonial era.

  Cosmopolitan imaginaries and connections continued to play a role in seamen’s self-understandings following independence, and seamen working for the NNSL continually endeavored to leverage the social and economic opportunities of transnational mobility to their benefit. But it will be seen that the process of nationalization slowly limited seamen’s freedom to craft and exploit these transnational and migratory solidarities and networks. Thus, this focus on the role of cosmopolitanism in seamen’s working lives provides essential context for measuring the outcome and significance of nationalization in seamen’s lives. Only against the background of these cosmopolitan imaginaries can we fully grasp the price that seamen paid when nationalization eliminated the opportunities that seamen had fundamentally come to rely upon.