ON THE WATERFRONT

This book is one of the products of a two-year travail undertaken by a committed European socialist social historian to understand trade unionism among Nigerian port and dock workers and to interpret its implications for them. With disarming frankness, the author reminds us of ‘the 150-year old tradition in the literature on the working class which holds that socialism is necessary in order to overcome capitalist exploitation, oppression, anarchy and waste’ and that ‘the force to bring about the overthrow of capitalism is the working class’. As a historian, the author has set for himself the task of ‘exposing the myths deliberately created and spread by the capitalist press and pro-capitalist intellectuals’. At the same time, he is aware of the need to ‘examine’ the myths created by workers and their leaders in their attempts to come to terms with their increasingly complex world by explaining their problems in terms of forces such as ‘race, religion, tribe, the CIA or Communist manipulation’.