International
Labor and Working-Class History / Volume 76 /
Issue 01 / Fall 2009 pp 194-216
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0147547909990172 (About DOI),
Published online: 16 October 2009
The Labor Question in Colonial Cyprus, 1936–1941:
Political Stakes in a Battle of Denominations
Alexis Rappasa1
a1 European University Institute
Abstract
Taking as
a starting point two strikes in colonial Cyprus in the 1930s—the miners' strike
in 1936 in which both Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots were involved and the
all-female spinners' strike in 1938—this paper looks at how the labor movement
deeply transformed the political landscape of the island. In a society closely
monitored by British colonial authorities and well acquainted with the
Greek-Cypriot claim for Enosis, or the political union of Cyprus with Greece,
the labor question became a locus, or “interstice of power structure,”
articulating competing and mutually exclusive visions of Cyprus as a polity.
More generally the paper investigates the modalities of formation of a
collective group allegiance in a context of constraint.
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