Join us at the Marx Memorial Library for the launch of Militant Migrants: Clements Kadalie, the ICU and the Mass Movement of Black Workers in Southern Africa, 1896-1951, by Henry Dee. The event takes place at 4pm on Saturday 29 November 2025.

The latest book in the Studies in Labour History series published by the Society for the Study of Labour History with Liverpool University Press is available now for pre-order. Find out more and pre-order.

Born in colonial Malawi, Clements Kadalie dramatically rose to global prominence as general secretary of the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union of Africa (ICU) during the 1920s. A famed orator, journalist and trade union organiser, Kadalie electrified huge meetings with his call for economic freedom and all-in mass organisation, eclipsing nationalist contemporaries and unionising anywhere between 100,000 and 250,000 workers throughout South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho and Zimbabwe.

A global labour history of Southern Africa from the perspective of the ICU’s immigrant leadership, Militant Migrants rehabilitates the significance of the early Malawian diaspora, the global importance of Kadalie’s ideas, the rationale behind the ICU’s transnational organising, and the many awkward difficulties that Kadalie faced in his personal life

Henry Dee is a research fellow at Northumbria University, and a historian of empire, labour and migration in the early 20th century. In particular, his research has focused on trade unions in Southern Africa, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, and the politics of free movement across the British empire. He has previously taught courses on the global history of empire, colonial fascism and labour, and together with David Johnson, has edited a volume of primary sources, ‘I See You’: The Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union of Africa, 1919-1930.