The Solomon Islands have a rich history of collective action, rooted in indigenous resistance. In the 1940s and 50s, the anticolonial movement Maasina Rule demonstrated the power of organised withdrawal of labour and mass non-cooperation. Colonial authorities used repressive laws and divisive tactics to break this movement. In the 1960s and 70s, workers inherited this history of resistance and developed a more class-centred approach through general strikes that deeply influenced labour militancy in the Solomon Islands.
After the abolition of slavery, there was a demand for cotton production. From the mid-19th century to the 20th century, over 60,000 Pacific Islanders were recruited, many through kidnapping, deception, or coercion, to work under exploitative conditions on plantations in Australia, Fiji, and Samoa. This brutal trade is now referred to as Blackbirding. In 1886, Germany claimed the northern Islands of what was to become the Solomon Islands. Then, in 1893, other parts of the Solomon Islands were made a British protectorate, and in 1900, most of the northern Islands were transferred to Britain.
From the late 19th century, Solomon Islanders migrated to industrial centres and worked as indentured labourers on domestic plantations. Labour conditions were extremely harsh, mirroring the brutal conditions of the Blackbirding slave trade. Solomon Islands workers especially despised the compulsory head tax and protested it regularly throughout the 1920s and 30s. In 1927, men from East Malaita massacred 13 Solomon Islands police and two cadet officers over the head tax. The government responded by killing and imprisoning the people of Kwaio, resulting in the deaths of approximately 100 Solomon Islanders.
Early Workers’ Movements and the Maasina Rule
In the early 20th century, workers were heavily restricted from collective organising. Colonial officials deemed protests and attempts to engage in collective bargaining to be unlawful. It is in this context that the political movement known as the Maasina Rule began in 1944 and lasted until 1952. It started as an anti-colonial protest against harsh working conditions and low wages. The Maasina Rule transformed into a significant socio-cultural movement that shaped labour relations in years to come. Centred on the island of Malaita, where much of the plantation labour was based, the Maasina Rule leaders organised to boycott the recruitment of workers as indentured labourers for foreign-owned plantations. In this way, they engaged in a form of collective bargaining.
In 1945, Maasina Rule leaders banned labour recruitment around the Malaitan coast, and took control of sub-district courts and councils. As a result of the recruitment boycott, there was a significant labour shortage, restraining the British colonial administration for years. It was also an important point in the growth of industrial consciousness. Maasina Rule set up a system of local governments built on the cultural value system of kastom. By 1946, the movement spread to neighbouring islands, forming local organisations.
In late 1947, the colonial administration began a campaign of repression in which thousands of people were arrested for not paying taxes, abstaining from the census, and for general non-compliance with the colonial administration. They brought Maasina Rule leaders to trial under the same laws that repressed workers in early industrial England – the Unlawful Societies Act of 1799, and the Seditious Meetings Act of 1817 – and forced them to do years of hard labour.
The Maasina Rule led to slight wage increases and better working conditions as employers used such incentives to try to overcome the labour shortage. Although the movement was violently suppressed by the colonial government, resistance continued and evolved. Maasina Rule laid the foundations for the political consciousness and labour militancy that shaped the industrial action of the 1960s and 70s. More explicitly, many workers who had been active in the movement went on to form the country’s first trade union, the British Solomon Islands Workers’ Union (BSIWU).
General Strikes of the 60s
Late in 1962, 1,100 workers struck for two weeks until achieving the same 20 percent wage increase as White expatriate civil servants. This was the first major general strike to happen in Honiara. In 1963, the BSIWU became the British Solomon Islands Ports and Copra Workers’ Union (BSIPCWU), and that same year, the British Solomon Islands Building and General Workers’ Union (BSIBGWU) was also formed. The newly formed BSIBGWU soon became an instrumental body of workers. With the same militancy as workers of the 1962 general strike, the union began wage negotiations, demanding a doubling of the minimum wage.
Two years later, in September of 1964, more than 900 workers (an estimated 80 percent of the company’s workers) struck for eight days against Levers, the largest private company in the Solomons, over pay and working conditions. The company broke the strike by hiring a minority ethnic group as scabs to divide the labour force.
Similarly, after the BSIBGWU leadership accepted a much lower wage increase than workers had pushed for, government and private-sector workers staged an unofficial general strike in April. Over 1,500 workers became involved in this strike, which lasted eight days. The police responded with violence and used tear gas on workers in Honiara for the first time. All striking workers faced government threats of being fired or deported back to their respective islands. And yet, approximately one-fifth of the strikers did not return to work. Although the workers did not achieve their demands, the level of militancy of these strikes helped build a tradition of industrial action.
General Strikes of the 70s
In July 1975, the newly formed Solomon Islands General Workers’ Union (SIGWU), representing stevedores working for the Ports Authority and wanting independent union recognition, struck for two weeks. Over 1,300 workers from across Honiara showed their solidarity, winning union recognition, pay increases of between 20 and 25 percent, and compensation for their time on strike. The administration cracked down on workers. Union officials, including SIGWU leaders, Bartholomew Ulufa’alu and James Meafa’alu, were arrested and fined.
On 2 January 1976, the day that the Solomons achieved internal self-government, a record of approximately 70–80 percent of all workers, or 4,300 workers in Honiara and the Guadalcanal Plains, engaged in the largest general strike in the Solomons. They demanded both official union recognition and better working conditions. This strike forced the government to officially recognise trade unions. Two years later, in 1978, the Solomon Islands gained independence. In 1981, following two decades of militant industrial action, the government introduced the Trades Dispute Act, which instituted repressive strike laws and gave the state control over bargaining.
Conclusions
The history of struggle and the political impact of Maasina Rule raised working-class consciousness. It was a movement deeply grounded in indigeneity, kastom, and anti-colonial autonomy. The movement was not a trade union, but it coordinated labour boycotts and mass non-compliance. It also established forms of collective organisation that influenced the development of labour militancy in the Solomon Islands. Although the movement certainly laid the groundwork for workers’ militant strike action in the 1960s and 1970s, the general strikes were organised across ethnic, geographic, and occupational lines, focusing on working-class solidarity.
The government consistently attempted to divide the workers, whether by dividing trade unions themselves and arresting leaders, hoisting up barriers to establishing a nationwide union, or hiring strikebreakers to divide the workforce. Yet, workers organised and frequently took industrial action, building a movement and a history of struggle. Maasina Rule and the strikes by Solomon Island workers show the power of collective action and resistance. Through boycotts, non-cooperation, union organisation, and mass strike action, they forced employers and colonial authorities to concede higher wages, union recognition, and greater political representation. Yet industrial gains were limited as the colonial administration implemented restrictive laws, divide-and-rule tactics, and arrested prominent organisers, ensuring that economic and political power remained in the hands of the ruling class. Even once the Solomons achieved independence in 1978, the new government continued to introduce repressive laws such as the Trades Dispute Act of 1981, proving that independence did not mean liberation for the working class.
Sources
Frazer, I. (1990). Solomon Islands labour history and Maasina Rule. In C. Moore, J. Leckie, & D. Munro (Eds.), Labour in the South Pacific (pp. 191–203). Department of History and Politics, James Cook University of North Queensland.
Frazer, I. (1992). Trade unions and the state in Solomon Islands. New Zealand Journal of Industrial Relations, 17(1), 23–37.
Kumar, V. (2023). Class struggle in the Pacific: Facing fascism and war. Marxist Left Review,26, 35–54.
Moore, C. (2017). Making Mala into Malaita, 1927–42. In Making Mala: Malaita in Solomon Islands, 1870s–1930s (pp. 379–440). ANU Press.
Banner image: Sign denoting the National Archives of Solomon Islands. Image credit: Jenny Scott on Flickr, CC BY 2.0.
