THESEGREGATIONERA
prise in the country and to build a coalition from both ethnic sections of the
white South African population. Since rabid imperialism was out of favor
in Westminster, they also accepted South Africa's membership in the British
Empire and nudged Westminster in the direction of greater autonomy for
South Africa and the other white dominions-Canada,
Australia, and
New Zealand.
The outcome was ironic. Although Parliament enacted laws in the in-
terests of white workers and farmers, by 19 I 9, when Botha died and Smuts
succeeded him, the erstwhile fighters for liberation from British imperi-
alism were losing Afrikaner votes and becoming dependent on the support
of British South Africans. The Union of South Africa's electoral arithmetic
meant that a distinctly British party had no chance of winning an election.
South Africans of British origin were fewerthan Afrikaners and had widely
divergent occupational, class, and regional interests. As the 19°7 Trans-
vaal election had shown, mining magnates like George Farrar and Percy
FitzPatrick could not win the support of the British working-class colo-
nists, who had founded aggressive trade unions and a La.bour party in the
Transvaal. A similar class division existed among the British in the Cape