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Caribbean Islands POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE
Changes in the Social Base of Political Power
Although the riots of the 1930s brought swift political
changes, the conditions that precipitated the explosion had been
building slowly for more than half a century. The long period of
direct and modified crown colony government after the Morant Bay
disturbances produced two political patterns throughout the British
Antilles. The first, to which allusion has already been made, was
based on strong executive power in the hands of a governor. Whereas
this undoubtedly made administration easier for governors, it had
negative effects on the social basis of political power and
political development. As Carl Campbell so eloquently put it,
"[Crown colony government] sought constantly to increase the area
of government and decrease the area of politics." Harris, was, of
course, describing the situation in Trinidad in the middle of the
nineteenth century, but his portrayal would have been apt for any
British colony at the beginning of the twentieth. Colonial
governors were not inhibited by the threat of legislative council
vetoes of their decisions nor by the type of obstructionism that
had characterized the assemblies before 1865. Colonial governors
were responsible only to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in
London. By appointing to the legislature members whose views were
compatible with the goals of empire, the governors reduced the
range of experience and advice available to them. They were not
interested in local opinion and local advice. If they had been,
they would not have stifled public opinion by consistently
discouraging political organizations and insisting that only
individuals could express their views.
Not surprisingly, the dominant views of the local governments
were those of the planter classes, especially the older, more
established planter classes. Nevertheless, by the end of the
nineteenth century, the planter class not only was divided but also
was being challenged by the popular classes. This challenge created
a series of recurring political crises among the governors, the
legislatures, and the Colonial Office, leading to some modest
reforms in the system in the early twentieth century.
After emancipation, dissolution of the old caste structure of
the Caribbean slave society, which was based on the confusing
divisions of race, occupation, and status, gave rise to a new, more
complex class society. Class divisions within the declining castes
generated new groups and produced new tensions. For example, the
planter class, which had never been homogeneous either within
territories or across the British colonies, became even more
variegated.
In the nineteenth century a new petty bourgeois class emerged
consisting of merchants, successful estate owners without the
ancestry and traditions of the older landed class, members of the
professions, and an expanding managerial sector. This class was far
more heterogeneous than the class it was surreptitiously displacing
in economic and political affairs. In Jamaica, a very large number
of Jews were given the franchise and participated actively in
politics. Remarkably, Jews obtained equality in Jamaica and sat in
the House of Assembly long before they secured such privileges in
Britain. In Barbados, a small number of free nonwhites and Jews
moved up, but the resilience of the planter aristocracy inhibited
the opening of opportunities found elsewhere. In Trinidad, the
white elites included English, French, Scots, and Spanish, and the
religious division along Catholic and Protestant lines was as great
as along political and social lines. Although governors might
prefer the older planter families, especially those of English
ancestry, the new reality was inescapable, and gradually the
appointments to high political office reflected the social arrival
of these new men. They tended to be politically conservative, but
theirs was a less rigid conservatism than had prevailed for
centuries in the Caribbean.
Although the small, predominantly planter and merchant elites
retained political control until the 1940s, increasing social and
political democratization of the Caribbean societies occurred. This
democratization derived from four sources: economic
diversification, which opened up economic opportunities; the
expanded educational system, which produced a new professional
class; the dynamic expansion of organized religion; and the rise of
labor unions. Although not of equal weight, all these forces
contributed to the formation of the strong tradition of democratic
government that has characterized the British Caribbean during the
twentieth century.
Between 1880 and 1937, expanded economic opportunities helped
create a new, broader-based middle class throughout the British
Caribbean. Much of this middle class was non-European--formerly
from the free nonwhite community of the days of slavery, reinforced
by the more industrious East Indians and other new immigrant groups
of the later nineteenth century. Thus, the black and colored middle
class has as long antecedents in the Caribbean as the white class.
This class expanded significantly during the post-slavery period.
The lower ranks of the civil service had always provided an
opening for nonwhite talent because in a typical colony sufficient
Europeans could not be found to fill all vacancies. In the larger
islands local groups sufficed. In the other areas the lower civil
servants were intercolonial immigrants. For example, the police
force of Trinidad was composed mainly of immigrants from Barbados
although the senior officers were always European. Bridget Brereton
points out that in 1892 only 47 of 506 policemen in Trinidad were
local (7.8 percent), compared with 292 from Barbados (57.7 percent)
and 137 from the other islands (27 percent).
New exports, such as rice, bananas, limes, cacao, nutmeg, and
arrowroot, provided the means for a few people to join the middle
economic classes and for their offspring to rise even higher. Rice
cultivation, although primarily a peasant activity in Trinidad,
also helped propel a number of its black, East Indian, and Chinese
producers into the ranks of the middle class. Wealth, of course,
was not enough to endow middle-class status, but it often
facilitated the upward social mobility of the sons of peasants, who
with the requisite education could aspire to full status.
Education was the great social elevator of the British
Caribbean masses. From the middle of the nineteenth century, public
education, expanded rapidly. A primary education combined with some
knowledge of languages was useful in commercial concerns because
most of the British Caribbean states conducted much of their
commerce with neighboring Spanish-speaking countries. A secondary
education was helpful in getting into the lower ranks of the
bureaucracy and essential for entering the professions. A system of
scholarships enabled lower-class children with ability to move into
secondary schools and into the professions. The number was never
large, but the stream was constant, and the competition for
scholarships was fierce. Studying for these scholarships was more
than an individual effort--it was a family enterprise. Moreover, by
the early decades of the twentieth century, this process of
academic selection and rigorous preparation for the British
examinations--uniform for both British and colonial students--was
controlled by predominantly black schoolmasters, the foundation of
the emerging "certificated masses."
As Guyanese political activist and historian Walter Rodney
wrote, "The rise of the middle class can only be effectively
chronicled and analyzed in relationship to the schools... The
position of headmaster of a primary school must be viewed as
constituting the cornerstone of the black and brown middle class."
Eric Williams, a distinguished product of the system, wrote, "If
there was a difference between the English public school and its
Trinidadian imitation, it was this, that the Trinidad school
provided a more thorough preparation for the university than the
average English school, partly because the students stayed to the
age of twenty rather than eighteen and took a higher examination,
partly also because it was not even the cream of the crop, but the
top individual from Trinidad who found himself competing with a
large number of English students of varying ability." The fact that
village primary school headmasters were also lay preachers and
intellectual and quasi-legal arbiters of the community increased
their importance both socially and politically.
The churches became important in molding the intellect and the
political sophistication of the masses beginning in the nineteenth
century. In the 1980s, churches continued to play an important role
in the Caribbean. Even more interesting, the churches have managed
to be both politically revolutionary and conservative, avant garde
and reactionary, depending both on the issues involved and the
denomination.
Whereas the mainstream churches--mainly Anglican and Roman
Catholic--accompanied the expansion of imperialism with the
expressed desire of converting "the heathens," their close identity
with the established order was a severe handicap to their effective
incorporation of the lower orders of society. They were especially
ineffective with the Hindus and Muslims from India. As a result,
what early religious conversion took place was most effectively
accomplished by the so-called nonconformist groups--Baptists,
Methodists, Moravians, Presbyterians, and Quakers. These
essentially evangelical sects originated in the metropolitan
countries with a mass, or working class, urban clientele in mind.
Their strongest converts were among the poorer classes. In the
Caribbean they were faced with a rather anomalous situation: the
hostility or indifference of the planters and the established
churches and no equivalent class structure. They had either to work
among the slaves and free nonwhites or change their clientele. They
chose the former course and so came into direct conflict with the
local elites. Nonconformist missionaries, white and nonwhite, were
some of the unsung heroes in the struggle for the disintegration of
the Caribbean slave systems.
The nonconformist churches enjoyed phenomenal success among the
nonwhites until the late nineteenth century, but they paid a price.
Their practice and their preaching became syncretized with the
rival Afro-Caribbean religions such as Kumina and Myal. When social
practice blocked the upward mobility of nonwhite members within the
hierarchy of the churches, they flocked to form their own
congregations, much as occurred in the United States. Some of these
congregations moved into a succession of charismatic religions
beginning with the rise of Pocomania in the 1880s, Bedwardism in
the early twentieth century, and Rastafarianism (see Glossary) in
the 1930s. All of these religions espoused trances, public
confessions, dreams, spirit possession, and exotic dancing. The
churches provided experience in mass mobilization and grass-roots
organization. More important, they provided the psychological
support for the black masses and gave them comfort and a self-
confidence rare among those of their color, class, and condition.
Politicians such as Marcus Garvey successfully tapped this popular
religious tradition for support.
Data as of November 1987
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