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Caribbean Islands Labor Organizations
Political experience emerged directly from the difficult growth
of labor organizations throughout the Caribbean. Trade unionization
derived from the plethora of mutual aid and benevolent societies
that existed from the period of slavery among the Afro-Caribbean
population. Not having the vote or a representative in power, the
lower classes used these societies for their mutual social and
economic assistance. To obtain political leverage, the working and
employed classes had only two recourses: the general strike and the
riot.
From time to time some of these strikes were widespread enough
to bring the plight of the masses to the attention of the Colonial
Office and forced significant changes in the constitutional order.
Such was the case with the so-called Water Riots of Trinidad in
1903, which began as middle-class dissatisfaction over the colonial
government's attempt to install water meters and reduce wastage.
The municipal Ratepayers Association, a solidly middle-class
organization, appealed to the working and unemployed classes of the
city of Port of Spain. An excited mob assembled outside the
legislative council's office, resulting in an altercation in which
sixteen people were killed and forty-three injured by reckless
police shooting, and the office of the legislature was burned to
the ground. After the usual official inquiry, the Colonial Office
gradually agreed to the insistent demands of a number of middleand working-class organizations for the restoration of an elected
city council which was put in place between 1914 and 1918.
Another such riot occurred in Demerara, British Guiana, in
1905. Starting as a localized dispute over wages by some stevedores
in Georgetown, it quickly spread to sugarfield workers, factory
workers, domestics, bakers, and porters, engulfing an ever-widening
area beyond the city limits. The causes of the disturbance were
essentially economic, and the workers--as opposed to their middleclass sympathizers--lacked any organizational structure.
Nevertheless, the governor of the colony called out the military
forces to put down the disturbances, causing seven deaths and a
score of serious injuries. Although the riots failed to achieve
their economic goals, for a few days they brought together a great
number of the middle and lower classes. The middle-class leadership
of some elements of the working classes which resulted gave some
impetus to the development of a trade union movement. The
coincidence of these riots throughout the British Caribbean created
an impression in Britain that the political administration of the
colonies required greater attention--an impression reinforced with
each commission report issued thereafter.
Between 1880 and 1920, the Caribbean witnessed a proliferation
of organizations, despite the authorities' marked coolness to them.
A number represented middle-class workers such as teachers, banana
growers, coconut growers, cacao farmers, cane farmers, rice
farmers, lime growers, and arrowroot growers. Sometimes, as in the
case of the Ratepayers Association in Trinidad, they had overtly
middle-class political aspirations: a widening of the political
franchise to allow more of their members access to political
office. However, more and more workers were forming unions and
agitating for improvements in their wages and working conditions.
Furthermore, as in the cases of the 1905 riots, the two sets of
organizations worked in concert--although the martyrs to the cause
were singularly from the working and unemployed classes. One reason
why the two sets of organizations--middle class and working class--
could work together was their common belief that political reform
of the unjust and anachronistic colonial administrative system was
the major element needed to achieve their divergent goals. They
realized that historically the governors had worked with a small
and unrepresentative segment of the old planter class serving their
narrow economic ends. To the middle classes and the workers--and to
a certain extent the masses of urban unemployed--social and
economic justice would be possible only if they secured control of
the political machinery, and there were only two ways to gain that
control: through persuasion or by force.
To a great degree, this conviction still exists among the
populations of the Caribbean. It was given further authenticity
when the British Labour Party, especially the Fabian wing of the
party, expressed sympathy with this view. But the Fabians did more.
They actively sought to guide these fledgling political
associations along a path of "responsible reform," thereby hoping
to avert revolutionary changes. After World War I, the Fabians grew
more influential--as did the British Labour Party--in British
politics. The experience of both the Boer War and World War I
strengthened the anti-imperialists within Britain and weakened
Britain's faith in its ability to rule far-flung colonies of
diverse peoples. There was even less enthusiasm for colonial
domination when the administrative costs exceeded the economic
returns. The result of this ambivalence about empire was a sincere
attempt to rule constitutionally and openly. British critics of
colonial rule expressed their opinions freely, and even the
government reports (Blue Books) produced annually on each colony
detailed shortcomings of bureaucrats and policies. Nevertheless,
talking about West Indian problems was not the same as doing
something about them, and by the 1930s, it was clear that British
colonial policy was intellectually bankrupt.
Throughout the 1920s and the 1930s, British labor unions had
sought to guide and encourage formation of West Indian affiliates.
As a result, unionization was common throughout the region, with
many of the unions formally or informally affiliated with the
British Trade Union Congress. However, Fabian tutelage and
reformist policies appeared to have failed when workers broke out
in spontaneous demonstrations throughout the region, beginning in
St. Kitts in 1935 and culminating with Jamaica (and British Guiana)
in 1938. A hastily dispatched Royal Commission, dominated by
Fabians and chaired by Lord Moyne (hence called the Moyne
Commission), toured the region and reported on the dismal
conditions, making strong recommendations for significant political
reform. The Moyne Commission noted as causes of the riots increased
politicization of workers in the region, deriving from the war
experiences of West Indian soldiers, the spread of elementary
education, and the influence of industrial labor unrest in the
United States. After the riots, the reforms sought by the union of
the middle classes and the workers were formalized. In 1940 the
British Parliament passed the Colonial Development Welfare Act, the
first foreign assistance program legislated specifically for the
islands. The British government also extended the franchise to all
adults over the age of twenty-one and set about building the
apparatus for modified self-government with greater local
participation.
Jamaica held its first general election under universal adult
suffrage in 1944, and the other territories followed soon
thereafter. The alliance of professionals and labor leaders easily
captured the state apparatus from the old combination of planters
and bureaucrats. Thus, in most colonies a very close bond developed
between the political parties and the workers' unions. In Jamaica,
the Jamaica Labour Party drew its basic support from the Bustamante
Industrial Trades Unions. Its rival, the People's National Party,
was at first affiliated with the Trades Union Council, and after
the purge of the radicals in 1951, created the National Workers'
Union--the popular base that catapulted Michael Manley to political
eminence in 1972 (see Historical Setting, ch. 2). In Barbados, the
Barbados Labour Party depended in the early days on the mass base
of the members of the Barbados Workers' Union. Likewise, labor
unions formed the catalyst for the successful political parties of
Vere Bird in Antigua, Robert Bradshaw in St. Kitts, and Eric Gairy
in Grenada (see Government and Politics on individual countries,
ch. 4 and ch. 5). The notable exception was Eric Williams in
Trinidad. His Peoples' National Movement, established in 1956,
succeeded despite a constant struggle against a sharply divided
collection of strong unions (see Historical Setting, ch. 3).
Beginning after World War II and lasting until the late 1960s,
a sort of honeymoon existed between the political parties and the
labor unions. Expanding domestic economies allowed substantial
concessions of benefits to workers, whose real wages increased
significantly as unionization flourished.
Data as of November 1987
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