SUNDAY 3RD JULY, 2016 – UWI TODAY
21
Labour and the Decolonization
Struggle in Trinidad and
Tobago examines T&T’s early labour organizations and
trade unions from the 1920s to the 1950s. A particular
focus is the Trinidad Workingmen’s Association (TWA),
later known as the Trinidad Labour Party (TLP), in the
evolution of the colony’s identity and culture. This volume
tracks contributions to the rise of the well-known general
strike of 1937 and subsequent cohesion, building toward the
Caribbean Labour Congress, an early advocate of Caribbean
federation. The book is particularly strong in its survey of
the impact of gender, religion, and the popular labour songs
of these toilers, and how these labour organizations boldly
advocated for them increasingly as a voting bloc.
Teelucksingh offers a nuanced view of multi-racial
labour, observing Afro-Trinidadian and Indo-Trinidadian
labour on their own authority. He offers perspectives
on major labour personalities such as Arthur Cipriani,
Krishna Deonarine (Adrian Cola Rienzi), Elma Francois,
and Tubal Uriah Butler. He also highlights personalities
not given as much focus such as F.E.M. Hosein, Timothy
Roodal, and C.B. Mathura. Hosein denounced Crown
Colony government’s racial logic as a benevolent despotism.
Roodal condemned great wealth disparities and divisions
even where fellow ethnics exploited “their own people.”
C.B. Mathura fought for Indo-Trinidadian workers to build
multi-racial and distinctly Indian-oriented labour groups,
instead of seeking colonial patronage or identifying with
racial or religious chauvinisms in their community.
The TWA/TLP recognized women’s workplace rights,
mobilized their participation in public meetings and rallies,
and defended women’s right to vote. The author recognizes
progressive similarities between British Fabianism and the
TWA/TLP approach toward women, recording activists
such as Cecilia Yearwood, Cecilia Urquart, andMrs. Alkins.
Placing this crucial period of national history in
conversation with regional labour movements found in
Guyana, Grenada and Jamaica, Teelucksingh shows how
the TWA wished for links with the British Labour Party to
influence Crown Colony Government.
BOOK REVIEW
Teelucksingh asks if the unemployed and marginal
toilers in Trinidad understand fully the implications of
labour songs which spoke of their blood and damnation.
These labour songs do not elevate the explosive self-
governing potential found in the 1937 Fyzabad strike.
Teelucksingh explains that Elma Francois’s national
unemployed movement and Negro Welfare Cultural and
Social Association (NWCSA) were major turning points
in the colony’s labour movement that desired to smash this
mediation.
I disagree with Teelucksingh that disputes among
the labour movement in the conferences for federation
leading up to the Caribbean Labour Congress, prevented
a united front in opposing Britain. There was not great
desire for immediate self-government among middle class
nationalists, who increasingly spoke for labour. Certainly
they never thought of direct self-government for the masses.
For the elite increasingly had the coveted positions, and
most often saw workers below them like a colonial official.
On those who
LABOURED
B Y M A T T H E W Q U E S T
Jerome Teelucksingh
LABOUR AND THE DECOLONIZATION
STRUGGLE IN TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)
At times they articulated the call for greater human rights
but does not global capitalism conquer under this premise
today? It must have a pre-history in other colonial and anti-
colonial administrative strategies.
Perhaps in the 1930s the Trinidad working and middle
classes could unite for a final moment against colonialism.
But shortly after, they did not belong in the same party. One
social class policed and repressed another in the name of a
benevolent despotism.
Teelucksingh concludes that the working class – but
overwhelmingly he means the trade union bureaucracy and
those who spoke before Parliament – had a prominent role
in decolonization. When he speaks of “the true soldiers of
themovement for responsible government” and “the scarred
warriors for economic, social, and political liberation,” the
author is referring to a separation of “the cadre of labour
leaders who with the masses of the African and Indian
working class…” expose unexamined problems that future
rank-and-file, not trade union staffers, will have to unravel.
Matthew Quest is a Lecturer in Africana Studies at University of Tennessee at Knoxville, USA.
One of the deliverables
of the UK/UWI Darwin-funded project to ‘Develop a Biodiversity Monitoring System for Trinidad and Tobago’ was to create a database of the plant specimens
kept at National Herbarium of Trinidad & Tobago (TRIN) using the Botanical Research and HerbariumManagement System (BRAHMS) software. This software was developed by Mr.
Denis Filer at University of Oxford, UK. Using this software the herbarium collection was digitized and the herbarium labels databased to develop a Virtual Field Herbarium. This was
created so that persons can access information about the specimens kept at TRIN. This virtual herbarium is currently being managed by the University of Oxford and can be accessed
via the Herbarium’s website at:
sta.uwi.edu/herbarium/
. The current estimated specimen holding from Trinidad and Tobago in the BRAHMS database is approximately 60,000.
From left: Prof. John Agard, Dept. Life Sciences, Mr. Carlton Roberts, Head of Forest Resource
and Inventory Management (FRIM), Forestry Division, Ministry of Agriculture, Land and
Fisheries, Yasmin S. Baksh-Comeau, Curator, National Herbarium of Trinidad and Tobago
(TRIN), Prof. Indar Ramnarine, Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology, Mike
Rutherford, Curator, Zoology Museum, Dept. of Life Sciences, UWI.
VIRTUAL FIELDHERBARIUM
From left: Dan Jaggernauth, Member of the T&T Field Naturalists’ Club who mounted the display,
George de Verteuil one of the Herbarium’s volunteers , and Bunty O’Connor.
