Sam Ma­haraj

The roar of the li­on that was Bas­deo Pan­day will res­onate in T&T for many years to come. It may nev­er be repli­cat­ed.

When his­to­ri­ans sit down to chron­i­cle Pan­day’s con­tri­bu­tions to our na­tion, they will no doubt fo­cus on his six years as prime min­is­ter when—with lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment in­come–he built much-need­ed bridges and roads, de­liv­ered clean wa­ter to about 90 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion, and worked with his na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty team to re­duce the crime rate to its low­est in decades. In ad­di­tion, he spear­head­ed ef­forts to give mem­bers of the Shouter Bap­tists faith their long over­due recog­ni­tion.

His­to­ri­ans who dig deep­er in­to Pan­day’s decades-long pub­lic ser­vice will dis­cov­er that Pan­day was an un­apolo­getic cham­pi­on of work­ing peo­ple. He was a man who used his sig­nif­i­cant le­gal, trade union, and po­lit­i­cal skills to ad­vance a sin­gle goal: to work for a bet­ter life for peo­ple in the coun­try, es­pe­cial­ly those at the low­est rung of the eco­nom­ic lad­der.

As the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the All Trinidad Sug­ar and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union, I had a front-row seat to that his­to­ry. In the late 1970s, at Pan­day’s urg­ing, I re­luc­tant­ly ac­cept­ed the job af­ter the in­cum­bent re­signed un­ex­pect­ed­ly. I was con­cerned that I did not have the rel­e­vant ex­pe­ri­ence to run a 12,000-mem­ber union, which rep­re­sent­ed work­ers in more than 40 dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies in­volved in con­tract­ing, en­ter­tain­ment and gar­ment pro­duc­tion, among oth­ers.

When I be­came a union ex­ec­u­tive, many sug­ar work­ers laboured for $5.03 a day. That was not enough to sus­tain their fam­i­lies, so they sup­ple­ment­ed their pit­tance wages with mea­gre earn­ings from plant­i­ng back­yard gar­dens, rear­ing live­stock or grow­ing their own plots of sug­ar cane, which they sold to the com­pa­ny.

In the 1980s, Pan­day was an old hand at fight­ing for work­ers. He be­gan to ac­quire that ex­pe­ri­ence when he left Lon­don in 1965 as a trained ac­tor, lawyer and econ­o­mist. He teamed up with sea­soned labour ad­vo­cates in­clud­ing CLR James, George Weekes and Stephen Ma­haraj to fight the 1966 gen­er­al elec­tion un­der the ban­ner of the Work­ers and Farm­ers Par­ty. All of them lost their de­posits.

Pan­day was un­fazed by that de­feat. He was con­vinced that fight­ing for bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions for work­ing peo­ple would be his life’s work. Af­ter be­ing elect­ed as pres­i­dent of the sug­ar work­ers union, Pan­day dis­cov­ered that work­ers had lost faith in their pre­vi­ous lead­ers, whom they saw as in­ef­fec­tive and part­ly re­spon­si­ble for their hor­ri­ble liv­ing con­di­tions. His first or­der of busi­ness: chang­ing the union’s con­sti­tu­tion to give every mem­ber the right to elect their rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Pan­day recog­nised that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of sug­ar work­ers earned pover­ty wages, were not of­fered year-round work, and suf­fered in­hu­mane work­ing con­di­tions, in­clud­ing hav­ing to work in the sun, rain and mud with no toi­let fa­cil­i­ties.

With no earn­ings dur­ing the out-of-crop sea­son, work­ers lived off cred­it [trust] from vil­lage shop­keep­ers. They would re­pay shop­keep­ers when the har­vest­ing sea­son came around.

Pan­day went big. He asked Ca­roni of­fi­cials to in­crease sug­ar work­ers’ wages by more than 100 per cent. Less than that would be like chick­en feed with­out corn. He was pre­pared to ask work­ers to go on strike to fight for bet­ter wages. He al­so recog­nised that they would have to go with­out any earn­ings and would be un­able to feed their fam­i­lies—or sus­tain the strike. That was when he asked them to make a shared sac­ri­fice: en­gage in a “one-week in, one-week out” strike.

Over time, Ca­roni of­fi­cials re­lent­ed, grant­i­ng the wage in­crease. Dur­ing his tenure, Pan­day racked up some re­mark­able achieve­ments, in­clud­ing:

• Guar­an­teed year-long work for all full-time em­ploy­ees in­stead of the pre­vi­ous six to nine months.

• In the next cou­ple of decades, sug­ar work­ers’ wages would rise from $5 to $110 a day.

• Hous­ing loans in­creased from $3,000 to $70,000, en­sur­ing sug­ar work­ers could build de­cent shel­ters for their fam­i­lies.

In keep­ing with Pan­day’s phi­los­o­phy of wag­ing a com­pre­hen­sive strug­gle for work­ing peo­ple, we were able to es­tab­lish a coun­selling cen­tre and a halfway house for re­cov­er­ing ad­dicts. Vol­un­teer doc­tors staffed our free med­ical clin­ics, which were open to the pub­lic. We col­lect­ed food, cloth­ing, and med­ica­tion from over­seas for dis­tri­b­u­tion to the poor. A book ex­change pro­gramme was start­ed to mit­i­gate the high costs of school books.

Pan­day knew that the sug­ar work­ers could not win by them­selves. In the 1976 gen­er­al elec­tion, he worked for labour uni­ty by team­ing up with oth­er union lead­ers—OW­TU leader George Weekes, Raf­fique Shah and Joe Young–to form the Unit­ed Labour Front, which won ten seats in Par­lia­ment and 27 per cent of the votes cast. Pan­day be­came the op­po­si­tion leader and an im­por­tant voice for work­ers.

That was the start of a jour­ney that would pro­pel him in­to the prime min­is­ter’s of­fice. There, he would en­sure that work­ers re­ceived their fair share.

When his­to­ri­ans do their re­search, I hope they find a re­port by UWI econ­o­mist Dr Dhanesh­war Ma­habir whose 1996 study found that the eco­nom­ic con­di­tions of sug­ar work­ers had been im­proved four times over.

Dur­ing a dis­cus­sion of that re­port, I re­called a union of­fi­cial ask­ing Pan­day if he ex­pect­ed any re­ward for his ef­forts.

“My heart is full and my cup run­neth over,” Pan­day said in his sig­na­ture, wit­ty style. “What re­ward could be bet­ter than see­ing my peo­ple en­joy­ing a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life.”