The reenactment of the Canboulay Riots of 1881 has become a fixture of the contempo- rary Carnival calendar. It is central to the mythos Carnivalists promote, that Canboulay is a definitive ontological moment in our history. Or something like that. Is it me, or does celebrating a riot, perpetrated by criminals, and retrospectively branding them as heroes for attacking the police, in a society sinking deeper and deeper into chaos every day, seem crazy? The Canboulay has found itself in this ennobled position through the zealotry of a number of "personalities" who have insisted that the virtue and creative energy of the society come from the bottom-and not just in win'ing; in sociological terms, the black urban underclass, and in Carnival terms, the jamette (criminal) Carnivals of the late 19th century. As history and sociology, this is criminally inaccurate. As state-endorsed culture, it's, well, crazy. (And as art, well, "as for local art, so it does go / the audience have more talent than the show." Yeah.) The story (for latecomers) is, briefly: The police seized the Canboulay criminals' torches in 1880. The criminals, being criminals, had nothing to do but plan for them for a whole year, so the police in 1881, under Capt Baker, were repulsed with violence, and then confined to barracks by the governor.
The Canboulay story has been seized by various parties like Earl "Badjohn is Freedom Fighter" Lovelace, Pearl Springer, and sundry others who turned this into a "victory of the people" (specifically, black people) over the evil oppressor. In doing this they mimicked the biggest history hustler of them all, Eric "Diddy" Williams, who "turned history into gossip," then a bootoo. So the riots are now an expression of de cult-yere, black people fighting for "freedom," and the evil white master being, well, evil. The facts that the white people are long gone, and we "free" dese days, seem not to matter. This is because gossip rearranges, omits, emphasises and deemphasises facts. Some deemphasised and omitted facts include that the complaints about the Canboulay had come from the black and brown middle and merchant classes, as well as the hated white oppressor. And the fact that criminals attacking the police was, and is, celebrated, suggests an astonishing, self-destructive immaturity which historians overlook. (Hmm, an admittedly imperfect police force, actually taking action against criminals, and everybody start to bawl: "All you advantaging black people!" And attack the commandant. Does this sound familiar?)
A grown-up view of the Canboulay business might note that the colonial authorities were not "defeated." They got battered (150 cops vs hundreds of criminals), and the governor chose to confine them to barracks, rather than let them do what they should have done: get their rifles and open fire. This was not a mistake they would make in the Hosay thing in 1884. Some historians also paint this (1884) police action a "massacre," and an act of "resistance." I call it "the 19th century police doing their jobs." The Hosay criminals knew what they were doing was forbidden by law. They were told this repeatedly, but went anyway. And bodow. Similarly in 1903: a little incident called the Water Riots. A group of angry people gathered outside the Red House to protest a bill concerning the introduction of water meters. The police, again, opened fire. Are these events connected? What if the 1903 rioters were incited to riot by a group of "radical" black and brown middle class touts. The same ones who had agitated for the withdrawal of the government troops in 1881, and encouraged them to fire in 1884? What if what connects these events is a significant piece of the historical narrative that the childish nonsense about "freedom fighters" and "resistance" has blotted out of the historical record.
The (Canboulay) Governor Sanford Freeling shared one characteristic with many Trinidadian black, coloured, and white men of education and means: he was initiated into (the Royal Prince of Wales lodge) one of the many Masonic lodges in Trinidad, in November 1881. Nearly every Trinidadian of consequence in the 19th and early 20th centuries (JJ Thomas, MM Philip, Edgar Maresse Smith, CP David, Alfred Richards and FEM Hosein) was a Freemason. And this characteristic provides a corrective to the idiocy passing as historical scholarship about jamettes and illiterate Indian labourers actually doing anything, instead (more plausibly) of being manipulated by devious people in lodges known for intrigue the world over, and responsible for several revolutions. Like in the other British colo-nies, there were British and Scottish masonic lodges in Trinidad. They were generally divided into white and black lodges, but there was intra-lodge fraternity-Free-masons in Port-of-Spain publicly celebrated Victoria's golden jubilee in 1887-as well as animus. (The Indians began entering the lodges around the turn of the 19th century, and, again, many prominent Indians were Freemasons.)
None of this is secret. It's impossible to open a 19th century Trinidadian newspaper and not see a reference to Masonry. Yet, inexplicably, the history of Trini-dad (and the West Indies) contains almost no reference to Masonry as a shaper of political consciousness-of rebellion as much as civic values. And the Freemasons were not the only organisation which promoted "foreign" values. The Blue Book of 1900 listed about 60 other lodges, like Mechanics, Foresters, Gardeners and Oddfellows. The membership was largely black working and middle class, and their aims were similar: to become good citizens, advance their own interests through self-help, hard work, and adherence to Christian/Victorian values. So how did Trinidad go from having a majority of citizens wanting this, to a population of violent, ignorant, drunken louts, and cultural institutions which promote a riot as a celebration? Arkse Earl Lovelace.
