Tony Fras­er

The labour ri­ots of 1937 (75th an­niver­sary) did not ini­ti­ate the for­ma­tion of po­lit­i­cal par­ties, nei­ther did the ri­ots orig­i­nate the call for re­form of the colo­nial con­sti­tu­tion and the de­mands for West In­di­an self-gov­ern­ment. The Trinidad Labour Par­ty of Al­fred Richards and Capt Cipri­ani, the East In­di­an Na­tion­al Con­gress and But­ler's par­ty all pre-dat­ed the ri­ots.

How­ev­er, the bold­ness of the 1937 work­ers in con­fronting the colo­nial es­tab­lish­ment start­ed an in­evitable po­lit­i­cal and so­cial move­ment for trans­for­ma­tion of the so­ci­ety that could not be turned back nor di­vert­ed. What was most as­sured­ly achieved by the ex­plo­sion in 1937 was a con­scious­ness and self-con­fi­dence among work­ers which forced the British colo­nial gov­ern­ment at least to ac­knowl­edge that the work­ers of T&T and else­where in the West In­dies were pos­sessed of hu­man­i­ty.

At a prac­ti­cal lev­el, a cou­ple dozen trade unions were es­tab­lished here in T&T and dozens more else­where in the West In­dies as a di­rect re­sult of the ri­ots. To fa­cil­i­tate the emer­gence of the unions and fash­ion some­thing of a func­tion­ing in­dus­tri­al en­vi­ron­ment, a leg­isla­tive agen­da took root in the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil.

His­tor­i­cal opin­ion is di­vid­ed on whether or not the change ad­vo­cat­ed by and made as a re­sult of the Moyne and Forster com­mis­sions of en­quiry, which were in­sti­tut­ed by the British Gov­ern­ment to in­ves­ti­gate the caus­es of the ri­ots, had a sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive im­pact. Com­pared to the ad­vances made in the decades af­ter by the trade unions and the gen­er­al labour move­ment, the changes which fol­lowed the com­mis­sions seem in­signif­i­cant.

How­ev­er, the re­ports of the com­mis­sions in­di­cat­ed that the pre-1937 con­di­tions could not con­tin­ue to ex­ist if there were to be so­cial and in­dus­tri­al peace and the op­por­tu­ni­ty for eco­nom­ic ad­vance. In the decade which fol­lowed 1937, the ag­i­ta­tion for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form by emerg­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ties and in­di­vid­u­als cul­mi­nat­ed with the grant­i­ng of adult fran­chise, first in Ja­maica (1944) and in T&T in 1946.

Adult fran­chise gave the right to every­one 21 and over, what­ev­er their so­cial and eco­nom­ic con­di­tion, to elect mem­bers to the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil, and even­tu­al­ly made it pos­si­ble for the elect­ed mem­bers of the peo­ple to be part of the colo­nial ex­ec­u­tive.

Wages and liv­ing con­di­tions for work­ers in oil, sug­ar, on the port and else­where did not un­der­go dra­mat­ic change, but there was an ad­vance. To il­lus­trate the point, the work­ers of 1937 asked for a six cents per hour in­crease; they re­ceived four cents. The bar­racks in towns such as Fyz­abad and on the sug­ar es­tates in cen­tral did not de­ma­te­ri­alise af­ter the strike end­ed, and the de­hu­man­is­ing racist struc­ture of the so­ci­ety con­tin­ued for many decades af­ter.

The space for the emer­gence of mid­dle-class politi­cians and their par­ties was cre­at­ed be­cause work­ers had con­front­ed the es­tab­lish­ment. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment and Peo­ple's De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, the lat­er be­ing the fore­run­ner to the DLP and UNC, emerged when they did be­cause of the in­ter­ven­tion of the work­ers in the 1930s.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, how­ev­er, labour/trade-union in­volve­ment in pol­i­tics de­clined as But­ler and his par­ty, de­nied the le­git­i­mate right to be part of the colo­nial gov­ern­ment in 1950, ceased be­ing elec­toral­ly and po­lit­i­cal­ly vi­able. Ac­count­ing too for the demise of labour in ac­tive po­lit­i­cal and elec­toral ac­tiv­i­ties was the re­al­i­ty that elec­tors be­gan to re­quire their politi­cians to be ed­u­cat­ed in the for­mal sense to be able to con­front the colo­nial es­tab­lish­ment to win ben­e­fits for the so­ci­ety.

In con­tem­po­rary times, when trade-union lead­ers and the move­ment ex­press po­lit­i­cal ideas and am­bi­tions, they are charged with "play­ing pol­i­tics." Quite an irony, when it is con­sid­ered that it was the po­lit­i­cal ac­tion of work­ers and their lead­ers which in­sti­tut­ed po­lit­i­cal change here and across the West In­dies.

The Trinidad case is dif­fer­ent from oth­er places in the Caribbean, where labour par­ties pre­dom­i­nat­ed. One ar­gu­ment has it that po­lit­i­cal mo­bil­i­sa­tion along racial lines here took over from the class-based pol­i­tics of the 1930s. Over the last decade and more, labour lead­ers and the trade-union move­ment have be­gun to ex­press an in­ter­est in re­turn­ing to the po­lit­i­cal are­na. The ques­tion for the im­me­di­ate fu­ture is whether labour can break the race-based po­lit­i­cal cul­ture and per­suade its mem­ber­ship to en­vis­age their fu­ture in labour pol­i­tics.

A cou­ple weeks ago I watched in­ter­est­ing­ly as bank work­ers, main­ly women, with a mea­sure of not be­ing ab­solute­ly sure of this new role, marched and chant­ed labour songs and slo­gans. But­ler, Cipri­ani, Rien­zi and those who en­gaged in the life-and-death strug­gle of the 1930s may feel jus­ti­fi­ably but pleas­ant­ly shocked. The in­abil­i­ty to co­here over a sus­tained pe­ri­od in the in­ter­est of labour/work­ers has sure­ly worked against the unions. Uni­ty of pur­pose is their po­lit­i­cal chal­lenge for the im­me­di­ate fu­ture.