British West Indian labour unrest of 1934–1939
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A series of workplace disturbances, strikes, and riots broke out across the
British West Indies The British West Indies (BWI) were colonized British territories in the West Indies: Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grena ...
in the period between 1934 and 1939. These began as the Great Depression wore on and ceased on the eve of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
. The unrest served to highlight inequalities of wealth, led the British government to attempt a solution to the problem, and in some cases spurred the development of indigenous party politics that would lead to self-government and independence in the postwar period.


Chronology

Various starting points for the cycle of disturbances have been proposed: the February 1934 labour agitation in
British Honduras British Honduras was a British Crown colony on the east coast of Central America, south of Mexico, from 1783 to 1964, then a self-governing colony, renamed Belize in June 1973,
(which ended in a riot in September) the May–July 1934 sugar estate disturbance on
Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...
(which broke out on several estates in the central sugar belt, involving over 15,000
Indo-Trinidadian Indo-Trinidadians and Tobagonians or Indian-Trinidadians and Tobagonians, are people of Indian origin who are nationals of Trinidad and Tobago whose ancestors came from India and the wider subcontinent beginning in 1845. Indo-Trinidadians and ...
labourers), and the January 1935
Saint Kitts Saint Kitts, officially the Saint Christopher Island, is an island in the West Indies. The west side of the island borders the Caribbean Sea, and the eastern coast faces the Atlantic Ocean. Saint Kitts and the neighbouring island of Nevis cons ...
sugar strike.Paravisini-Gebert, p. 104. In any event, after St Kitts (which turned into a general strike of agricultural labourers) came a March strike in Trinidad's oilfields and a hunger march to Port of Spain. In
Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...
labour protests broke out in May on the island's north coast. Rioting among banana workers in the town of Oracabessa was followed by a strike of dockworkers in Falmouth that ended in violence. In September and October there were riots on various sugar estates in British Guiana; there had been strikes the previous September on five sugar estates on the west coast of
Demerara Demerara ( nl, Demerary, ) is a historical region in the Guianas, on the north coast of South America, now part of the country of Guyana. It was a colony of the Dutch West India Company between 1745 and 1792 and a colony of the Dutch state ...
. In October rioting also took place on St Vincent in
Kingstown Kingstown is the capital, chief port, and main commercial centre of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. With a population of 12,909 (2012), Kingstown is the most populous settlement in the country. It is the island's agricultural industry centr ...
and Camden Park. The year ended with a November strike of coal workers in
St Lucia Saint Lucia ( acf, Sent Lisi, french: Sainte-Lucie) is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean. The island was previously called Iouanalao and later Hewanorra, names given by the native Arawaks and Caribs, two Amerindi ...
. After a relatively tranquil year in 1936, there was widespread unrest in Trinidad that saw unprecedented cooperation between Indo-Trinidadian and
Afro-Trinidadian Afro-Trinidadians and Tobagonians (or just Afro-Trinbagonians) are people from Trinidad and Tobago who are of West African descent. Social interpretations of race in Trinidad and Tobago are often used to dictate who is of West African descent ...
labourers,Brereton, p. 20. in
Barbados Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate) ...
in June 1937, and Jamaica in May–June 1938. The 1937–38 disturbances were of greater magnitude than the 1934–35 ones, which had been more localized. In Trinidad, for example, the protest began in the oilfields but eventually spread to the sugar belt and the towns. In Barbados the disorder that started in
Bridgetown Bridgetown (UN/LOCODE: BB BGI) is the capital and largest city of Barbados. Formerly The Town of Saint Michael, the Greater Bridgetown area is located within the parish of Saint Michael. Bridgetown is sometimes locally referred to as "The Ci ...
spread to rural areas, leaving between 14 and 22 dead. In Jamaica most areas of the island experienced serious strikes and disturbances. At least two ending points have also been suggested: the Jamaican cane-cutters' strike of 1938Sutton, Constance R. (ed.). ''Revisiting Caribbean Labour'', p. 23. Ian Randle Publishers (2005), . or the major February 1939 strike at the Plantation Leonora in British Guiana, which led to further disturbances.Brown, p. 605. In 1937, there were numerous deaths as strikes descended into riots, while the sugar workers' and Kingston labourers' strike in Jamaica in 1938 resulted in riots and 46 deaths. At least 429 were injured, with thousands detained and prosecuted. Women played a crucial role at almost every level of the popular protests. As workers, many women were involved in the planning and execution of the strikes, and they were active in radical organizations such as the
Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) is a black nationalist fraternal organization founded by Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican immigrant to the United States, and Amy Ashwood Garvey. The Pan-African ...
. The Caribbean unrest was not limited to British colonies: massive strikes took place in independent
Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
in 1930, 1933 and 1935, as well as a hunger march by sugar workers on French
Martinique Martinique ( , ; gcf, label=Martinican Creole, Matinik or ; Kalinago: or ) is an island and an overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France. An integral part of the French Republic, Martinique is located in ...
in February 1935.


Causes

Each labour rebellion had its own particular circumstances, but a common pattern can be discerned: the underlying causes were economic. With the exception of the mineral-extractive industries - oil in Trinidad and bauxite in British Guiana - the British West Indian economies were largely dependent on a narrow range of agricultural exports. Thus, they were highly vulnerable to reduced demand or a serious downturn in Britain and Europe. The sugar industry, which remained the mainstay of the colonial economies, had long been in a critical state but had revived during
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
as warfare disrupted European sugar beet production. In the postwar years, sugar prices fell sharply as world supply exceeded effective demand. The British government's policy of subsidizing domestic sugar beet production further depressed prices. The prices of other agricultural staples, including cocoa, coconuts, limes and bananas, also slumped to unprofitable levels due to worldwide overproduction. In some cases agricultural commodities suffered from the effects of plant diseases and hurricane damage. The crisis in the colonial economy was exacerbated by the global economic Depression, which further reduced demand for British Caribbean exports in the 1930s. The pervasive economic Depression in the colonies had far-reaching consequences for the working classes. Employers in some industries drastically reduced wages. Social conditions deteriorated as unemployment and underemployment increased (which an inadequate social welfare system could not address), factors that were worsened by sharply increased population growth, itself the result of a significant downward trend in the region's mortality rate as health conditions improved. The cost of living also went up: it was a sudden upsurge in 1937-1938 that led to strikes in Jamaica. Emigration outlets were closed, which created a frustrating sense of being shut in and of being denied opportunity and choice. Other general causes were the longstanding grievances of the West Indian peasants against the plantation owners. Historically, the peasants occupied the least fertile lands and were bullied by the owners. They had problems with land title, poor technology, lack of finance and marketing assistance, and poor means of transporting produce from the farm to the market. These and other grievances stimulated peasant participation in the disturbances. Furthermore, there was a rapid growth of working-class consciousness. Labour unions had been well-organised in Guiana and Jamaica since the 1920s. The British Guiana Labour Union dated to 1919, and the Longshoremen Union had a chapter in Jamaica from the early years of the century. In addition, there was a general increase in nationalist and pro-independence sentiments in the 1930s. The labour unions were organised as general political organisations or broad-based social movements. They campaigned for better wages and working conditions, the transformation of the colonial system and political independence for the colonies. Moreover, West Indians had rising expectations, as many had travelled abroad and experienced living conditions in Britain and the US. They wanted the same high standard of living at home, wished to be accorded respect as trained professionals and desired opportunities for upward mobility. Instead, they remained trapped in the system's political, economic, social, colour and racial hierarchies. Ideologies such as
Marxism Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...
and Fabian socialism gained currency.


Consequences

As a result of the disturbances, the British government created the Moyne Commission, headed by
Lord Moyne Walter Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne, DSO & Bar, PC (29 March 1880 – 6 November 1944), was an Anglo-Irish politician and businessman. He served as the British minister of state in the Middle East until November 1944, when he was assass ...
, to investigate what had transpired. Its members visited all the British Caribbean territories between November 1938 and February 1939, looking at conditions in housing, agriculture, hospitals, asylums for the mentally ill, leper homes, prisons, factories, docks, schools, orphanages, land settlement, and political and constitutional matters.Canterbury, p. 61. It heard formal evidence in 26 centres from 370 witnesses or groups of witnesses, and received and considered 789 memoranda of evidence. The investigation was regarded with great seriousness, as seen from the high level of public interest and the numbers, status and range of organisational affiliation of those giving evidence; both the latter and those who had been in active rebellion saw it as a channel for achieving reform. The Moyne Report pinpointed the outdated land-tenure structure and the remnants of the plantation system as the chief culprits in the economic crisis facing the West Indies, and recommended the federation of all the West Indian colonies as "an ideal to which policy should be directed", beginning with the federation of the
Windward Windward () and leeward () are terms used to describe the direction of the wind. Windward is ''upwind'' from the point of reference, i.e. towards the direction from which the wind is coming; leeward is ''downwind'' from the point of reference ...
( Grenada, Saint Vincent, Saint Lucia, Dominica) and Leeward (Antigua, Saint Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, Montserrat) Islands. However, it rejected the idea of immediate independence and the introduction of universal adult suffrage, both of which featured among the workers' demands. The report was issued in 1939 but was not published in full until 1945, lest it provide a propaganda source for the Axis powers. Based on its recommendations, the Colonial Development and Welfare Act became law in July 1940, providing the framework for reform in welfare and development in the entire British Empire. It allowed for £5m to be spent yearly on colonial development and welfare for ten years and £500,000 annually for colonial research indefinitely.Brown, p. 611. A Colonial Development and Welfare Department was established in 1940 and the appropriate staff assembled in the regional territories in 1941. Still, due to wartime exigencies, little was achieved in the region by 1945. In Jamaica, the settlement of the 1938 unrest laid the foundations for that country's modern party system.
Alexander Bustamante Sir William Alexander Clarke Bustamante (born William Alexander Clarke; 24 February 1884 – 6 August 1977) was a Jamaican politician and labour leader, who, in 1962, became the first prime minister of Jamaica. Early life and education He was ...
led a strike on the Frome Estate Sugar Plantation after a wage-and-hours dispute. The excitement generated there quickly spread to dockworkers and street cleaners, ultimately producing a general strike suppressed by British forces. Bustamante was jailed for seventeen months, becoming a labour martyr; his cousin
Norman Manley Norman Washington Manley (4 July 1893 – 2 September 1969) was a Jamaican statesman who served as the first and only Premier of Jamaica. A Rhodes Scholar, Manley became one of Jamaica's leading lawyers in the 1920s. Manley was an advocate ...
helped settle the strike. Manley quickly became so popular that by September, he had organised the
People's National Party The People's National Party (PNP) is a social-democratic political party in Jamaica, founded in 1938 by independence campaigner Osmond Theodore Fairclough. It holds 14 of the 63 seats in the House of Representatives, as 96 of the 227 local go ...
with the support of the Trade Union Congress (later to become the National Workers' Union). Bustamante, once released, began to organise his own party, and in 1943, strongly backed by the
Bustamante Industrial Trade Union The Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU, also referred to as the Busta Union) is a trade union center in Jamaica established by Sir Alexander Bustamante. The BITU was formed in 1938 and built up a membership of 54,000 within 6 years. It is a ...
(BITU), which he led, founded the Jamaica Labour Party. The two parties have remained dominant ever since. Other leaders identified with working class aspirations emerged, including Grantley Adams of Barbados, who served as legal counsel for some of those arrested in 1937; and
Albert Gomes Albert Maria Gomes (25 March 1911 – 13 January 1978) was a Trinidadian unionist, politician, and writer of Portuguese descent, was the first Chief Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. He was the founder of the Political Progress Groups and later led ...
of Trinidad, who became a popular political speaker during this period and was elected to the Port of Spain City Council. Strong trade unions continued to develop all around the Caribbean. These collected data on working conditions and wage levels, and became mass movements associated with political parties. Besides the BITU, the National Workers Union arose in Jamaica, the Labour Party of St. Kitts and the St. Kitts-Nevis Trades and Labour Union, and unions and parties in Antigua. All were of the same general view regarding wages and salaries for workers.Lisowski, p. 106.


Notes


References

* Brereton, Bridget and Yelvington, Kevin A. ''The Colonial Caribbean in Transition''. University Press of Florida (1999), * Brown, Judith M. et al. ''The Oxford History of the British Empire''. Oxford University Press (2000), * Canterbury, Dennis C. ''Neoliberal Democratization and New Authoritarianism''. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. (2005), * Lisowski, Joseph. ''Environment and Labor in the Caribbean''. Transaction Publishers (1992), * Paravisini-Gebert, Lizabeth. ''Phyllis Shand Allfrey: A Caribbean Life''. Rutgers University Press (1996), * Weiner, Myron and Özbudun, Ergun. ''Competitive Elections in Developing Countries''. Duke University Press (1987), {{DEFAULTSORT:British West Indian Labour Unrest Of 1934–1939 1930s labor disputes and strikes 1934 in Jamaica 1934 in the Caribbean 1934 in Trinidad and Tobago 1934 labor disputes and strikes 1935 labor disputes and strikes 1936 labor disputes and strikes 1937 labor disputes and strikes 1938 labor disputes and strikes 1939 labor disputes and strikes British West Indies Economy of British Guiana General strikes in North America General strikes in South America History of British Honduras History of Guyana History of the Caribbean History of the Colony of Jamaica History of Trinidad and Tobago Labor in the Caribbean Riots and civil disorder in Jamaica Riots and civil disorder in Trinidad and Tobago