Capitalism in the Caribbean (part 3)

The First World War gave the West Indies sugar industry a real fillip, but the slumps which followed caused the sugar owners to amalgamate and look for ways of cutting costs—as always, their first thought was to lower wages. Sugar workers were forced to form trade unions to resist the attempts of the sugar owners to depress their already very low standard of living and in 1935 the sugar workers of Antigua went on strike.

Trade unions had already been formed in other industries, notably the oil industry in Trinidad. Blood was shed during riots in the oilfields in 1937. The Trinidad oilworkers’ union is strong and well-disciplined: a well-planned strike in 1960 forced some notable concessions from the oil companies in the face of a recession in the oil industry.

There were disorders in other islands, and governments soon realised that it was wise to encourage rather than to hinder the formation of trade unions. To meet the challenge, both from their workers and from rival capitalist groups in other parts of the world, West Indian capitalists joined together in strong amalgamations. Thus were formed the various cane-growers associations, the Banana Producers’ Association of Jamaica, the Trinidad and Tobago Co-operative Citrus Growers’ Association, etc.

West Indian leaders on the economic field eventually became political leaders: men like Bradshaw in St. Kitts, Bird in Antigua, Grantley Adams in Barbados, Bustamante and Manley in Jamaica, and Tubal Uriah “Buzz” Butler (who was behind the 1937 oilfield riots) in Trinidad. Economic struggles, therefore, formed the basis for political struggles, fought mainly on a racial platform with special emphasis on anti-colonialism. These political movements were supported by the utterances of men like Marcus Garvey (a Negro from Jamaica who served his apprenticeship with Booker T. Washington) who eloquently and powerfully advocated during the thirties a Negro “Back to Africa” movement.

Through the energetic action of politicians such as Bustamante, Manley, and Marryshow of Grenada the British Government conceded constitutional reforms, culminating in the formation of the West Indies Federation in 1958. This meant full internal self-government based on universal suffrage in certain islands, the British Government retaining control of defence.

The identification of trade unions with newly emerged governments is fraught with danger for the West Indian working class. During the recent Trinidad elections, for example, one or two quite large trade-unions held demonstration marches in support of Dr. Williams’ Peoples’ National Movement party. It may be. however that West Indian workers are too politically sophisticated to be completely taken in by demagogic politicians to the point of surrendering trade union and political advantages won after so many years of struggle.

The wind of change has blown through the West Indies as it has through the African continent; the eagerness with which the Colonial Office has fanned this wind in the British Caribbean towards the formation of the West Indies Federation indicates that the British ruling class would rather deal with a single West Indian Government than with several. But West Indians have apparently proved to be too nationalistic. In a referendum held towards the end of 1961, Jamaica seceded from the Federation, and thus set off the collapse which quickly followed. Now, a looser federation of eight of the islands, including Barbados and the Leeward and Windward Islands, is in prospect. The present tendency is for unit governments (at least in the British islands and British Guiana) to try to go it alone. Political leaders in the larger islands such as Jamaica and Trinidad, the only really economically viable island in the Federation, are reluctant for sizeable proportions of taxes realised in their islands to be utilised by a Federal Government to assist the poorer, smaller, islands’ economy, when the money could be used in development projects in their own countries.

Whatever the ultimate outcome, whether it be in terms of a host of small units trying to go it alone or of varying degrees of federation, the problems of the West Indian worker wherever he is will be basically the same as those of his fellows in other parts of the world. He is, unfortunately, no more seized with the ideas of Socialism than his counterparts elsewhere, but sooner or later he will find that these ideas are the only ones worth considering in his search for an end to his present poverty and insecurity and for a better and happier future.