20th Century Colony
The labor movement began to assume importance after World War I, spurred by the return of Trinidadians who had fought with the British armed forces. The most important of these was Captain Andrew Arthur Cipriani, a white man of Corsican descent, who had served as commander of the West India Regiment. Cipriani resented the fact that the West India Regiment was not allowed to fight for the British Empire but instead was sent to Egypt, where its forces served as labor battalions. Upon his return to Trinidad, Cipriani organized the masses, giving them national pride and teaching them to oppose colonialism. He revitalized the Trinidad Workingman's Association, which was renamed the Trinidad Labour Party (TLP) in 1934; by 1936 the TLP had 125,000 members. Because Cipriani was white, he was able to transcend the black-East Indian racial dichotomy and became known as "the champion of the barefoot man."
In the first elections held for the Legislative Council, Cipriani was elected in 1925 and remained a member until his death in 1945. He was also elected mayor of Port-of-Spain eight times. In these two offices, Cipriani struggled against racial discrimination and fought for constitutional reform, universal suffrage, and better rights for workers.
In the 1920s, the labor movement organised trade unions, and pressure increased for greater local democracy and then independence. A new constitution brought a limited form of electoral representation to Trinidad for the first time (Tobago had had elections before). But only seven of the 25 members were elected, and high property and language qualifications limited the vote. This did not satisfy the growing demand for political expression, which led to the 1937 labor disturbances, an increase in the number of elected members in 1941 and, in 1945, universal adult suffrage.
During the 1930s, Trinidad and Tobago suffered severely from the effects of the worldwide depression. Living standards deteriorated as workers were laid off from the plantations. The situation was aggravated by unjust labor practices. Wages on the sugar estates and in the oil fields were kept low while shareholder dividends in London rose. Workers moved away from Cipriani's moderate policies, and the labor movement became radicalized. Between 1934 and 1937, there were strikes and riots on the sugar plantations and in the oil fields throughout the Caribbean.
Tubal Uriah Butler, a black Grenadian who had been expelled from the TLP for extremism, emerged as the leader of the black oil workers, who were the best paid and most politicized laborers on the island. Butler called for racial unity among black workers and organized strikes, heading a highly personalized party that was known as the "Butler Party." Although the British labeled Butler as a "fanatical Negro" during the 1930s, Trinidad and Tobago later recognized him as a man who sensitized the common man to the evils of colonialism. The strikes in Trinidad and Tobago in the 1930s included many incidents of racial violence, culminating in twelve deaths and over fifty injuries in 1937.
The British responded by deploying marines from Barbados and appointing two successive commissions from London to investigate the causes of the riots in Trinidad and Tobago and elsewhere in the Caribbean. Both commissions noted the low wages and poor working conditions throughout the region. The second commission, chaired by Lord Moyne, which completed its report in 1940, was very critical of the British colonial system in the Caribbean and recommended housing construction, agricultural diversification, more representative government for the islands, and promotion of a middle class in preparation for eventual self-government. Although the Moyne Commission's findings were not made public until after World War II, some of its recommendations were put into effect under the Colonial Development Welfare Act of 1940.
The British government had encouraged the formation of trade unions in the belief that labor organization would prevent labor unrest. After the islandwide strikes of 1937, Butler succeeded Cipriani as the leader of the Trinidadian labor movement. Butler's associate, Adrian Cola Rienzi, an East Indian, organized both oil workers under the Oilfield Workers Trade Union (OWTU) and the sugar workers under the All Trinidad Sugar Estates and Factory Workers Trade Union (ATSE/FWTU). Railroad and construction workers were organized under the Federated Workers Trade Union (FWTU), and a number of smaller unions were also formed.
Following a recommendation of the Moyne Commission, government was made more representative. Constitutional reform in 1925 had provided for six elected members on the twenty-five-member Legislative Council, but franchise restrictions limited voters in the 1925 election to 6 percent of the population. In April 1941, the number of unofficial elected members on the Legislative Council and the governor's Executive Council was increased, giving the elected members a majority. Some of these elected members were included on official committees and the governor's Executive Council, although the governor retained ultimate authority and veto power.
Trinidad and Tobago was profoundly changed by World War II. For the first time since British annexation, the islands were widely exposed to another foreign influence. The 1941 Lend-Lease Agreement (also called the Bases-for-Destroyers Agreement) between the United States and Britain included ninety-nine-year leases of the deepwater harbor at Chaguaramas to the United States Navy and of Waller Field in central Trinidad to the United States Army. Many United States and Canadian personnel were brought in to work at these bases, and thousands of Trinidadian workers were employed at the bases for higher wages under better conditions than ever before. As a result, by the end of World War II many Trinidadians had become used to a higher standard of living and wanted to keep it.
Although the election in 1946 was the first under universal adult suffrage, less than half of the registered voters cast ballots. The trade unions did not consolidate into a cohesive political entity. The labor vote fragmented, as blacks and East Indians divided and as racial slurs became a common part of campaign rhetoric. Butler, who had been detained throughout the war, was released from jail and campaigned for the Legislative Council, but he was defeated by Albert Gomes, a trade unionist of Portuguese descent. The labor movement was unable to gain a majority because no leader could command the widespread support of both the blacks and the East Indians, a pattern that continued throughout the ensuing forty years. The middle class — comprising primarily blacks and a smaller number of East Indians — came to dominate the political scene in the crucial elections that led to independence and dominated it into the late 1980s.
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