Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh

It is be­com­ing com­mon for busi­ness­es and the me­dia to pro­mote “Christ­mas in Ju­ly” each year. This fes­tive at­mos­phere did not ex­ist dur­ing Ju­ly 1934, when protests erupt­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Many young peo­ple are un­aware that the up­ris­ings of 1934, 1935 and June 1937 are linked. Every year, in T&T, the June 1937 dis­tur­bances are com­mem­o­rat­ed, but there is lit­tle or no men­tion of the ear­li­er work­ing-class chal­lenge to the sta­tus quo in 1934.

What were the fac­tors that trig­gered these protests? The ag­i­ta­tion of sug­ar work­ers in 1934 was part of the over­all cli­mate of work­ing-class protest in the colony dur­ing the De­pres­sion years. The agony of the Great De­pres­sion (1929–1930s) lin­gered and added to the mis­ery of the mass­es. These ne­glect­ed labour­ers faced pover­ty, mal­nu­tri­tion, poor san­i­ta­tion, il­lit­er­a­cy and un­em­ploy­ment. Hous­ing for work­ers in the oil and sug­ar in­dus­tries was al­so in a de­plorable state.

From 1933 to 1935, un­em­ployed Afro-Trinida­di­ans in Port-of-Spain were mo­bilised in hunger march­es un­der the lead­er­ship of El­ma Fran­cois, Jim Headley, Jim Bar­rette and Dud­ley Ma­hon of the Na­tion­al Un­em­ployed Move­ment (NUM). The name of this group was lat­er changed to the Ne­gro Wel­fare Cul­tur­al and So­cial As­so­ci­a­tion (NWC­SA). ON Bol­land ar­gued that the NUM played an in­stru­men­tal role in mo­bil­is­ing work­ers and be­gan “a new, rad­i­cal labour pol­i­tics”. Dur­ing 1934, the NUM played a role in spear­head­ing and in­flu­enc­ing demon­stra­tions among dis­con­tent­ed work­ers.

The NUM con­tact­ed the sug­ar work­ers and was in­formed by Pool­basie, an out­spo­ken In­do-Trinida­di­an work­er, of the prob­lems fac­ing them. These in­clud­ed high rents for bar­racks, high lev­els of un­em­ploy­ment, es­tate dri­vers who ex­ploit­ed young fe­male sug­ar work­ers, in­creased work­loads, and a drought that made the land un­work­able. The protest by 800 sug­ar work­ers on Ju­ly 6, 1934, at Brechin Cas­tle and Es­per­an­za Es­tates, lat­er joined by frus­trat­ed work­ers from the Cen­tral and North­ern es­tates, set in mo­tion a se­ries of civ­il demon­stra­tions. The po­lice sought to quell the out­burst but were at­tacked. Af­ter the vi­o­lence sub­sided, 12 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed.

The domi­no ef­fect was ev­i­dent as al­most 15,000 sug­ar work­ers in Tu­na­puna, Ch­agua­nas, Cou­va and San Fer­nan­do staged sim­i­lar protests. For­tu­nate­ly, no­body was killed, al­though many pro­test­ers were jailed or fined. The spon­tane­ity of the dis­tur­bances and the fact that no lead­ers emerged could be a rea­son why these work­ing-class dis­tur­bances tend to be for­got­ten by the pub­lic.

Brid­get Br­ere­ton is ac­cu­rate in de­scrib­ing the ac­tion of the sug­ar work­ers in 1934 as “the pol­i­tics of the streets” and “a wa­ter­shed in In­di­an par­tic­i­pa­tion in labour move­ments in Trinidad”. This de­vel­op­ment in­tro­duced a new fac­tor in the chal­lenge of the work­ing class against cap­i­tal­ist dom­i­na­tion. Al­though thwart­ed by po­lice, the pro­posed hunger march by sug­ar work­ers on Ju­ly 20, 1934, from Ca­roni to Port-of-Spain was in­tend­ed to unite In­do-Trinida­di­an sug­ar work­ers and Afro-Trinida­di­an hunger marchers of the NUM in a mas­sive city demon­stra­tion.

The frus­tra­tion and suf­fer­ing of the In­do-Trinida­di­an work­ing class found ex­pres­sion in the dis­tur­bances of 1934. How­ev­er, their ac­tions did not seem as threat­en­ing to the gov­ern­ment and the em­ploy­er class as the ear­li­er 1919–1920 strikes, which were led by the ur­ban Afro-Trinida­di­an work­ing class, whose po­ten­tial for so­ci­etal dis­rup­tion was al­ways feared by the white élite.

Un­doubt­ed­ly, it was the at­tempt at racial and class uni­ty in the protests that the colo­nial au­thor­i­ties sought to sup­press. In­deed, the 1934 sug­ar belt un­rest re­vealed the con­tin­ued iso­la­tion of In­do-Trinida­di­an work­ers, whose in­ter­ests were ig­nored by the ur­ban work­ing-class lead­er­ship of the Trinidad Work­ing­men’s As­so­ci­a­tion (TWA), whose pres­i­dent was Cap­tain Arthur Cipri­ani.

The un­rest among sug­ar work­ers in Cen­tral Trinidad, the hunger march­es of the un­em­ployed in Port-of-Spain, cou­pled with the Apex oil strike of 1935 in South Trinidad, un­leashed tor­rents of anger and frus­tra­tion against cap­i­tal­ist ex­ploita­tion and gov­ern­men­tal ap­a­thy as so­cial con­di­tions wors­ened.

The protests in T&T were not iso­lat­ed but formed part of the re­gion­al dis­tur­bances that erupt­ed across the British West In­dies dur­ing the 1930s. There were protests in 1934 in Be­lize (then known as British Hon­duras). The caus­es in­clud­ed low wages, pover­ty, un­em­ploy­ment and ne­glect by the colo­nial au­thor­i­ties. In 1935, there was a labour re­bel­lion in St Kitts and strikes in St Vin­cent and St Lu­cia. These were soon fol­lowed by dis­tur­bances by work­ers in Bar­ba­dos and the Ba­hamas in 1937, and Ja­maica in 1938.

It is un­for­tu­nate that the im­pact of this note­wor­thy up­ris­ing of 1934 is nei­ther ac­knowl­edged nor re­tained in the pub­lic mem­o­ry.