Fay­ola Fras­er

As Trinidad and To­ba­go moved from colony to in­de­pen­dent na­tion, women were not mere­ly on the side­lines. Through po­lit­i­cal or­gan­is­ing, civic ed­u­ca­tion, com­mu­ni­ty work and elec­toral pol­i­tics, they helped lay the ground­work for the coun­try that emerged in 1962. Long be­fore 1962, women in po­lit­i­cal spaces such as Au­drey Jef­fers and El­ma Fran­cois, among oth­ers, laid the cru­cial ground­work for fe­male or­gan­is­ing, cam­paign­ing and vo­cal­is­ing what coun­try they want­ed to in­her­it.

When Trinidad and To­ba­go raised its red, black and white flag at mid­night on Au­gust 30, 1962, the mo­ment was re­mem­bered and re­told pro­found­ly through the per­spec­tives of the men who had oc­cu­pied the most vis­i­ble po­si­tions in the long cam­paign for self-gov­ern­ment. Dr Er­ic Williams, the coun­try’s first prime min­is­ter, nat­u­ral­ly stood at the cen­tre of the sto­ry, while the po­lit­i­cal strug­gles of the pre­ced­ing decades had al­so brought fig­ures such as Tubal Uri­ah But­ler in­to the na­tion­al con­scious­ness.

Yet, the move­ment to­wards In­de­pen­dence was not ex­clu­sive­ly the work of the men who stood at the fore­front. Long be­fore the Union Jack was low­ered at the Red House in Port-of-Spain, women were or­gan­is­ing in po­lit­i­cal and civic or­gan­i­sa­tions, ed­u­cat­ing vot­ers, mo­bil­is­ing com­mu­ni­ties and chal­leng­ing the as­sump­tion that their role in pub­lic life should end at the polling booth.

Their con­tri­bu­tions may not have re­ceived the same at­ten­tion as the con­sti­tu­tion­al ne­go­ti­a­tions or the speech­es de­liv­ered from po­lit­i­cal plat­forms, but they were part of the po­lit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture that made the tran­si­tion to In­de­pen­dence pos­si­ble.

The roots of that in­volve­ment stretched back to the so­cial and po­lit­i­cal up­heaval of the 1930s and 1940s. The 1937 labour dis­tur­bances ex­posed deep dis­sat­is­fac­tion with wages, work­ing con­di­tions and the dis­tri­b­u­tion of pow­er in colo­nial Trinidad, while the growth of trade union­ism and wider ag­i­ta­tion for po­lit­i­cal re­form grad­u­al­ly al­tered the re­la­tion­ship be­tween cit­i­zens and the colo­nial state.

One of the most con­se­quen­tial de­vel­op­ments came in 1946, when Trinidad and To­ba­go held its first gen­er­al elec­tion un­der uni­ver­sal adult suf­frage. Women were now for­mal­ly part of the elec­torate, but the achieve­ment of the vote did not im­me­di­ate­ly trans­late in­to po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

The chal­lenge was to turn the fran­chise in­to mean­ing­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion, and women them­selves be­gan build­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tions and net­works through which they could learn about pol­i­tics, ed­u­cate oth­ers and make their voic­es heard.

Among the or­gan­i­sa­tions that played an im­por­tant role was the League of Women Vot­ers, es­tab­lished by po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Leono­ra Pu­jadas-Mc­Shine to ed­u­cate women on their civic and po­lit­i­cal rights.

Fol­low­ing the achieve­ment of uni­ver­sal suf­frage, this move­ment be­came crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant, seek­ing to pre­pare women for their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as cit­i­zens and en­cour­age greater par­tic­i­pa­tion in pub­lic af­fairs.

Pu­jadas-Mc­Shine be­gan or­gan­is­ing women in­to a dis­cus­sion group fo­cused on their new civic re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. Among the oth­er women as­so­ci­at­ed with this ef­fort was Berenice Dol­ly, one of Trinidad’s first for­mal­ly trained fe­male nurs­es, and Edith Bornn, who had con­nec­tions to the US Vir­gin Is­lands, where a League of Women Vot­ers al­ready ex­ist­ed.

By 1949, the dis­cus­sion group had de­vel­oped in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s first full-fledged League of Women Vot­ers, head­quar­tered in Port-of-Spain. Pu­jadas-Mc­Shine be­came its pres­i­dent and re­mained in that po­si­tion for 14 years.

Through this League, women were be­ing en­cour­aged to un­der­stand the work­ings of gov­ern­ment, the im­por­tance of the vote and their abil­i­ty to in­flu­ence the di­rec­tion of the coun­try.

Pu­jadas-Mc­Shine emerged from this tra­di­tion of civic ac­tivism and be­came one of the women as­so­ci­at­ed with the ef­fort to strength­en women’s po­lit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion. Her de­ci­sion not to join the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment when it emerged in 1956 was it­self re­veal­ing; she main­tained the po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence of the League of Women Vot­ers, demon­strat­ing that women in­volved in the move­ment did not nec­es­sar­i­ly share a sin­gle po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy or al­le­giance.

Some would work through po­lit­i­cal par­ties, while oth­ers be­lieved women’s or­gan­i­sa­tions should re­main in­de­pen­dent enough to hold all po­lit­i­cal ac­tors ac­count­able.

The for­ma­tion of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in 1956 opened an­oth­er im­por­tant av­enue for women’s po­lit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion.

The PNM Women’s League was in­au­gu­rat­ed at Martha House in Port-of-Spain in May of that year, with more than 250 women at­tend­ing. Among its ear­ly fig­ures were Is­abel Teshea, Le­o­la Wood and Lu­cille Bap­tiste.

The League’s stat­ed con­cerns in­clud­ed women’s wel­fare, com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion and fam­i­ly life, re­flect­ing the so­cial ex­pec­ta­tions placed on women at the time, but its po­lit­i­cal im­por­tance ex­tend­ed be­yond those tra­di­tion­al ar­eas.

Women helped or­gan­ise meet­ings and mo­bilise sup­port­ers, brought po­lit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion in­to com­mu­ni­ties and con­tributed to the re­search that un­der­pinned the new move­ment’s po­lit­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion.

For an­oth­er promi­nent fe­male po­lit­i­cal fig­ure at the time, Is­abel Teshea, po­lit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion could not stop at or­gan­is­ing for oth­ers.

Her name is etched in­to the his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go as the woman be­hind sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant firsts: the first woman elect­ed to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the coun­try’s first fe­male Cab­i­net min­is­ter, and its first woman to serve as an am­bas­sador.

An ear­ly mem­ber of the PNM, she be­came deeply in­volved in or­gan­is­ing women and mo­bil­is­ing them around the emerg­ing po­lit­i­cal move­ment.

She played a par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant role in build­ing the PNM Women’s League, be­com­ing its chair­man in 1956. That same year, she was ap­point­ed La­dy Vice-Chair­man of the PNM, po­si­tions she would hold for sev­er­al years.

Her po­lit­i­cal ca­reer con­tin­ued to gath­er mo­men­tum as Trinidad and To­ba­go moved to­wards self-gov­ern­ment and, ul­ti­mate­ly, In­de­pen­dence.

A promi­nent mem­ber of the PNM Women’s League, Teshea be­came in­creas­ing­ly de­ter­mined that women should move from the sup­port­ing struc­tures of po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tions in­to the in­sti­tu­tions where de­ci­sions were ac­tu­al­ly made.

Her op­por­tu­ni­ty came with the gen­er­al elec­tion of 1961, a piv­otal con­test in the coun­try’s con­sti­tu­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, where Teshea won the Port-of-Spain East con­stituen­cy.

Her elec­tion made her the first woman to en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go’s House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, mark­ing a sig­nif­i­cant break­through at pre­cise­ly the mo­ment when the coun­try it­self was prepar­ing to en­ter a new po­lit­i­cal era.

In a Par­lia­ment pre­oc­cu­pied with the con­sti­tu­tion­al fu­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Teshea’s pres­ence car­ried its own sig­nif­i­cance: women were not sim­ply cit­i­zens be­ing asked to par­tic­i­pate in the new na­tion; one woman had now se­cured a place among those re­spon­si­ble for shap­ing it.

There were al­so women whose ac­tivism ex­ist­ed out­side the im­me­di­ate or­bit of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

Christi­na F Lewis, a com­mu­ni­ty work­er, ac­tivist and trade union­ist, for in­stance, rep­re­sent­ed a more rad­i­cal tra­di­tion of po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ac­tivism, with her in­volve­ment in cam­paigns against racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and her work around the rights of women and work­ing peo­ple.

Her ac­tivism is a re­minder that the road to In­de­pen­dence was not sim­ply a straight­for­ward march be­hind one par­ty.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­lit­i­cal land­scape con­tained com­pet­ing ideas about race, class, labour, colo­nial­ism and the mean­ing of free­dom, and women par­tic­i­pat­ed in those de­bates in dif­fer­ent ways.

Some worked through es­tab­lished po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tions, some through civic groups and oth­ers through labour and so­cial ac­tivism. Their in­di­vid­ual po­lit­i­cal po­si­tions dif­fered, but their in­volve­ment re­flect­ed a grow­ing recog­ni­tion that the coun­try’s fu­ture could not be dis­cussed with­out con­sid­er­ing the po­si­tion of women with­in it.

In­de­pen­dence did not sud­den­ly de­liv­er equal­i­ty be­tween men and women. Still, when the flag was raised in the ear­ly hours of Au­gust 31, 1962, women were un­mis­tak­ably part of the sto­ry.

They were among the ac­tivists of the 1930s, the vot­ers who had trans­formed the coun­try’s elec­toral pol­i­tics af­ter 1946, among the or­gan­is­ers who built po­lit­i­cal net­works dur­ing the 1950s, among the women who ed­u­cat­ed com­mu­ni­ties about cit­i­zen­ship and among those who chal­lenged the bar­ri­ers to for­mal po­lit­i­cal of­fice.

They were al­so part of the wider so­cial fab­ric that gave mean­ing to the new na­tion. The na­tion be­ing cel­e­brat­ed was not an ab­stract con­sti­tu­tion­al cre­ation; it was a so­ci­ety of com­mu­ni­ties in which women had long played cen­tral roles.

The women who or­gan­ised, ed­u­cat­ed, cam­paigned and ul­ti­mate­ly en­tered the po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions of the emerg­ing na­tion played a crit­i­cal role through­out the pre- and post-In­de­pen­dence eras. In do­ing so, women en­sured that when Trinidad and To­ba­go be­came in­de­pen­dent, they were not mere­ly in­her­it­ing the new coun­try, but so­lid­i­fy­ing their place in its in­fra­struc­ture.