Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany

The con­text of Labour Day has been framed as an ex­er­cise in cel­e­brat­ing the life and times of Tubal Uri­ah But­ler. When the first Labour Day pub­lic hol­i­day was cel­e­brat­ed in 1972, But­ler was cel­e­brat­ed at the NUGFW Hall on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain.

Ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad Guardian for Tues­day, June 20th, 1972, un­der the cap­tion “But­ler promis­es to unite Labour”, he ad­dressed the as­sem­bled crowd and said:

“My plan of du­ty is to give you a new hope; to take over the reins of Gov­ern­ment in this coun­try, for the time has come for a change of Gov­ern­ment…” (p. 3).

The Guardian re­port con­tin­ued:

“The 75-year-old one-time trade-union politi­cian fire­brand al­so spoke of re­triev­ing the mil­lions of dol­lars made from oil and hand­ing it over to the peo­ple of the coun­try. ‘It will be one hell of a fight, where no mer­cy or no quar­ters will be asked by But­ler and his war­riors,’ he said. The ques­tions ‘how’ and ‘when’ are still to be an­swered.”

Em­bed­ded in his re­marks were the pangs of class strug­gle and not racial di­vi­sion. The Guardian re­port went fur­ther to state:

“One of his promis­es was to get back in­to the swing of things to unite labour, cur­rent­ly split down the mid­dle – get­ting to­geth­er the unions in and out of Con­gress.”

That di­vi­sion had been suc­cess­ful­ly ex­ploit­ed ever since colo­nial times to weak­en the labour move­ment.

The late Pro­fes­sor Brins­ley Sama­roo pub­lished a book en­ti­tled “Adri­an Co­la Rien­zi: The life and times of an In­do-Caribbean pro­gres­sive” (Ro­yards Pub­lish­ing, Ma­coya, Trinidad, 2022). It is an in-depth look at the evo­lu­tion of Adri­an Co­la Rien­zi and demon­strates the ex­tent to which knowl­edge of the role of Rien­zi in the de­vel­op­ment of trade union­ism in this coun­try re­mains rel­a­tive­ly low.

As the key mover in the for­ma­tion of two trade unions, the Oil­fields Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) and the All Trinidad Sug­ar Es­tates and Fac­to­ry Work­ers Trade Union (All Trinidad), there is lit­tle con­scious­ness among the pop­u­la­tion about this his­to­ry. Ac­cord­ing to Sama­roo:

“As Rien­zi and his co-lead­ers moved to or­gan­ise trade unions, they had to de­vise strate­gies to re­duce the con­sid­er­able clout of the Sug­ar Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (SMA) and the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion – both of which did their ut­most to pre­vent the for­ma­tion or sub­se­quent op­er­a­tion of trade unions. In or­der to strate­gise against such odds, the union­ists put to­geth­er a team drawn from oil and sug­ar, which trav­elled around the is­land ed­u­cat­ing work­ers and urg­ing them to join the re­spec­tive unions. Both the OW­TU and All Trinidad shared the same head­quar­ters, which was Rien­zi’s of­fice on Cof­fee Street, San Fer­nan­do. Mem­ber­ship on both Ex­ec­u­tives over­lapped and the Union’s month­ly ‘The Van­guard’, found­ed in 1939, car­ried news and com­men­taries re­lat­ing to both in­dus­tries.” (p. 92).

The role played by Rien­zi in cross­ing the eth­nic di­vide through his for­ma­tion ef­forts and pres­i­den­cy of both unions and his ad­vo­ca­cy for the eth­ni­cal­ly dis­tinct in­dus­tries of oil and sug­ar re­main large­ly un­known.

How­ev­er, as far as the brute force re­quired to face off the colo­nial and es­tab­lish­ment au­thor­i­ties in the ac­tu­al strug­gle, Pro­fes­sor Kelvin Singh has doc­u­ment­ed the events lead­ing up to the recog­ni­tion of June 19th as a sig­nif­i­cant day in the his­to­ry of labour in this coun­try:

“A strike of oil work­ers was orig­i­nal­ly planned for 22 June 1937, but in­tel­li­gence was re­ceived by the oil work­ers to the ef­fect that the oil com­pa­nies and the po­lice were con­cert­ing mea­sures to frus­trate it. The strike plan­ners ac­cord­ing­ly re­vised the date of the strike for 18 June… The strike be­gan at mid­night on June 18, when rig­men sat down on their jobs at Trinidad Lease­holds Ltd., For­est Re­serve and Fyz­abad.” (The Trinidad Labour Ri­ots of 1937, edit­ed by Roy Thomas, UWI Ex­tra Mur­al Stud­ies Unit, June 1987, chap­ter by Kelvin Singh en­ti­tled: “The June 1937 Dis­tur­bances in Trinidad”, p. 62).

Ac­cord­ing to Singh:

“At about 6.00 pm, a par­ty of po­lice of­fi­cers tried to ar­rest But­ler, who at the time was ad­dress­ing a meet­ing in the yard of one Bho­la. While the po­lice fum­bled in read­ing out the war­rant, on But­ler’s de­mand, and a de­tec­tive was in the process of seiz­ing But­ler’s arm, the crowd ex­plod­ed in anger, rushed the po­lice and hus­tled But­ler out of their grasp. A group al­so chased Cor­po­ral Charles King, who, hav­ing fall­en with a leg in­jury, was drenched with oil and burned to death…” (pp. 62-63).

Out of those events, Dr Er­ic Williams de­clared a pub­lic hol­i­day on June 19th, 1972, and But­ler re­spond­ed by call­ing for a change of gov­ern­ment at the first com­mem­o­ra­tive event.

This has now mor­phed in­to an open class strug­gle to­day in the po­lit­i­cal are­na.

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI. He was se­lect­ed by the THA to guide the dis­cus­sions on To­ba­go au­ton­o­my.