Trouble in Jamaica The riots in Jamaica, following on the
riots last year in Trinidad, have once again directed attention to labour conditions in the West Indies. Outbreaks of violence have to be suppressed, even at the cost of innocent lives, and their instigators punished ; but the necessity of main- taining law and order should not be allowed to obscure the justice of the labourers' case. The causes of the troubles are unmistakable ; they are to be found in the labourer's wage of is. a day and in his disgraceful housing conditions. In recent years some effort at improvement has been made ; but the West Indian colonies suffer from years of misrule, neglect and decay and social conditions which today are, as Lord Milner once said of them, a disgrace to the British Empire. For such a situation the Colonial Office must ultimately be held responsible ; and perhaps the gravest criticism that can be made is that only by outbreaks of violence can the natives bring about the official action which is required. Meanwhile the task of improving their situation is made more difficult by the commercial policy of the British Government which has both restricted the Jamaican sugar quota and created, at great expense, a wholly super- fluous and uneconomic beet sugar industry in this country.
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