TROUBLES IN TRINIDAD
By MARC T. GREENE
TRE labour troubles in Trinidad arise largely from the activities of a negro who bears the rather alarming name of Tubal Unit'. Buz Butler. Some years ago he formed an organisation which he called the British Citizens', Labourers' and Peasants' Union. As head of this he assumed the title of "Chief Servant." Under that name he continues his agitation, the ground being the admittedly deplorable economic state of a large part of the black population of the Colony. It is true that many negro workers are underpaid. Even today domestic servants in Trinidad and Tobago work for from no more than ten to twenty Trinidad dollars a month, the equivalent of two to three pounds sterling. Agricultural labourers generally receive less than four shillings a day, with the necessity of supporting themselves. In the oil and in the asphalt industry the wage is not much more. Even at this low rate there is wide- spread unemployment, just as there is in Jamaica and in the other British Colonies of the West Indies. As a result many blacks and some of mixed blood are living on the edge of destitution.
These conditions are not chiefly due to exploitation by the large estate-owners and primary-producers, as Butler and his followers allege. They are due to conditions which are the subject of much concern both to the Colonial Office at home and to the several Crown Colonial Governments in the islands. Rectification of these conditions is a principal objective, but it is undoubtedly being retarded by a good deal of irresponsible if not self-seeking agitation. The British West Indian Colonies, like other Colonies throughout the world-wide colonial system, are going through a transition period. Just what the future will be, how much indeed of the long-enduring colonial system will endure at all, no man can at the moment ray. Vital experiments are being embarked upon in the former Dutch dependencies, in the Philippines, in the Middle East. All of them are experiments, and cannot with accuracy be called anything else.
For the most part the. unrest that has led to all this has an economic origin. Nothing is served by trying to dodge the fact that the living-scale of native labour, whether in Java, Amain, the Philippines or the British West Indies, has been so low and has improved so little during the expensive war and post-war years as to provide the indigenous worker with sound reason for com- plaint. Nor is there any doubt at all that, had the various colonial Powers looked to this matter some time ago, as every consideration should have urged them to do, they would not be facing their present problems and the danger of losing their colonies and the revenues thereof altogether. The docility of black labour in the Caribbean colonies through the ages since the slave days has beyond any manner of doubt led the white minority, mostly sugar-growers, into the grave error of contemplating the condition of the workers with an easy-going indifference. It is much the same attitude as that common to the rich planters of the Dutch East and the French colonies. Wholly apart from the moral issue, such an attitude is inexpedient and short-sighted. That is now apparent. Native labour everywhere, its unrest and resentment at last organised and implemented under aggressive and sometimes self-seeking leadership, makes demands far beyond anything that would have been accepted with appreciation had it been voluntarily offered by producers and employers a dozen years ago.
It is not too much to say the West Indian planter has been living for generations in a fool's paradise. The old feudal system based on black slavery has, in effect, been very little changed. There was no inducement, other, of course, than the moral, to change it. Living under it was expansive and luxurious for the white man, and his black workers and servitors were docile and uncomplaining. But he assumed too much. He made the grave mistake of taking it for granted that all this would go on indefinitely, refusing to face the facts that the old order was passing and that the war had dealt it a final blow. He now pays the price for that shortsightedness, seeing men like Bustamente, in Jamaica, and Butler, in Trinida gradually achieve power, and, among the natives, prestige for which the only precedent is the career of Toussaint l'Ouverture in Haiti. And it is likely that the latter is the model for each of these organisers and leaders of West Indian blacks.
The methods of both *take the form of fomenting strikes, and endeavouring, often by methods of intimidation, to bring the strikers into their unions. When the strikes are " broken " by the employ- ment of workers outside these unions, men with no desire or intent to join them, the trouble commences, and, as several times in Trinidad, develop into violence, bloodshed and sometimes killings. Union leaders are sent to induce strike-breakers to abandon work and join the organisation. When these refuseas they often do, intimidation commences and fighting results. That this is deplored by many workers themselves has been indicated lately, when the men in the Trinidad oil-fields, not only negroes but East Indians, Portuguese, South Americans and various racial blends, drew up and published in the local Press a manifesto to the effect that they were satisfied with working conditions and confident that their employers would deal with them as generously as changing circum- stances permitted, and that they were in no wise desirous of joininl Chief Servant" Butler's union or of having anything to do with him. They deplored his methods of violent intimidation and asked protection from them.
The observations and investigations of the present correspondent make it fairly clear that the position in Trinidad has been exaggerated and distorted by sensational journalists and anti-Government agitators. For example, the report that martial law was declared some weeks ago, when Butler's unionists and workers who had taken the place of strikers clashed with some violence, was a mis-statement. All that happened was that a night curfew was established on two successive evenings for the purpose of preventing street brawling and possible injury to people not concerned in the dispute. As this article is written the capital, Port of Spain, and the whole colony are perfectly tranquil. Native unrest, here as in Jamaica, could be at least partially allayed were a genuine effort made to reduce the cost of living to the native populace. All retail prices remain abnormally high. This is especially true in respect of clothing. Much, probably most, of this at present comes from Canada. Its standard of quality is far from justifying its high cost. Merchants wish to import from the United States, whose products, if not quite up to the English pre-war standard, are certainly of much better quality than Canadian. Import tariff on American goods is twenty per cent., but Trinidad merchants say they would be glad to pay that since, both because of the superior quality and the lower cost f.o.b. United States ports, it would profit them to do so and at the same time have a favourable effect upon the Colony's general living-standard.
But it is found that the import-control authorities in Trinidad grant licences for importation from America with far more reluc- tance and far more infrequently than do such controls in Jamaica or in any other of the West Indian colonies. No satisfying explana- tion of this is vouchsafed to anybody, though Trinidad ians generally, including all classes, are anxious to find one. As elsewhere, primary- producers here feel the gravest apprehension at the prospect of the abandonment of Imperial Preference, and this applies especially to sugar-planters. But there seems no sound reason why in any case, in this period of difficulty in importing living essentials from Britain, some concession, if only temporary, should not be made in respect of imports from the United States.
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