Book Review… History that echoes today

Feb 22, 2015 Book Review…, Features / Columnists

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Book: Labour And The Decolonization Struggle In Trinidad and Tobago
Author: Jerome Teelucksingh
Reviewer: Dr Glenville Ashby

Jerome Teelucksingh, known for his eclectic literary work, has always proven provocative and insightful. From poetry and fiction to scholarly writings, he has emerged as one of the marquee intellectuals in the Caribbean.

In this exhaustive, incisive and clinically researched offering, Teelucksingh’s ‘Labour and Decolonization’ triumphs on multiple fronts. It’s a pedagogical tool that blends the past with the present and the future. In some ways, it is prophetic, an algorithm, of sorts.
Teelucksingh chronicles the rise of the labour movement, beginning with the Trinidad Workingmen Association (TWA), and more importantly, the undercurrents that arguably birthed one of the most catalytic institutions in the twin-island state, and indeed, the region.
This is the crux of this seminal study. It details the multiple struggles for economic justice and the complexities in establishing a meaningful body to represent the working class. It elicits a greater sense of appreciation for early pioneers, such as, Alfred Richards, C. Howell and J.E. Pilgrim of the Cane Farmers Association, and later, Adrian Rienzi, Buzz Butler and the more conservative Arthur Cipriani, to name a few.
Thoroughly annotated, Teelucksingh explores the manumission of slaves, the advent of Indentureship and their impact on race and labour relations. The exploitative use of labour to drive a wedge between the two largest ethnic groups is well documented. So too are the rise of laissez faire economics, naked capitalism, and the political intrigue in the latter half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. That economics has always driven racial and social forces serves as one of the key thematic arguments.
Teelucksingh writes, “Planters used Indian Indentureship as an institutionalized form of labour control to restrict the bargaining power of African freedmen. Subsistence wages in the plantation sector contributed to a general depression of wages in the colony, which was advantageous only to sugar and import/export mercantile interests. Indentureship contributed to the retention of poor housing conditions, long hours of work, and contracts designed to harness the labouring class in a scheme devoid of provisions for appeal.”
That indentureship followed in the same vein as slavery, albeit partially sanitised in a legal sense, is unquestionable. And that efforts to curtail and eventually end importation of labour were met with resistance from the bastions of power, are alarming. For example the 1910 Sanderson Commission argued that, “during 1906-1909, Indians in Trinidad remitted varying sums varying from £10,000 and £17,000 in the banks and during the period 1901-1908 Indians bought 3,000-5000 acres of land on an annual basis”. But there is substantial evidence that Indentureship was an albatross, nothing more than a reconfiguration of slavery.
But notwithstanding their impediments, Indians rose from the ashes, becoming a vibrant group holding key positions in the public and private sectors. “The establishment of the San Fernando branch in 1925,” Teelucksingh pens, “signalled a new feature in the TWA with the emergence of the Indian presence in the Association. The crossing of the racial divide was a major advance by the organisation, since African-Indian co-operation was essential both for social cohesion and economic and political reform.”
But even as the TWA combated a common opponent, becoming a playmaker in the socio-political theatre was not without suffocating hiccups. The intra-organisational struggles that pitted conservative and radical elements against each other, and the resistance of some pockets of labour to ‘march’ in lock step with this growing and well organised movement were evident
Between 1925 and 1938 labour pressured the Legislative Council to implement the Employment of Children Ordinance and to repeal the Habitual Idlers’ Ordinance of 1918 that redefined vagrancy that had described anyone not working on a plantation as a potential menace.
Teelucksingh also traces the rise of the Trinidad and Tobago Labour Party and the role of labour in the advancement of self-government and regional federation.
In the words of the Caribbean Labour Congress, “Federation meant self-government and dominion status, those concepts in turn being conceived as essential instruments for overall planning and development of the Caribbean area as an integral part of the larger world economy.”
While Teelucksingh’s treatise reads more like a historical study, it’s a history that breaths. For sure, labour movements, over the last two decades have been compromised, defanged, and in some quarters, are on the cusp of irrelevance.
The dynamics of labour relations are continually shifting. But there is always that constant: the use of force by governments to corral working class demands while suffocating economic freedom.  As inflation, salary freezes, downsizing, and lay-offs plague societies; a new kind of plantocracy – in the form of the nouveau rich – has consolidated power. Labour unions must regroup and respond, mindful of history.
Surely, Teelucksingh’s memory does not fail him. His message is unequivocal and timeless: “The true soldiers of the movement for responsible government, the precursors of independence and the true pioneers and martyrs of nationalism belong to the labour movement of the pre-1956 era.”

Feedback: [email protected] or follow him on twitter@glenvilleashby
Labour and The Decolonization Struggle in Trinidad and Tobago by Jerome Teelucksingh, 2015
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN, 9781137462329
Available: amazon.com
Ratings: Highly recommended

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