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‘Whenever Society Is in Travail Liberty Is Born’: The Mass Strike of 1919 in Colonial Trinidad

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The Internationalisation of the Labour Question

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements ((PSHSM))

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Abstract

In colonial Trinidad in 1919, rising industrial turmoil culminated in a rolling mass strike that would shake this outpost of the British empire to its foundations. Though it is often located as an important part of Trinidadian or at best Caribbean labour history—a precursor in many ways to the powerful wave of labour rebellions that swept the Anglophone colonial Caribbean in the 1930s—this chapter will examine the strike through the prism of transnational and global labour history. It will explore how the strike had indigenous and international roots and will aim to situate the inspiring mass strike of 1919 within the wider international turmoil of that year, not least the rising challenge the militancy of organised labour posed in the imperial metropole of Britain itself.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Headley in the Monographic Labour Review 1 (1921), quoted in Kelvin Singh, Race and Class Struggles in a Colonial State: Trinidad 1917–1945 (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 1994): 23. My thanks to David Featherstone for comments on this chapter in draft.

  2. 2.

    Brinsley Samaroo, “The Trinidad Workingmen’s Association and the Origins of Popular Protest in a Crown Colony,” Social and Economic Studies 21, no. 2 (1972): 205.

  3. 3.

    Adam Ewing, “Caribbean Labour Politics in the Age of Garvey, 1918–1938,” Race & Class 55, no. 1 (2013): 27.

  4. 4.

    Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 22. See also Ron Ramdin, From Chattel-Slave to Wage-Earner: A History of Trade Unionism in Trinidad and Tobago (London: Martin Brian & O’Keeffe, 1982): 51; Jerome Teelucksingh, Labour and the Decolonisation Struggle in Trinidad and Tobago (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015): 32.

  5. 5.

    Ray Kiely, The Politics of Labour and Development in Trinidad and Tobago (PhD thesis, University of Warwick, 1991): 118; Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 13.

  6. 6.

    Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 22.

  7. 7.

    Samaroo, “The Trinidad Workingmen’s Association”: 206–208; Teelucksingh, Labour and the Decolonisation Struggle: 20.

  8. 8.

    Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 10.

  9. 9.

    Teelucksingh, Labour and the Decolonisation Struggle: 20–22, 48. See also Samaroo, “The Trinidad Workingmen’s Association”: 208.

  10. 10.

    Samaroo, “The Trinidad Workingmen’s Association”: 218–219.

  11. 11.

    Satnam Virdee, Racism, Class and the Racialised Outsider (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014): 77; Chanie Rosenberg, 1919: Britain on the Brink of Revolution (London: Bookmarks, 1987): 30–31. See also Paul Griffin, “Labour Struggles and the Formation of Demands: The Spatial Politics of Red Clydeside,” Geoforum 62 (2015): 121–130.

  12. 12.

    Teelucksingh, Labour and the Decolonisation Struggle: 32–33.

  13. 13.

    Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 23.

  14. 14.

    Teelucksingh, Labour and the Decolonisation Struggle: 33. See also Kiely, “The Politics of Labour and Development”: 118; Ramdin, From Chattel-Slave to Wage-Earner: 56.

  15. 15.

    Virdee, Racism, Class and the Racialised Outsider: 79. See also Jacqueline Jenkinson, Black 1919: Riots, Racism and Resistance in Imperial Britain (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008).

  16. 16.

    Ewing, “Caribbean Labour Politics”: 28.

  17. 17.

    Tony Martin, “Revolutionary Upheaval in Trinidad, 1919: Views from British and American Sources,” The Journal of Negro History 58, no. 3 (1973): 318.

  18. 18.

    Ewing, “Caribbean Labour Politics”: 27–28.

  19. 19.

    Samaroo, “The Trinidad Workingmen’s Association”: 212.

  20. 20.

    W.F. Elkins, “A Source of Black Nationalism in the Caribbean: The Revolt of the British West Indians Regiment at Taranto, Italy,” Science and Society 34 (1970): 99, 102–103.

  21. 21.

    Elkins, “A Source of Black Nationalism in the Caribbean”: 103; Ewing, “Caribbean Labour Politics”: 29.

  22. 22.

    Martin, “Revolutionary Upheaval in Trinidad”: 315.

  23. 23.

    Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 17.

  24. 24.

    Ramdin, From Chattel-Slave to Wage-Earner: 54.

  25. 25.

    Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 18; Ewing, “Caribbean Labour Politics”: 30.

  26. 26.

    Martin, “Revolutionary Upheaval in Trinidad”: 319. See also W.F. Elkins, “Black Power in the British West Indies: The Trinidad Longshoreman’s Strike of 1919,” Science and Society 33 (1969): 73.

  27. 27.

    Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 16–20. Cipriani would in the 1920s play a leading role in Trinidadian nationalism. See C.L.R. James, The Life of Captain Cipriani: An Account of British Government in the West Indies with the Pamphlet the Case for West Indian Self-Government (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014).

  28. 28.

    David Featherstone, “Politicizing In/Security, Transnational Resistance, and the 1919 Riots in Cardiff and Liverpool,” Small Axe 57 (November 2018): 64–65.

  29. 29.

    W.F. Elkins, “‘Unrest Among the Negroes’: A British Document of 1919,” Science and Society 32 (1968): 72–74.

  30. 30.

    F.E.M. Hercules, “The African and Nationalism,” The African Telegraph 1, no. 8 (December 1918): 84.

  31. 31.

    W.F. Elkins, “Hercules and the Society of Peoples of African Origin,” Caribbean Studies 11, no. 4 (1972): 56.

  32. 32.

    Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 21–22. After Trinidad, Hercules left for British Guiana, and the fears colonial authorities had about him are testified to by the fact that in mid-December 1919, Hercules was forbidden to re-enter Trinidad.

  33. 33.

    Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 23–24; Teelucksingh, Labour and the Decolonisation Struggle: 34.

  34. 34.

    Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 22, 25–27.

  35. 35.

    Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 26–27; O. Nigel Bolland, On the March: Labour Rebellions in the British Caribbean, 1934–1939 (Kingston: Ian Randle, 1995): 31.

  36. 36.

    Elkins, “Black Power in the British West Indies”: 73–74.

  37. 37.

    C.L.R. James, A History of Negro Revolt (London: FACT, 1938): 75.

  38. 38.

    Elkins, “Black Power in the British West Indies”: 71.

  39. 39.

    Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 27–28. See also Elkins, “Black Power in the British West Indies”: 74; Ramdin, From Chattel-Slave to Wage-Earner: 61.

  40. 40.

    Ramdin, From Chattel-Slave to Wage-Earner: 59.

  41. 41.

    Martin, “Revolutionary Upheaval in Trinidad”: 323; Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 29.

  42. 42.

    Bolland, On the March: 30–32.

  43. 43.

    Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 30.

  44. 44.

    Teelucksingh, Labour and the Decolonisation Struggle: 35; Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 31; and Kiely, “The Politics of Labour and Development”: 119.

  45. 45.

    Teelucksingh, Labour and the Decolonisation Struggle: 35.

  46. 46.

    Ramdin, From Chattel-Slave to Wage-Earner: 60.

  47. 47.

    Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 31.

  48. 48.

    Ewing, “Caribbean Labour Politics”: 28.

  49. 49.

    Teelucksingh, Labour and the Decolonisation Struggle: 35; Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 31.

  50. 50.

    Samaroo, “The Trinidad Workingmen’s Association”: 215.

  51. 51.

    Teelucksingh, Labour and the Decolonisation Struggle: 36–37.

  52. 52.

    Samaroo, “The Trinidad Workingmen’s Association”: 218.

  53. 53.

    Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 32.

  54. 54.

    Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 24.

  55. 55.

    Teelucksingh, Labour and the Decolonisation Struggle: 35.

  56. 56.

    Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (London: Zed, 1991): 363; Susan Campbell, “Carnival, Calypso and Class Struggle in Nineteenth Century Trinidad,” History Workshop Journal 26 (1988): 20.

  57. 57.

    Elkins, “Black Power in the British West Indies”: 75.

  58. 58.

    Ewing, “Caribbean Labour Politics”: 29; Elkins, “Unrest Among the Negroes”: 67; and Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 21.

  59. 59.

    Martin, “Revolutionary Upheaval in Trinidad”: 326.

  60. 60.

    Kent Worcester, C.L.R. James: A Political Biography (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996): 14.

  61. 61.

    Ewing, “Caribbean Labour Politics”: 30.

  62. 62.

    Ahmed Shawki, Black Liberation and Socialism (Chicago: Haymarket, 2006): 103, 105.

  63. 63.

    Teelucksingh, Labour and the Decolonisation Struggle: 36–37.

  64. 64.

    Teelucksingh, Labour and the Decolonisation Struggle: 37; Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 32, 34.

  65. 65.

    Singh, Race and Class Struggles: 33, 35–36.

  66. 66.

    Campbell, “Carnival, Calypso and Class Struggle”: 20.

  67. 67.

    Ramdin, From Chattel-Slave to Wage-Earner: 65; Samaroo, “The Trinidad Workingmen’s Association”: 216.

  68. 68.

    C.L.R. James, “Introduction,” to Ron Ramdin, From Chattel-Slave to Wage-Earner: A History of Trade Unionism in Trinidad and Tobago (London: Martin Brian & O’Keeffe, 1982): 14.

  69. 69.

    Quoted in Elkins, “A Source of Black Nationalism in the Caribbean”: 103.

  70. 70.

    Martin, “Revolutionary Upheaval in Trinidad”: 322.

  71. 71.

    Socialist Review (Summer 1916): 205, quoted in Tony Cliff and Donny Gluckstein, The Labour Party: A Marxist History (London: Bookmarks, 1996): 87.

  72. 72.

    “Negroes Revolt—Trinidad Governor Besieged,” Daily Herald, 15 December 1919; “Trinidad Revolt—The Official Explanation,” Daily Herald, 16 December 1919. For the British parliamentary debate on the ‘Trinidad and Tobago disturbances’ on 15 December 1919, see Hansard, https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1919-12-15/debates/22d34579-fc51-4075-a467-b4874d69caeb/TrinidadAndTobago(Disturbances). The term ‘nigger brown’ was then a popular name for a particular colour and this character was contrasted in the cartoon to ‘lily white’, another character, but this poem still represents an indefensible racist caricature.

  73. 73.

    See the interesting exchange over colonialism at the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920 between Lenin and Tom Quelch of the British Socialist Party. Ralph Fox, The Colonial Policy of British Imperialism (London: Martin Lawrence, 1933): 115–116.

  74. 74.

    Claude McKay, “Socialism and the Negro,” Workers’ Dreadnought, 31 January 1920. See also Jonathan Hyslop, “The Imperial Working Class Makes Itself ‘White’: White Labourism in Britain, Australia, and South Africa Before the First World War,” Journal of Historical Sociology 12, no. 4 (1999): 398–421.

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  1. University of Brighton, Brighton, UK

    Christian Høgsbjerg

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  1. Institute for History, Leiden University, Leiden, Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands

    Stefano Bellucci

  2. Department of History, Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland

    Holger Weiss

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Høgsbjerg, C. (2020). ‘Whenever Society Is in Travail Liberty Is Born’: The Mass Strike of 1919 in Colonial Trinidad. In: Bellucci, S., Weiss, H. (eds) The Internationalisation of the Labour Question. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28235-6_10

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