It was a bright sunny day in early October 1953 in Georgetown, British Guiana, the only predominantly English-speaking nation in South America, not far from the Caribbean Sea. He had only recently come to power—or as much power as this man of South Asian origin could assume in a British colony. But now, as he recalled later, London had had quite enough of his months in office, as “the cruiser ‘Superb’ and the frigates ‘Bigbury Bay’ and ‘Burghead Bay’ were steaming from Bermuda. Troops were being flown from Jamaica. The aircraft carrier ‘Implacable’ was to bring further reinforcements from...

AS EVIDENCED BY THE COMING to power of the radical Cheddi Jagan in 1953, British Guiana had long been in the vanguard of the movement in the former British West Indies for sovereignty and labor rights. Thus it should not be overly surprising that Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow, a man of African descent though indigenous to British Guiana, could well be deemed the modern Father of Caribbean Labor.¹ The Caribbean Labour Congress (CLC) had its origins in the “First British Guiana and West Indies Labour Conference,” hosted by him in 1926.² Born in 1884 and deceased by 1958, Critchlow was an...

THE WEST INDIES COLONIES with which we are in touch by correspondence,” said the International Department of the British labor movement in July 1938, “are practically confined to three—Trinidad, Jamaica and British Guiana. Trade union development,” it was added not inaccurately, “is naturally most advanced in Trinidad.”¹

Obviously, it would have been preferable for British labor to be in touch with every nation in the region, as St. Lucia and St. Vincent had demonstrated that disturbances among workers were not limited to the “Big Three” of the region. Yet if resources were limited, it is understandable why these three...

AS THE HOOFBEATS OF WAR approached ever more insistently, London—and its erstwhile ally, Washington—had a security problem in the Caribbean. It was not only that Britain’s rules mandating preference for those of “pure European descent” were not designed for mass appeal in the West Indies¹ and made the nationals of this region susceptible to the blandishments of London’s opponents (especially those in Japan who purported to be the “champion of the colored races”), it was also that these small islands were stepping-stones from which the security of the United States itself could be challenged. Antigua, for example, was...

THE WAR HAD A SEARING IMPACT on Caribbean labor. Workers were being moved around the hemisphere like so many pieces on a chessboard, which exposed them to stimulating experiences as it enhanced their internationalism and reduced their provincialism, making them more susceptible to regional forms of organization. The rhetoric of the war, with its impassioned calls for democracy, freedom, and self-determination, would have been exposed as empty if they had been applied solely to those of “pure European descent”; inevitably those of the Caribbean began to think that such uplifting sentiments also applied to them. Given the outstanding role played...

THE CARIBBEAN LABOUR CONGRESS (CLC) had gotten off to a slow start since its euphoric founding meeting in Barbados in 1945. With an understaffed and underfunded Secretariat, it was unable to effectively meet the challenge provided by its twin goals of coordinating labor organizing while pushing for a federated independence for the British West Indies. But the sum of its parts was considerably more than the whole, for the affiliates of the CLC were waging ferocious and militant battles throughout the region in a manner that in many ways exceeded the now fabled battles of 1937 and 1938. Hence it...

THE INEXORABLE WEAKENING of a war-ravaged Empire combined with the rise of U.S. imperialism in the Caribbean—a factor propelled by security concerns—led to a deeper engagement by Washington with the region. This trend, however, was contradictory. Yes, Washington was seen as an improvement over London, and yes, this did lead to further U.S. investment in the region, notably in Jamaican bauxite and tourism generally. This was viewed by some on the island as compromising sovereignty, but it also led to a steadier influx of Negroes from the United States to the region (and West Indian migrants to the...

THE LATE 1940S WERE A TIME OF INTENSE LABOR turmoil in the British West Indies. The democratic promise of the war and the deplorable conditions endured by workers combined to produce a militant response. Hundreds of miles and numerous differences separated a necklace of islands stretching from Jamaica to British Guiana, but they all shared in common an upsurge of labor that was propelled in part by the common program agreed to at the founding of the Caribbean Labour Congress (CLC).

Tiny St. Kitts, whose entire contemporary population is smaller than the student body at the Ohio State University, provides...

GRANTLEY ADAMS WAS WORRIED. He had given a fervently anticommunist speech at the United Nations that had won him plaudits in Washington, but his concern was how it would play in Barbados. But hours before his plane was to land at Seawell Airport, a large crowd in Bridgetown assembled to greet him. Three columns of trade unionists formed the guard of honor at the airport, and on the triumphal procession from the airport to Bridgetown some eleven miles away, the path was lined with cheering masses. Squads of bicycles led the way and more than fifty cars followed as the...

IT IS APPARENT,” Richard Hart concluded forlornly in early 1949, “that the cessation of publication of the ‘CLC Bulletin’ has left a terrible gap. I am far too broke to finance the publication of another issue. I have, however, received an unsolicited contribution collected by the Jagans in British Guiana of six pounds,” he added, brightening, “and I am going to bring out another issue. Would you be able to print it for me for this sum?” he importuned his comrade, Frank Hill, of Montego Bay, Jamaica.¹ That same year Hart demanded from the CLC treasurer, H. W. Springer, “a...

EVERYONE IS SO SCARED because of recent events in Grenada,” observed Sir Thomas Lloyd nervously, speaking from the conservative citadel that was Barbados in the spring of 1951.¹ He was referring to massive strikes that convulsed the spice island that was Grenada as he wrote. The acting governor argued that what was at play was not a wage dispute but a “communistic uprising organized” by Eric Gairy,² a former primary school teacher who, like many of his compatriots, had been forced to seek work beyond the confines of the island before returning in 1949.³

This invocation of Cold War rhetoric...

THE DISLODGING OF THE CHEDDI JAGAN REGIME in 1953 in British Guiana was the formal acknowledgment of the bitter reality that the CLC left-labor model would not be allowed to attain hegemony in the region. This paved the way for the rise of an alternative—authoritarian labor politicians such as Bradshaw in St. Kitts, Gairy in Grenada, and Bird in Antigua, whose lust for power and limited vision also ensured that federation would not reach fruition. This momentous and portentous development that indelibly marked the early Cold War in the region also guaranteed that hundreds of thousands would not be...

AS THE SECOND HALF of the twentieth century unfolded, the British West Indies was on the cusp of immense change. Riveting struggles had compelled the commencement of adult suffrage throughout a good deal of the region, which slowly was bringing to power forces that embodied the laborleft ideal of the Caribbean Labour Congress (CLC)—namely the Jagans—though London would retain ultimate power for some years to come. Yet since Grantley Adams had cast down the anticommunist gauntlet in Paris, the CLC itself had been under siege. These contrasting trends found it hard to coexist, and ultimately Adams of Barbados...

THE BATTERING OF THE CARIBBEAN Labour Congress (CLC) and the overthrow of Jagan were vicious body blows to the once realistic dreams in the region of labor rights, sovereignty, and federation. Arguably, the region has yet to recover from this setback.

This is not how the matter was viewed in conservative circles. “Among most of the Europeans, including the well-to-do Portuguese” in the colony, “there were expressions of jubilation,” Jagan recalled, speaking of his displacement. He wished to visit London to rally support, but neighboring islands refused his right to transit, as did the United States, French Guiana, and Suriname....

BY THE CRUCIAL YEAR of 1953 the British West Indies by one definition had a total population of 2.8 million, with Jamaica—the largest island—containing about 1.5 million inhabitants, whereas Montserrat had only 13,000; the thirteen islands comprised approximately 8,000 square miles, of which 4,700 were in Jamaica, 2,000 in Trinidad, and 1,300 divided among the other eight territories. (Of course, British Guiana, with a land mass of 83,000 square miles, was only slightly smaller than Great Britain.) Their gross national product amounted to about 230 million pounds, perhaps $500 million, with Jamaica comprising about half of this total....