This essay undertakes an examination of the OWTU and the challenge of Working class Political Party formation and Electoral politics, 1962–2012. This area of study has been neglected by Historians and Political Scientists who have tended to focus on the narrow interpretation of the trade union. From 1965 and 1977, the OWTU played significant roles in the creation of the Workers and Farmers Party (WFP) and the United Labor Front (ULF. This essay contends that the union's involvement with these political parties was fraught with difficulties and challenges, and its efforts did not convince the working class that it was in their best interest to support the movement at the polls.

offered us compilations of his writings and speeches, but neither offered anything new by way of scholarship. Palmer's new work on the "Doc" is both timely and appropriate two-and-half decades later because Williams's scholarship is forever etched in the coconsciousness of historians who pay attention to his contribution not only to History but also to Government and Politics. As an authority on the Caribbean, Colin Palmer's voice is most welcome, especially given a recent debate (more speculative than scholarly) began by Selwyn Ryan et al. concerning Williams's death. While Palmer is an authority on the Caribbean, he is a rookie "Williamist." He proclaims:

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The Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) is one of the oldest and most powerful labor organizations in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean. Its origins lie in the formation of the United Workers Trading Association (UWTA) in 1936 when oil workers at Fyzabad, under the leadership of Elbert Redvers Blades, established a cooperative to seek redress against high food prices that plagued oil workers. Following the 1937 general strike and insurrection that engulfed the country, and with Tubal Uriah “Buzz” Butler on the run from British security forces, members of UWTA met at the home of Cecil Williams – located at Coon's Town, Forest Reserve, Fyzabad – on July 15, 1937 to formally launch the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union.