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

Abstract

Whenever society is in travail liberty is born": The mass strike of 1919 in colonial TrinidadChristian Høgsbjerg "Our inherent rights receive emphasis and new assertion at moments of political stress and strain, for whenever society is in travail liberty is born. Evolution is the outcome of revolution, and advancement in any sphere of human activity is expedited by epochal upheavals." So argued David Headley, a leading figure in the social democratic nationalist Trinidad Workingmen's Association (TWA) in the aftermath of the mass strike of 1919 in the Crown Colony of Trinidad. 1 Though a small island with a population of some 312,790 in 1911, the subsequent growth of the TWA into a mass organisation during the 1920s vindicated such radical words, which themselves give a sense of the new feeling of empowerment and confidence felt by workers. 2 This essay will explore how 1919 saw a rolling mass strike that would shake this outpost of the British Empire to its foundations. Though often located as an important part of Caribbean labour history -a precursor in many ways to the powerful wave of regional rebellions in the 1930s -this essay will examine the strike through a transnational prism. It will explore how the strike not only had indigenous roots relating to the workers' resentment that had steadily built up during the Great War but also international ones -such as the experience by black Trinidadians of popular racism in imperial Britain and institutional racism by black colonial troops in the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR). It will also situate the strike within the wider international industrial turmoil of that year -not least the rising militancy of organized labour in imperial Britain itself. In the process it aims to explore the potentialities for -and limitations ofinternational solidarity in 1919, when the British Empire was perhaps at the height of its power. Local and Global Roots of a Mass StrikeWith the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, there was a great show of imperial loyalty at the outset from colonial subjects, with some 16,000 black West Indians answering the call to defend the British Empire. Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican Pan-Africanist and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), had given his blessings, arguing that it "was the duty of every true son of the Empire to rally to the cause of the Motherland [Britain]". 3 Yet workers' resentment grew as the bloody conflict dragged on. In Trinidad, devoid of elected representatives above the municipal level, and governed by officials appointed by the Crown headed by a governor, anger at price rises and mercantile profiteering amid low wages, underemployment and unemployment slowly escalated. In spring 1917, oilfield, dock and asphalt workers in the south in Point Fortin,