The Labouring Population of Guyana (1917-2017)

Indentureship formally ended in the year 1917. Indian indentureship started in 1838 (May 5 – Indian Arrival Day) while enslaved Africans were being granted emancipation (August 1 – Emancipation Day). The abolition of indentureship came about through sustained struggle on the foreign front and through sustained resistance in the local vanguard. The local resistance was later harnessed into organisations fighting against the exploitation of the labouring population with the intention of securing better wages and working conditions.

According to Ashton Chase in his well-documented, well-presented and well-written book, A History of Trade Unionism in Guyana, 1900 to 1961, “it was not until after immigration of these [Indian] workers ceased in 1917, and their semi-feudal status which has by then become outmoded due to inefficiency and waste, that prospects for organisation seemed ripe”.

The year 1917 was the year of strikes. Early in January 1917, the wharf workers at Booker Brothers struck for shorter working hours and increased pay. The strike fever spread to workers at Curtis Campbell, Bookers Cooperage, Georgetown Railway Wharf and Luggage Store,  Sawmills – Charlestown, Lopes, Sprostons, Demerara Railway, the Ice Factory, the Match Factory, Demerara Ice House Soda Aerated Factory, sea defence workers, East Coast road workers and the post office employees among others. According to Chase, Indian labourers were getting into the act. For instance, during the months of March, April and May workers from the East and West Bank Demerara went to Georgetown to complain about their hardship to the Immigration Agent General.  That agitation took place over a three-month period.

But the year of strikes cannot be viewed in isolation. The first two decades of the 12th century were decades of strikes, forming the bedrock on which the birth of formal trade union movement was spawned. Many of the remonstrations took the form of marches from various plantations towards the Immigration Agent General, of which the office was called ‘Crosby’ in memory of one Mr Crosby who held “this office for a considerable time and often discharged his duties with satisfaction to the workers” (Chase). This period also gave rise to “Black Crosby”, as Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow was affectionately called by Indian immigrants.

According to Chase, “Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow was born in Georgetown on the 18th December, 1884… His academic school record was colourless, but in the field of athletics, his prowess overshadowed all his school mates… After a number of odd jobs…, he entered the waterfront as a dock labourer. He died a bachelor on 10th May, 1958… leaving a small estate of $704.83…”

From the docks of Georgetown, Critchlow was able to form the country’s first trade union, becoming revered as the father of the trade union movement in Guyana.

On December 1, 1903, sixty indentured immigrants on Pln. Diamond ceased working and headed to Georgetown. Other such remonstrations surfaced on Pln. Farm, East Bank Demerara, June 1904, and Pln. Lusignan, May 1905. Also in 1905 came the well documented Ruimveldt series of riots. From 1906 to 1916, there was no letting up in remonstrations from the labouring populations of the plantations across the country via  Providence on the East Bank Demerara, Friends on the Berbice River, Wales in Demerara, Anna Regina on the Essequibo, Marionville of Leguan Island, La Bonne Intention, Peter’s Hall, Leonora, Ruimveldt, Blairmont, just to name a cross-section of involvement.

“A History of Trade Unionism in Guyana, 1900 to 1961” is, first and foremost, a “record of the facts showing how our trade union movement began and how it developed”. Except for a few intrusions into the text by the author due to the fact that he was intimately involved in trade unionism and in politics as a founding member of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and as Minister of Labour, Trade and Industry in the 1953 PPP Government, the book states the facts verifiable by its extensive bibliography.

Interestingly, the book ends with an epilogue “to bring readers up to date with the latest developments (up to 1964) and to make the book more topical”. This is not a review of the book “A History of Trade Unionism in Guyana, 1900 to 1961” by Ashton Chase, but a collation of notes from the book during my research for material referencing the centennial end to Indentureship. The eventual article came together as the following events were in the air – May Day, Indian Arrival Day, my first visit to Highbury, where the first set of Indian Immigrants were landed in order to save sugar, the impending closure of sugar estates across the country and Independence Day.

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