Review of The Price of Conscience: Howard Noel Nankivell and Labour Unrest in the British Caribbean in 1937 and 1938, Hansib, 2015.
The icon of the labour movement in T&T is TUB Butler. His image and the story of the murder of a policeman who tried to arrest him in Fyzabad, which sparked off the 1937 labour riots, is the point of origin of the modern Trinidadian labour story/movement in popular consciousness.
Like so many other populist myths this is only partially true. Butler was a large, visible and important figure, but not the only one. Several key figures have been pushed into obscurity, and some have been erased altogether from the story. Adrian Cola Rienzi (a lawyer), whose contribution to the labour movement easily surpassed Butler’s, is such an obscure figure.
But two individuals who helped bring the modern labour movement into being simply do not exist in popular and much academic consciousness: these are the then governor, Sir Murchison Fletcher, and his Colonial Secretary, Howard Nankivell. Also worth a history of her own for her contribution to the social welfare of the poor in Trinidad is Florence Nankivell, Howard’s wife.
Prof Brinsley Samaroo’s new book, The Price of Conscience: Howard Noel Nankivell and Labour Unrest in the British Caribbean in 1937 and 1938, contributes to the necessary and crucial work of augmenting and correcting the Trinidadian historical record, which has suffered many slings and arrows of outrageous opportunists.
Nankivell’s story begins in Jamaica, where he was born to British parents in 1893, and educated in England, in preparation for a career in the military and public service. He served in the First World War with distinction and entered the colonial service thereafter, in 1920 in Jamaica. He was appointed Assistant Secretary to the colony of Trinidad in 1928, and acted, in the succeeding years, as the governor’s deputy and was active in various welfare and labour committees, like the unemployment board.
Nankivell was therefore exposed to the conditions of both urban and rural working classes, with whose plights he sympathised and worked to alleviate. And here is the first major divergence from the conventional narrative which makes the 1937 labour unrest into a colonial-colonised, black-white affair.
The truth of the matter, as Samaroo explicates in some detail, was that Nankivell was sympathetic to the plight of the working people in T&T. So was the governor, Sir Murchison Fletcher. They both spoke and wrote policy documents advocating improvement in their conditions. So much so, notes Samaroo, that Cola Rienzi would note that Nankivell “had facilitated the recognition of the first trade unions in sugar and in oil”.
Samaroo gives a compact account of the 1937-1938 labour unrest. (Many people forget that labour unrest was general in the region.) He identifies the villain(s) in Trinidad as the “sugar sahibs”, “sugar barons”, and representatives of capital, who occupied positions of power in the society. Chief among them was Sir George Huggins (who was the chairman of Trinidad Publishing Company, then owners of this newspaper, and the Petroleum Times, which, according to Samaroo, gave bowdlerized accounts of the events).
Thus the sources of the two narratives about the labour riots and the conditions in Trinidad. The first, propounded by the labour movement and supported by Nankivell and Fletcher, was that industry and capital made obscene profits, and exploited workers. The second, popular among the representatives of capital, was that the workers were unreasonable, motivated by Bolshevist propaganda, and driven by external Communist agitators.
Naturally, capital won and labour lost the war of words, mostly. Capital’s narrative was supported by Trinidadian politicians like Lennox O’Reilly, who was on the executive council, official responses like the Forster Commission of inquiry, and the direct intervention of businessmen. Huggins led a delegation to England in the aftermath of the riots, was seen by the Colonial Office, and was able to have his position articulated from the mouths of influential politicians, like the Duke of Montrose in the House of Lords.
Meanwhile, back at home, Huggins et co were relentless in their campaign to punish and dislodge Nankivell and Fletcher. Nankivell was demoted and transferred to Cyprus, and Fletcher was retired off. It was Nankivell, however, who suffered the most, and died under suspicious circumstances (he fell off a train on the way to Calais) in December 1939. Samaroo concludes it was suicide, since his personal life was dogged with much misfortune as a result of his first marriage.
This much is documented, if not well-known, but Samaroo adds to the existing knowledge in several ways. First the local support of Howard Nankivell was considerable. The book is punctuated by verses from calypsoes sung in sympathy and support by the likes of Atilla, Protector, and less well-known singers. Samaroo also includes in his appendix Nankivell’s pivotal speech given in the Legislative Council July 9, 1937.
But by far the largest contribution of this terse book is its assertion that the cause of the locals was helped considerably by people like Fletcher and both Nankivells. Florence Nankivell was tireless in her social work projects, and was praised by all sections of the community, including Audrey Jeffers (the first woman in the Legislative Council). She, according to Samaroo, was one of the women responsible for the British government’s change in its social policies in the post-Moyne Commission period.
But these individuals were part of a larger stream of British sentiment, consciousness and action which contradicts the “evil oppressor” image. Samaroo quotes Lord Sydney Oliver, Nankivell’s mentor, and a Fabian socialist on the Nankivells’ “remarkably honourable and humanitarian ethic” which was characteristic of the “the educated Christian and gently nurtured classes of England and not that of trade exploitation.”
And it is this final point, made late in the book, that is the most valuable. T&T’s (and Caribbean) history cannot be an unending diatribe of resentment and rage. There were always people in the colonial administration who believed and lived the Christian virtues, and there were many local stooges of the exploitative arm of the Empire. Influential metropolitan ideas like Fabian Socialism and Freemasonry positively shaped institutions and local elites. Much of this subtlety is lost in the rush to portray labour and independence as “struggles” against white oppressors. Bridget Brereton’s important study of Justice John Gorrie, who served as Chief Justice here in the 1880s is one such story, of which there are many to be told, and too few actually done.
If there could be a criticism of The Price of Conscience, it would be that it was too short. Samaroo is an orthodox historian, and is concerned with just the facts, and is very short on extrapolations of environmental and social atmosphere, though, as the calypso insertions, and the epigraph from Ralph de Boissiere’s novel Crown Jewel show, he is familiar with them.
A few other works which give a good account of the period include the collection of Alfred Mendes’ stories, The Man Who Ran Away; Arthur Calder Marshall’s travelogue account, Glory Dead; and Kelvin Singh’s historical work, Race and Class Struggles in a Colonial State. But even without that expanded view, The Price of Conscience is a valuable piece of work, opening up a new and necessary vista in T&T’s history.