It was an eye-catching headline.
“Tongue-lashing for ‘Team BLP,’ was the way the NATION published it a few days ago.
The criticisms, articulated by Minister of Education Ronald Jones were aimed at suspected supporters of the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) who may be seeking election to the executive of the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW). But they also indicated that the Cabinet minister was in need of a lesson or two in the history of Barbados’ labour movement.
For implicit in his tongue-lashing was a suggestion that something was fundamentally wrong with trade unionists publicly holding the hands of political party leaders in Barbados during marches and rallies focusing attention on pressing national issues, in this case the poor state of the economy and declining social conditions.
The truth is that what occurred recently with the BLP march and some prospective candidates for the NUPW executive is not new. Trade unionists and members of political parties have been holding hands for several decades.
While Jones wasn’t reported to have pinpointed the NUPW by name, many in the audience at a Democratic Labour Party branch meeting in St Andrew might have left the Alleyne School convinced he had the NUPW in mind when he complained that the sight of the aspiring trade unionists marching with the BLP probably caused trade unionists and politicians of yesteryear to turn in their graves.
“Every one of those persons on a particular side are all members of the Barbados Labour Party. Strong supporters of the Barbados Labour Party . . . they could as well call themselves Team BLP,” Jones was quoted as saying.
But If the minister had read Dr Francis Mark’s History Of The Barbados Workers Union, a book written in the 1960s; Sir Alexander Hoyos’ The Rise Of West Indian Democracy and Grantley Adams And The Social Revolution; Professor Sir Hilary Beckles’ A History Of Barbados From Amerindian Settlement To Nation State and The Right Excellent Errol Barrow And The Labour Movement, a paper written recently by Evelyn Greaves, a former deputy general secretary of the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) who rose to become a Democratic Labour Party parliamentarian, Cabinet minister and Barbados’ High Commissioner in Ottawa, he would have recognised that the birth of trade unions was traceable to close relationships between founders of the BWU and leaders of political organisations of yesteryear and today, the Progressive League and the BLP and the Democratic Labour Party (DLP).
Among them were Sir Grantley Adams, who served as BWU’s president, Sir Hugh Springer who was its first general secretary and Sir Frank Walcott, who succeeded Sir Hugh when he left to become registrar of the newly established University College of the West Indies in Jamaica in the late 1940s. When Barrow returned to Barbados in the early 1950s after World War II, he lent his tremendous skill and commitment to economic and social reform, especially to the cause of workers and their unions.
That explained why Michael Manley, a former Jamaica Prime Minister, said in a tribute to Barrow on the latter’s death in 1987 that Barbados’ first Prime Minister “yielded pride of place to no person in his support for workers’ causes. The Long friendship and close association between himself and Frank Walcott of the Barbados Workers’ Union and in the eyes of many the dean of Caribbean trade unionists is ample evidence of the late Prime Minister’s commitment.”
Greaves agrees with Manley.
“The relationship between Errol Barrow and the labour movement is one that spans most of his (Barrow’s) political career and one that might be compared to the relationship between Brazil and soccer,” was the way Greaves
put it in his paper. “Such was the natural synergy.”
A somewhat similar “synergy” existed between Sir Grantley and Sir Frank during the BWU’s early years, a time when the union was being buffeted by the hostility of planters and titans of industry in Bridgetown.
“The fledgling union was being sustained by the sheer grit and determination of Grantley Adams, Hugh Springer and the young Frank Walcott,” Greaves recalled. “It had begun to gain a foothold among some workers, especially at the Foundry and among workers offloading cargo from ships and in the sugar industry. These were the key areas of economic activity in the island.”
The partnerships between trade unionists and political parties stretched to more recent times when they involved Sir Roy Trotman, Sir Frank’s successor, and Robert Morris, currently Barbados’ CARICOM Ambassador, all of whom were DLP parliamentarians.
The workers of Barbados benefited significantly from those relationships which led to the enactment of landmark social and economic initiatives that, Greaves explained, ushered in improved holiday with pay entitlements; five-day work week for public employees; peaceful picketing at the workplace or near the homes of employers locked in labour disputes with union; the emergence of the NUPW, the Barbados Secondary Teachers Union and the Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT); and a guaranteed minimum work week for sugar workers during the out of crop season.
This was in addition to a Tenantries Act that prevented plantation owners from moving tenants off of plantation lands after they had ceased working for the owners; a pension scheme for sugar workers; maternity leave for pregnant women; BWU representation on the Tourist Board, the former Barbados Industrial Development Corporation, the Transport Board, the board of the National Insurance Scheme and the Vocational Training Board; the appointment of Sir Frank to the presidency of the Senate and Barbados’ Ambassador to the United Nations.
Little wonder, then, that four of the movers and shakers, nation-builders – Sir Grantley, Barrow, Sir Hugh and Sir Frank are among our national heroes.
What happened in Barbados with trade unionists and political parties was a carbon copy of the partnerships that existed across the Caribbean, in the United States (US) and Britain. The trade unions in Britain were the cornerstones of support for the British Labour Party and in the US the Democratic Party is routinely backed by labour.
Imagine a Barbados without those useful partnerships. The country wouldn’t be the same. It would be worse off.
As a former BUT leader who helped to establish the Congress of Trade Unions and Staff Associations of Barbados, Jones should understand that.