The use of state violence and the law against strikes and mass revolts in Antigua Part three
by Alvette Ollorton Jeffers
The Antigua Labor Party (ALP) won the 1976 election. VC Bird announced soon after that 1968 would never happen again. His 1968 demise still galled, even though the party was celebrating an electoral victory and 1968 still gives present day party leaders angst. The ALP government immediately went into controlling mode.
One of the first things the government did was to arrest Jerome Bleau, Vincent Michael, Alvette E Jeffers, Ricardo Mapp and Leonard Hector for picketing a government building to expose the transhipment of arms from Antigua to South Africa by Space Research. The government quickly established the Industrial Court of 1976 (IC), parts of which amended the PLM’s 1975 Code.
According to the IC, the Minister of Labour was not compelled to opt for voluntary adjustment in a trade dispute. He could, in the first instance, choose to take the matter to the IC. Once the matter was referred to it, neither a strike nor a lockout could be continued or commenced. The Minister could, in the “national interest” apply for an injunction to stop the strike, thereby taking possession of the dispute. [IC: sec 21 (1)] It wasn’t just the passage of the IC which reinforced the idea that the ALP government had retained the idea that workers should be contained.
An industrial dispute between the Antigua Teachers Union and the government between 1977 to 1979, made that abundantly clear also. That dispute began when its President, Juno Samuel, was transferred from teaching to the Ministry of Economics in 1977. In the intermediate periods between 1977 and 1979, the Teachers Union and the government continued to have conflicting narratives of the dispute which only served to outline the gulf which separated them.
As the dispute continued to escalate, the ALP government became more repressive. I can reference only a couple of these occurrences for the sake of brevity. To begin, the teachers believed that the transfer of Samuel in December of 1977, “was obviously designed to prevent the union’s President from taking part in the discussion on the new employment package.” (New Teacher, 1978)
The teachers continued to protest his transfer into 1978 and on 7th of June, they picketed the Ministry of Economics. Thirteen were arrested and charged under an old colonial law with “watching and besetting.” They were tried on 13th of June, 1978 and the Court dismissed the charges.
\On the 14th of June the thirteen teachers were prevented from entering their classes by the police. Subsequently, the Permanent Secretary, Archie King, suspended the previously arrested teachers who remained that way from 1978 to 1979. On the January 1st of 1979, they were retired in the “public interest”. (Juno Samuel, interviewed by AEJ, October 2021) Students attempted to stage a demonstration in support of their teachers at the Parliament building. At the time, Parliament was held in St. John’s in the old Queen Elizabeth Hall. They did not make it.
They were chased away by the Defense Force. On the 13th of January, 1979, teachers struck. On February 27th ACLM, AWU and the Antigua Teachers Union tried to stage a demonstration of several hundred people for which permission was denied.
As we lined up in preparation to march, the Riot Squad appeared and without warning teargassed the demonstrators until the entire area was cleared of people. The Riot Squad proceeded to chase and teargas demonstrators throughout the city of St. Johns which caused merchants to close their shops.
Several demonstrators were arrested. Two of its organizers, Juno Samuel and Leonard Hector, were imprisoned for two weeks. The strike was called off on April 17th, 1979. The teachers, who were not “retired in the national interest”, were allowed to return to work without a settlement of their original grievances. It was clear then that VC Bird meant what he said in 1976 that 1968 will never happen again.
No matter which party is in office, the State retains these powers to maim, kill, teargas, pepper spray, dismiss striking workers and arrest, charge and imprison demonstrators. When AWU and its political allies were in opposition, they condemned the ALP for using force against its members.
The ALP laid similar accusations against the PLM when it became the opposition. In attempting to preserve their rule, both parties were using the repressive measures they had put in place to control the political activities of the other. At least, that is how it appears on the surface. But if you peer below it, you will see that they had other objectives in mind.
One was to prevent a union from ever becoming the springboard for the kind of political upheaval that gave rise to George Walter and VC Bird. The second was the creation of a tightly, regulated industrial relations system that could forestall any unpredictable disruptions at the place of work.
The State now polices the system and encourages the process through which workers are disciplined into accepting the supervisory structures put in place at work that help the owners of industry achieve their economic objectives. In a more general sense, the State abets the role assigned to workers as the creators of wealth for the owners of the economy, thus continuing what workers have been doing from the time they were captured and brought to Antigua and Barbuda.
Antiguans and Barbudans did not choose this life. It was imposed upon them, and governments have told them that it is the best that can be done. The workers and everyday people are cajoled into accepting these pronouncements as if they were unalterable truths. In Barbuda those official truths are contested because they are causing unbearable harm.
The government has informed Barbudans that the exploitation of their resources will continue unabated and that they will not be allowed to decide what happens on the island. The people of Barbuda and their Council which has constitutional autonomy over Barbuda’s internal affairs have been protesting Peace Love and Happiness’ (PLH) disregard for the local environment. PLH is an American firm that is building luxury houses on the island.
Barbudans consider the degradation of their environment by PLH as violation of their human rights. They recently asked the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights to intervene on their behalf. The PM has truculently denied Barbudans’ claims against PLH. He sees this and all of their other protests as a threat to the success of the company.
People who protest economic projects that they feel disadvantage them and their communities are dismissed by him as “economic terrorists,” which indicates, as has happened in the USA, that the “terrorists” could be denied the legal protections a non-terrorist enjoys. Even if his designation was a moment of flippancy, it suggests how easily the Antigua government can turn a right into a criminal act.
In July of 2020, Gaston Brown told the Barbudans after they had protested PLH that “they would have to face the full extent of the law for any infractions whatsoever. Anytime they do anything over there I am sending the police and defense force.” He continued to say that he would “rather fight them and resign than to turn a blind eye.” The PM’s supreme loyalty to PLH, trumps any remaining commitment he may still feign for the limited, democratic rights that Barbudans and Antiguans have to protest a wrong.
All Barbudans were doing was peacefully protesting. They were not burning buildings and sugarcane crops as happened in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. These were the acts for which both unions were blamed. In the colonial days it was just called arson. The present government has now revealed what in the past seemed hidden. People are now aware that economic elites do greatly impact decisions governments make. It is an obvious fact too, that the government will do all it can get away with to encourage the appropriate conditions for the exploitation of local resources by the likes of PLH and the Robert De Niro’s.
The ongoing, political crisis in Barbuda reveals this. It points to the fragility of political rights also, especially those that can enable everyday people to realize that democracy does not terminate after a single act of voting at election time. They are increasing their understanding that it can be used to end the domination of the many by the few. Nowhere is this clearer than in Barbuda.
There are some indications that some people in Antigua are beginning to understand too that democracy is continuous, but those few must realize that it must also become the medium through which new ideas and practices of local, self-governance are discovered to become the replacement for the parliamentary dictatorship. The workers’ uprisings of the past succumbed to the ideological vision of their party leaders.
The present political parties are trying to keep things that way by continuing to promote ideas that encourage their followers to believe that they cannot practice self-governance. Autonomous, political action that aims to bring about different approaches and solutions to social problems are ridiculed, even when the members of the autonomous body are sympathetic to the ruling party.
When these autonomous bodies differ with it, the government threatens to abridge their rights. For example, the AT&LU recently decided to ask the Court’s opinion on the governments’ use of mandatory vaccination to help stop the spread of Covid. PM Brown said in Parliament that AT&LU’s decision was an attempt to “fight us” and “to stand against us.”
Brown declared war on the leadership of the union, and threatened Mr. Wigley George, the president, with dismissal. He says he can do it, because “the center of power in the Antigua Trades and Labour lie within Antigua Labor Party and we can affect that change.” The trade union seems to have no independence or rights which the PM is bound to respect.
Unions and workers are already hamstrung by the Code and Industrial Court. Yet Brown is still attempting to micromanage their operations so that their decisions come to reflect his government’s wishes. It is of no importance what the workers want for themselves.
The union’s internal, democratic practices are viewed as mere encumbrances that can be conveniently dispensed of when the government says so. An autocrat prefers the quickness of a dictatorship to the deliberative processes of democracy. However, this is not the only time the A&BLP has indicated its preference for the autocratic form.
A few months ago, PM Brown told Parliament that his government was exploring ways to amend the Constitution to make possible the relief of some, if not all, of the Barbuda Council’s powers of oversight. This, no doubt, would please PLH since the government’s decision would totally free it and future investors from the Council’s scrutiny. While amendment of the Constitution remains a wish of the government, the Court has stepped in to help it by preventing the Council and Barbudans from encroaching on “PLH’s lands.”
I do not see any evidence that the political elites are going to change course on their own volition. When the next election concludes and either the Democratic National Alliance (DNA) or the United Progressive Movement (UPP) were to win, Parliament, the Senate and the Executive will remain a Trinity. The laws which regulate the division of labor to aid the continuing creation of wealth by the many for the few will remain intact. The transfer of resources to the wealthy few will continue and remain central to their development strategy.
The Defense Force and police, which by the way is not a benign body as some are suggesting, will still be there to reinforce the decisions of the political Trinity, especially when their decisions spark mass opposition. The thing that will remain to distinguish one party from the other will be their different party colors and contrasting leadership styles. Nothing else.
During the general strike of 1951, Moody Stuart told the AT&LU that he would starve the striking workers into submission. He was wrong about that. But he and the estates owned virtually all of the fertile lands in Antigua. When resources and wealth are concentrated in a few hands the general population are at their mercy. How and for what purposes resources are used is left to the owners of those resources. Investment decisions are never made on the basis of what is good for society but what is good for theirs’s and the company’s pockets.
The concentration of wealth in the hands of the few has become so detrimental to society that a few economists have begun to worry about the possibility that workers might just do something about it. It is in part due to this concentration of wealth that made Martin Luther King Jr. told the world that we needed a revolution in values and a radical departure from a thing oriented society to a people oriented society.
A united working class has to first undergo a revolution in its political values to make a people’s society possible. The working class and everyday people cannot develop these revolutionary values as long as they remain in the traditional parties, like the UPP, DNA and A&BLP. They will need their autonomous bodies and help from those who want to bring this new vision to reality.
This necessary step is needed to bring about a government of, for and by the people, whose democratic practices will bar the possibility for an intermediate power to emerge with the capacity to usurp the masses authority over the day to day management of society. Power to the workers and everyday people must come to mean just that. Nothing else.
I decided to write this article after the young people, who called themselves the Freedom Fighters, went out to protest on August 8th. They and nearby community areas were teargassed. People were surprised and remarked that they had never seen such a demonstration of State power and violence. Well, maybe they were born after 1979 and no one took the time to tell them the history of their ancestors and what they encountered in their attempt to change their world.
I write this article, particularly for them, in the hope that they may see the need to broaden their struggle to include demands that go beyond the call for an end to mandatory vaccination. What this Covid crisis reveals is that the State has enormous power which it uses to impose its will and those of the ruling classes on the general society. That power is so real and dangerous to democracy that it should force us to consider new ways of organizing a new society that embraces the concept of a government of workers and everyday people.
We used to say in ACLM, the system is the problem, and the system must go. But now, I will add to that this. “A country is only as good…only as strong as the people who make it up and the country turns into what the people want it to become…I don’t believe any longer that we can afford to say that it is entirely out of our hands. We made the world we’re living in, and we have to make it over.” (James Baldwin, from (www.brainpickings.org/2016/05/09).
That must become our duty or else, we will continue to be held back by governments that promise the sky “to win the election. But after that the only type of government and social relations that they know is that of “power,” violence “and subordination” the “concept” and “practice” of which “is that of the old colonialist government.” (CLR p. 124 )