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3 “Are We British Subjects of His Britannic Majesty or Objects?” British Subjects and the “Right to Have Rights,” 1920–1950 We know a word from you to the Colonial Government worth a million petition of ours. After our demobilization in the year 1919 we were sent to our respective island where we believed our government would of provide work for us to do, but instead of that we were turn over to the Chapana Sugar Company as immigrant, to work for that Company. The economical crisis of the country has grown worst and the Cuban Government adopted the policy to force all West Indians out of work regardless of occupation. So our condition is grave. . . . Sir, as Premier of the World War we are asking you to consider those of us who has answered the cry of democracy, that our Government may repatriate us at Government expense as the Jamaican Government are doing for their people, especially as ex-soldiers who find ourself surrounded with this critical condition. Mr. John Howe (Montserrat) and Mr. Allman George (Barbados), veterans of the Eighth Battalion, British West Indian Regiment, Central Manuel (Chaparra), Oriente, Cuba, to David Lloyd George, Wartime Premier of England, February 22, 1937 Hundreds of us went to Santiago de Cuba to the British Consul and asked him to assist us to get home to our respective places. He refused to aid or assist us, saying, he was not there to represent West Indians. . . . The Consul further misled us by saying that when we go there in three or four days a British boat would be coming from Havana to take us to our respective places. . . . I presume it was a complication between the Government , the Consul, and the Chaparra Sugar Company. . . . Are we British subjects of His Britannic Majesty or objects? R. A. Charles, teacher, San Manuel, Oriente, to Marcus Garvey, February 8, 1937 R. A. Charles’s concluding question to Marcus Garvey, the great anticolonialist and pan-Africanist leader, was not simply rhetorical. For years British Caribbean immigrants in Cuba had complained to imperial authorities about the lack of attention they had received or, alternatively, the open hostility shown toward them. Prior to the late 1920s these complaints could be managed, or more easily ignored, by consular and British Subjects and the “Right to Have Rights,” 1920–1950 · 79 embassy officials. As we saw in the previous chapter, life was far from easy for British Caribbean workers in Cuba, but after the restrictions on the size of Cuba’s harvests in 1927, followed shortly after by the world depression , thousands lost their jobs and land and became destitute. Resentment against foreign workers “stealing” Cuban jobs became widespread. What had once been a manageable number of complaints about ill-treatment and requests for assistance became, after 1927, a deluge. By the late 1930s both the humanitarian and political implications of not confronting the challenge of what to do about so many unemployed and desperately poor British subjects throughout the Caribbean was impossible for imperial authorities to ignore.1 Undoubtedly prompted by Charles’s letter, on March 2 Marcus Garvey himself wrote to the British colonial secretary to protest the ill-treatment of British Caribbean immigrants in Cuba and to pressure the imperial state to aid and better represent its subjects.2 Probably by coincidence, on the same day, the secretary informed the British ambassador in Havana that while the ill-treatment of British subjects in Cuba was now a topic of debate in Parliament, it was not “considered possible, in the negotiations for the commercial agreement concluded with Cuba on the 19th of February, to press for the safeguarding of the interests of the British West Indians concerned.” The ambassador was instructed to show the Cuban government the parliamentary debates on the conditions of British Caribbean subjects in Cuba and to indicate to them that there should be reciprocal treatment of Cubans in the UK with British subjects in Cuba, clearly a token gesture given how few Cubans resided in England at the time.3 Britain’s ability or willingness to act on behalf of its black subjects in the Hispanic Caribbean was conditioned by economic interest. Just over a year after Charles sent his letter, another British Caribbean worker in Cuba, Theophilus Samms, wrote to the colonial secretary in London: We have always been obedient to you and at any time of your distress . Many of our boys had been to your rescue in the worlds war. Some...

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