In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

179 six Bustamante and the Politics of Power The position here is very difficult owing to the large number of persons who have nothing to do but attend mass meetings, listening to wild speakers, one of whom, Bustamante, has been guilty of utterances on which I am advised he can be arrested, but I do not desire to do so at the moment or until such utterances can be associated with any direct act of disturbance,” Governor Edward Denham observed on May 8, 1938. His Excellency was writing to the secretary of state, Ormsby Gore, about potential disturbances in the island and his strategy for dealing with Alexander Bustamante. “Bustamante is challenging arrest,” the governor said, “and no doubt all arrangements are made for the demonstration on his behalf if this occurred.” But the governor thought it more judicious “to hold my hand for the moment but all steps are being taken to deal with any disturbances,” he confessed. The governor stressed that it had “to be recognized that a West Indian mob gets completely out of hand and force has to be resisted by force.” He knew that force “is the one thing they understand.”1 Bustamante was arrested sixteen days later as the governor employed the state’s power to crush the social unrest that he had predicted. Edward Denham’s pejorative comments about Bustamante and the workers he led reflected the fears of the government and the island’s elite, as well as the naive belief that “force” was an appropriate response to the social and economic ills that created the “mob.” Bustamante’s detention was short-lived, but the state’s surveillance of his activities showed no abatement. Governor Arthur Richards, Denham’s tough-minded successor, also awaited an opportunity to silence Bustamante, reduce his appeal to and power over the workers, and puncture the island’s nascent nationalism. Undoubtedly taking their cue from the administration, members of the police department seemed to delight in tormenting the labor leader. Inspector William Orrett pursued Bustamante relentlessly, beginning with his arrest during the rebellion of May 1938. Bustamante complained to the colonial officials about this apparent abuse of police power and also “ 180 | Bustamante and the Politics of Power brought the matter to the attention of the Moyne Commission. The hostility manifested toward Bustamante by the police did not cease, generating more complaints on his part. Writing to the colonial secretary on August 17, 1939, Bustamante reported incidents of alleged police harassment of him, adding: “I will not alone attribute these incidents to just impertinence and ignorance, but it seems to me that there is a sinister motive to inflame and to cause public disturbance, for whilst I am willing to be arrested when I act in such a manner as to justify it, I do not intend to be made a victim of what I term a sinister motive with intent to humiliate and persecute. . . . I am determined not to have your police put their hands on me.”2 Bustamante accused the police of acting in concert with his enemies and those of the bitu. He insisted that the police officers were trying to frame him on various charges. The police inspectors, he said, were endeavoring “to obstruct and foment trouble, and then if anything had occurred it would have been said I caused the trouble.”3 In a letter to Governor Richards, written on December 21, 1939, Bustamante accused “the government” of conspiring with J. A. G. Edwards, the former general secretary of the bitu, to frame him. Edwards’s “gang” of conspirators, he alleged, included St William Grant and Hugh Buchanan, as well as “a well known legal man,” presumably Norman Manley. “I know there is a move on foot to frame me in a criminal charge just to lose confidence in me,” he told the governor, but “the whole police force, the legal man and all of them together will never succeed.”4 J. A. G. Edwards was certainly working to effect Bustamante’s political demise. In late fall 1939, Edwards and St William Grant “came to Inspector Orrett and reported a plot by Bustamante to kill Mr. Bradshaw and Mr. Manley,” the commissioner of police informed the colonial secretary. Bradshaw was the chairman of the United Fruit Company, a major exporter of bananas. Apparently confident about the veracity of his charge, Edwards told an associate that “it won’t be many days from this when an...

Share