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TWO: The Labor Rebellion
- The University of North Carolina Press
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28 two The Labor Rebellion Newly released from jail in May 1938, Alexander Bustamante addressed “a vast gathering of labourers” at Trench Pen, Kingston. The labor leader had come to announce to the cheering crowd that the government had agreed to increase the wages of those who worked for the Public Works Department by 25 percent. “I have given proof I am willing to suffer for your cause,” he declared as the excited crowd “waved their hands high and cheered.” Continuing, Bustamante boasted, “I have suffered,” promising that “if more should come, I am willing to accept it with a smile.” He told the people that he expected them “to accept my advice as you would that of a good and faithful father.” Bustamante saw himself, he said, “as your father, your protector.” “And our saviour!” shouted a voice from the rear of the crowd.1 Alexander Bustamante must have been very pleased when someone called him “our saviour.” This was not an indication of his deification but rather an expression of gratitude and a recognition of the special place he was beginning to occupy in the hearts of many Jamaican workers. It was a meteoric ascent from skepticism to affection, from mistrust to blind faith. The brown-skinned usurer who had spent most of his adult days away from his homeland had, in a matter of days, become the repository of the dreams for a better life for black Jamaican workers. Bustamante’s identification with the plight of Jamaica’s poor began shortly after his return to the island from the United States in 1934. As he recalled: “I discovered something radically wrong—there were too many barefooted, half-naked and hungry people around. They seemed hopeless, friendless.”2 By 1937 he had embraced their cause and trade unionism as well. At first, Bustamante served as an officer of the Jamaica Workers and Tradesmen Union (jwtu), founded by Allan Coombs. The partnership was a rocky one, and the two men went their separate ways in November of that year. Bustamante’s break with the union did not mean his withdrawal from labor’s cause. Since he had no legally sanctioned official standing, however, employers were not required to give him a hearing. The Labor Rebellion | 29 Bustamante’s identification with Jamaica’s underclass was dramatically captured in a series of letters that he wrote to British officials in early 1938. Not since 1865, when Dr. E. B. Underhill sent a letter to the secretary of states for the colonies, had British officials received such a ferocious criticism of their regime in Jamaica. Underhill’s letter, written in January 1865, was a catalog of the economic deprivations that many Jamaicans endured. “The people,” he wrote, “are starving.” Underhill reported that “there is not sufficient employment for the people; there is neither work for them, nor the capital to employ them.” Underhill blamed the policies of the colonial government for the disgraceful conditions and proposed a series of reforms. The Colonial Office forwarded the letter to Edward Eyre, the local governor . Eyre dismissed Underhill’s charges, blaming the Jamaicans for their condition. Their laziness and moral turpitude explained their condition, the governor asserted. The mostly white elites supported the governor’s position when the Underhill letter became the subject of popular discourse. Concerned members of the colonial middle class held meetings throughout the island to discuss Underhill’s letter. Known as the Underhill meetings, the attendees passed resolutions supporting the Baptist missionary’s conclusions . The public, as a whole, was also actively engaged in debates on the contents of the letter, leading one contemporary to observe that “since the date of emancipation, no subject had so seriously agitated the public opinion of Jamaica, or called forth more acrimonious discussion.”3 The seething discontent with the status quo produced the great Morant Bay rebellion in October, the loss of 893 lives, and the cruel repression of the protest.4 It is very likely that Bustamante was aware of the Underhill letter and its connection to the Morant Bay rebellion. He was born in 1884, nineteen years after the rebellion occurred, and it was conceivably still a part of the popular consciousness. Bustamante was probably also introduced to the events of 1865 in school. In any event, Bustamante’s letters to sympathetic British officials echoed that written by Underhill. Bustamante also sent copies of these letters to the British press to ensure widespread...