The Role of Labour in Promoting the CARICOM Single Market and Economy

• Author: Rt. Hon. Owen Arthur
• Pages: 63-82

63

The Role of Labour in Promoting the CSME

Whenever and wherever people of the Caribbean gather to reflect on

their circumstances, and the desirability of having those circumstances

improved by coming together as one; the peroration of Norman Manley at

the 1947 Montego Bay Conference on Closer Association assumes a fresh,

yet enduring relevance:

“I say, here we are all on a sea of world conditions, stormy and

hazardous in the extreme, each huddled in some little craft of our

own. Some hardly have oars, and only a few have accomplished a

rudimentary sail to take them along. And here offered us is a boat

substantial, capable of being made sea-worthy and ready to be

manned by our captain and our own crew. If we won’t leave our

little boats and get into that larger vessel which is able to carry us to

the goal of our ambitions, then I say without hesitation that we are

damned and purblind and history will condemn us.”

In a similar vein, but with an even more pragmatic directness it was left

to another Manley in 1974 to speak to the requirements of a regional manifest

destiny in these terms:

“The challenge of the future is to shake off the shackles of yesterday’s

assumptions which have delivered us into a separatist trap. The

logic of tomorrow’s possibilities unfolds in the larger context of

regional cooperation and economic integration.”

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77

7Lecture by the Rt. Hon. Owen Arthur

Prime Minister of Barbados to the 15th Triennial

Delegates’ Congress, Caribbean Congress of Labour,

Paramaribo Suriname, October 19 2004

THE ROLE OF LABOUR IN

PROMOTING THE CARICOM SINGLE

MARKET AND ECONOMY

64 CSME: Genesis and Prognosis

The realization that integration represents the only viable destiny for the

people of the Caribbean came to life, not in 1973 at the signing of the Treaty

of Chaguaramas, or in 1958 with the creation of the West Indies Federation

but has been etched in the hearts and souls of the labouring masses since the

end of slavery.

Organised labour, which has been at the vanguard of the struggle for

social and economic transformation of the Caribbean people has done more

than any other institution of our civil society to first define, and next to

express in practical terms what that manifest destiny should entail. Indeed,

the last century is replete with evidence of labour’s role and commitment in

forging unity among Caribbean states. And at a time when the Region seems

to be at the point of doubting itself as to where it should go with its integration

movement, it is necessary that we should reflect for a moment on how sure

and how deep have been the perspectives expressed and the initiatives

undertaken by the regional labour movement over time, to advance the cause

of Caribbean integration. Proposals for the integration of the British West

Indian colonies as they were then called, date back to the nineteenth century.

The impetus for political integration however, was provided by the efforts to

unite the workers of the Region in 1926, when the first regional labour

conference was held in British Guiana. That conference approved a resolution

for the formation of a labour federation between Guyana and the West Indies.

It also resolved that the inhabitants of British Guiana and the West Indies

should be federated and granted some form of self-government which would

enable them to conduct their own affairs.

The idea of federation was pushed even further when, at the invitation of

the Dominica Tax-payers Reform Association a conference of West Indian

leaders was summoned to meet in October 1932, in Roseau. That conference

did a remarkable thing. It drafted, as its first act, a Federal Constitution to

include Trinidad, Barbados, Grenada, St. Vincent, Saint Lucia, Antigua &

Barbuda, St. Kitts-Nevis, Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands.

The proposals presented way back then, merit being revealed so that

their daring can be an inspiration to all in today’s more doubtful environment.

In this West Indies Federation there was to be a single chamber legislature of

33 members with 27 elected. The government, the Federal government, would

be financed by each territory making contributions in proportion to its

revenues. It sought too, to remove tariff barriers between the islands on all

goods, “wherever practicable.” There would be a united West Indian civil

service. The Federal Government was to have power on 24 matters, inclusive

of police, education, public health, commerce, public loans, postal services,