Has Labour Day lost its meaning!

FOR TWO YEARS NOW, courtesy Jerry George, I have followed the Labour

Point of View

Day celebrations in Grenada. The marchers seemed to have been taking pride in celebrating the occasion. Impressive also were the numbers, although one official being interviewed, had hoped to see more workers. In SVG, silence prevailed, as if there was no significance to the day. Why are things so different here? I thought about it for a while and then remembered that there was another area in which Grenada was different.

While we had over 30 homicides last year, Grenada had less than ten, so the differences might be more complex than I originally thought. Was it that the 1979 Revolution and its aftermath had introduced a sense of discipline and consciousness that have impacted on the society?

Hopefully union officials have seen a video of the proceedings and began some soul searching.

Labour Day is celebrated world-wide to commemorate the occasion when workers were killed at a labour demonstration in Chicago on May 4, 1886.

In 1945 at a conference in Barbados that launched the Caribbean Labour Congress, a resolution was passed calling on regional governments “to consider declaring the First Day of May in each year ‘Labour Day’ and that the date should be proclaimed a public holiday.” That meeting was attended by George McIntosh and J.S Bonadie of the St. Vincent Workingmen’s Association. McIntosh informed his regional colleagues that there was a strong labour movement in St. Vincent, but no registered union and asked if they should concentrate on building one. The following year, two unions were established, the General Workers Union and the Peasant Cultivators Union.

The first Labour Day celebration was in 1951.

By then a new union, the United Workers Peasants and Ratepayers Union, led by George Charles, had captured the imagination of workers. Charles drew on the experience from his association with Butler in Trinidad, and his union took off. Some years ago, in an interview with me in Canada, Evans Morgan, grievance officer of the Union, described their method of building and organising the union that was launched on May Day. An estimated 2,000 workers marched from the King George V Playing field, later to be the site of the Arnos Vale airport, to the Victoria Park. They were led by two brass bands, the workers wearing a black cross that, according to the Vincentian, “represented those who made the necessary sacrifice, so that labour may gain the measure of power which they now enjoy.” 1951 was the year of Adult Suffrage and the workers knew that for the first time they were going to exercise their right to vote. Three of their leading members, Evans Morgan, Herman Young and George Charles, won seats at the elections held later, on October 15.

As the labour movement grew, 1951 became an important landmark and the planters found themselves on the defensive. Planter and Lawyer O. W Forde warned his planter colleagues about the significance of what was developing: “We must accept the view that trade unions are here to stay, if some cannot even accept they are good…We must also accept and be resigned to the fact that adult suffrage is also here to stay. We must adopt a change of heart and win the cooperation of those who work for us, if we cannot get accustomed to the idea that the pendulum of time has swung the other way.”

The Labour Movement today has lost its way.

Admittedly, there are those trying to restore some dignity and purpose to the movement. Until that is achieved, and consciousness rebuilt, the significance of May Day will continue to be lost.

DR ADRIAN FRASER