West Indies News Bulletin*
"As kings defend their thrones, religious leaders their churches, the lioness her cubs, and mothers their children so, I consider it my duty as a trade union leader to defend the rights and privileges of every worker in Trinidad and Tobago even to the danger of my life. Here I stand, I shall not recant." This quotation from George Weekes, President of the Oilworkers' Trade Union, one of the best organised workers! organisations in the West Indies, decorates the outside cover of the pamphlet, "The N.T.U.C. and the Sugar Workers' Strike - Why I Resigned", written by Weekes himself.
The pamphlet recounts the history of the sugar workers strike against the corrupt trade union bureaucracy and which, like the Dominican Revolution succeeded, but whose verdict was reversed by the state of emergency which the Eric Williams Government declared to save the union bureaucracy and prevent a complete realignment in the trade unions favouring the rapidly advancing workers movement, which now ‘had a revolutionary centre in that . important bastion the oilworkers and their effective leadership of the NTUC.
The strike was remarkable for the employment of the paramilitary police and the army (defence force) to defeat the workers. As the pamphlet itself states: "..it is well knowm the movement into the (strike) area on 24.2.65. of the first batch of the Defence Force..." That was two days after the strike began. And it says in the next paragraph: "But what the hierarchy of All Trinidad (the Sugar Workers Union) did with the blessing of the employers and the connivance of the military forces is not at all well known and will in due course be documented." Acts of violence were perpetrated “against the striking workers and their supporters".
But another reason for the timely onslaught on the sugar workers and the NTUC of February-March 1965 was the attempt to influence the elections in the Oilfields Workers Trade Union which were to take place in May. It was the strength and victory of the rebel reform movement in the oilworkers union, of which Weekes was chairman, which had made possible the 2-week strike of 1960 that had paralysed the whole country. It had also made possible the conversion of the oilworkers and the TUC into a rallying centre for the entire workers movement, buttressed by progressive developments in certain other major unions. A defeat in the oilworkers union election would have been a serious blow to all these struggles.
The propaganda offensive which started shortly after the strike was broken by the state of emergency with the Report on Subversion in the Trade Unions, Civil Service, the Youth and the country as a whole, while directed as an offensive on all fronts, was immediately concerned with denigrating Weekes and preventing his re-election as chairman of the OWTU. The imperialist newspapers, radio and television and the puppets in the Government sounded off grave warnings. But the workers had learned many lessons since 1953, the period of the last counter offensive on a West Indian scale.
Weekes has won hands down. He polled 4,281 votes against his opponent Lesaldo's poll of 794. : * The West Indies News Bulletin is published by W.I. News Service,
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