Continued Reflections on the Advent of Adult Suffrage

The political climate in St.Vincent in 1951 reflected what was happening in neighbouring colonies with the advent of Adult Suffrage. Albert T. Marryshow of Grenada, who had been the darling of politics in Grenada since the 1930s, was to give way to a new leader in the person of Mathew Eric Gairy. Like Ebenezer Joshua who was the dominant personality to have emerged from the era of Adult Suffrage in St.Vincent, he was a former primary school teacher and had worked in Aruba and Curacao before returning to Grenada.{{more}} In July 1950, he had registered his Grenada Manual and Mental Workers Union. While Marryshow had cooperated with McIntosh and the Working Men’s Association, Gairy had built bonds with George Charles and his new union. He addressed one of their meetings on May 25, 1951. Patrick Emmanuel in explaining the decline of Marryshow noted that his style was “valid and productive” within the politics and political expressions of Crown Colony. Mass involvement in politics in 1951 favoured the style of Eric Gairy.

Parallel developments took place in St.Vincent with Ebenezer Joshua, following the earlier prominence of George Charles, replacing George McIntosh as the dominant political figure of the 1950s. The United Workers Peasants and Ratepayers Union, the union cum political entity that emerged in 1951, began to focus on the broad constituency of the under-privileged. Samuel Eric Slater who had emerged as the winning candidate for the North Leeward constituency that stretched from Mt.Wynne to Windsor Forest, highlighted a programme that spoke to the need for improved land settlement, a producers and marketing organisation and the establishment of credit unions. Herman Young in the South Leeward constituency dubbed himself the “Poor Man’s Friend”.

Evans Morgan who ran in the South Windward constituency was an Assistant Headmaster at Stubbs. He had originally decided to run as an independent candidate, but then threw in his lot with George Charles. He assisted with the establishment of the union and became the Grievance Officer. I had interviewed Evans Morgan in Canada sometime in the late 1960s. Reflecting on that period, he felt that McIntosh had outlived his usefulness and that a political vacuum existed in St.Vincent in 1951. He agreed that the May Day Rally in 1951 was a turning point in the politics of the country. He spoke of the impact and bandwagon effect produced from assembling the largest crowd up to then to have ever graced Victoria Park.

The Vincentian newspaper carried regular reports of the political meetings at that time. In its May 26 edition, one of its writers was clearly very impressed with Julian Baynes who was contesting the St.George’s constituency. He described Baynes’ speech at a meeting held on May 22, claiming that he was at his best; “He bubbled over with indelicate wit. In his impressive catalogue of instances of backwardness of St.Vincent, he laid bare the delicate confidence that there were government offices in the island in which the female clerks have no place to urinate.”

George McIntosh had at first dismissed the challenge from George Charles and appeared unperturbed by the reception that the new political grouping was getting. He had accepted an invitation to go to England at a time when the campaign was getting underway. By the time he got back the political situation had changed. Dr. John, writing about McIntosh at that time, said that he “had grown arrogant and imperious, apparently seeing himself as clad in the mantle of the groomed colonial who had a prescriptive right to take the torch from a departing Britain.” His party had by 1946 faced internal conflicts as witnessed by the decision to run Edmund Joachim as the favoured candidate over H.A Davis who had to run as an independent. St.Clair Bonadie also contested as an independent in 1946 and was very critical of what was happening in the party, vowing to have it cleansed.

The United Workers Peasants and Ratepayers Union, whose political arm was referred to later as the ‘Eight Army of Liberation’, had hit on issues that appealed to the masses. Its promise to break up the estates was a rallying cry in a colony where land monopoly still prevailed despite earlier land settlement schemes. This was, however, not new, because McIntosh had earlier trumpeted the cause of land settlement. What was new was the style and the different context. What was beginning to appear was a challenge to the whole colonial system. The Eight Army in fact captured the peoples’ imagination. By then all persons over 21 years had a vote and were not simply looking on from the sidelines. The St.Vincent Working Men’s Association through its political arm, the Labour Party, had dominated the St.Vincent legislature since 1937. Its defeat in 1951 must have been a very telling blow to an organisation that had been such a formidable political force. McIntosh must have been truly shaken. In 1946, the last election before 1951, he had run unopposed. In 1951 he lost to Rudolph Baynes. The fact that the combined votes of he and Frank Ellis were larger than those of Baynes must have been no consolation. In that same year, however, he was re-elected to the Kingstown Board and continued to serve it for a number of years.

1951 marked a significant milestone in the political and social history of St.Vincent and the Grenadines. The forces unleashed in 1951 are still playing themselves out as we have marched from Adult Suffrage to post Independence. At the time of Adult Suffrage, the idea of a West Indian Federation was very much in the air. The collapse of the Federation which came on stream in 1958 has left us fighting as individual units to achieve the hopes that were created in 1951. There has been a lot of rhetoric about deepening the regional political space, but this appears to be stifled amidst the trappings of independence.

Dr Adrian Fraser is a social commentator and historian.