On Critchlow and the Colonisation Scheme (Pt I)

For Labour Day, May 1, Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow, founder of our first trade union, the BG Labour Union (BGLU), in 1919, was rightly extolled. His life, however, as one who chose to represent workers’ rights, illustrates the contradictions from the intersection of race and representation in our society that bedevil us more than a century later. Sadly, he died in obscurity in 1958, ignored by Burnham, who used the BGLU as a political stepping stone in 1952. One poignant anecdote is of Jagan recognising and acknowledging him in front of his humble home during a 1957 Labour Day Parade. He commissioned and unveiled Critchlow’s statue on December 2, 1964, with the PNC and TUC boycotting.
Eighty years after emancipation, notwithstanding some gains, the economic and social condition of African Guyanese remained precarious. The end of indentureship in 1917 had imbued the Indian community with a new commitment to fulfil their economic raison d’être for enduring their long bondage. A branch of Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) had also been launched in Georgetown in 1919, making the community more politically conscious through its organ, “The Negro World”.
Critchlow initially organised the Georgetown dockworkers, of whom he was one, and soon broadened BGLU’s reach to other urban workers, primarily African Guyanese who had gravitated to Georgetown after the abolition of slavery. Georgetown’s working-class Indians were found only in the scavenging gangs cleaning the city. Rural sugar workers, however, soon heard of his activities and dubbed him “Black Crosby”, after their departed “Protector of Immigrants”.
Following the abolition of indentureship, however, a meeting of representatives of the Government of India and British colonial officers had met in London to devise a “new system” to attract Indian immigrants to the colonies. In British Guiana, a committee was formed to consider the plan, but matters languished until, as reported by the Journal Timehri of September 1919, “Officers of the Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society (RACS) and Royal Colonial Institute (British Guiana Branch) had been called in January (1919) by Mr Strang (Chairman, Planters’ Association) to address a serious decline in the acreage under sugar during 1918 due to a labour shortage. “It concluded starkly that it was a ‘question of colonisation (to bring in labourers) and development or decline.’”
The article continued that the members of the Combined Court and representatives of municipal and other public bodies assembled in Georgetown on January 27, at the RACS Rooms… It included also the officers of the BG Farmers’ Association and Village Chairmen’s Conference and the leading East Indian and Chinese citizens. A programme of work was outlined by the secretary of the RACS (Dr Nunan) and unanimously accepted. It included the formation of an executive committee consisting of the heads of all the public bodies and a huge general colonisation committee consisting of all members of the combined court and a full representation of various interests. It contemplated the creation of a special sub-committee to deal with West Indian and African immigration and labour supply. Finally, it proposed the despatch of a Colonial deputation to England. “The Combined Court on 5th February passed resolutions… (including)… ‘the need for the delegation to proceed to London.’”
In hindsight, it is therefore not coincidental that a “British Guiana East Indian Association”
(BGEIA), which had been formed in 1916 by some Indian professionals in New Amsterdam to represent the interests of Indians but had lapsed, was resuscitated in Georgetown in April 1919, primarily at the instigation of the establishment-friendly J A Luckhoo, the first Indian elected to the Court of Policy in 1916. He was at the January meeting.
On June 12, 1919, Attorney General Joseph Nunan, as the head of a seven-member team, departed to hold meetings with the Colonial Office in London. The team planned to travel later to India and some British colonies in Africa to discuss migration proposals with their governments. The other members of the delegation were Dr Hewley Wharton, Parbhu Sawh, and Joseph A Luckhoo (representing East Indians); and A B Brown, McFarlane Corry, and Eric Robinson (representing Africans). “Luckhoo’s delegation arrived in India on December 5, 1919.
A dilemma was posed to Critchlow after the delegation to Africa never materialised, and Luckhoo in India presented the colonisation scheme’s “advantage” as one to make British Guiana an “Indian colony”. One reaction to the implied Indian “domination” was the formation of a Negro Progress Congress (NPC) in 1922 to uplift Africans, which Critchlow vigorously supported. (To be continued)