Butler, Uriah

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Butler, Uriah

January 21, 1897
February 20, 1977

Tubal Uriah "Buzz" Butler was born in the South Caribbean island of Grenada in 1897. In 1917 he volunteered to serve with a detachment of the British West Indies Regiment and was posted to Egypt. At the time, West Indian blacks were not permitted to engage in frontline fighting against white troops. Toward the end of the First World War he returned to Grenada and joined the Grenada Union of Returned Soldiers, which pressed for improved compensation packages for West Indian soldiers. He also became politically active and formed the Grenada representative government movement.

In the meantime, the political and social situation in Trinidad and Tobago had become explosive. From December 1919 to February 1920 the island was rocked by a wave of industrial unrest led by a radical black working-class organization called the Trinidad Workingmen's Association (TWA). Following these " disturbances," the TWA, which at the time had close links with the British Labour Party, helped to persuade the British Colonial Office to send a commission of enquiry headed by Major E. L. F. Wood, the undersecretary of state for the colonies, to investigate political and social conditions in the British West Indies. One of the consequences of the commission's report in 1922 was that the British Government conceded to Trinidad and Tobago, then a Crown Colony, elective representation to its legislative council. Trinidad and Tobago was at the time experiencing a rapid development of its petroleum industry, while the traditional sugar and cocoa sectors of its plantation economy were beginning to decline.

Migration to Trinidad

The growing petroleum economy brought many Grenadians to Trinidad and Tobago in the 1920s. Butler joined the stream of migrants in 1921 and found employment in a small oil field owned by Timothy Roodal, with whom he would maintain a special relationship even after he had left Roodal's employment. Butler performed such sundry jobs as pipe fitter, pumpman, and rigman. In 1929 he suffered a permanent injury to his leg while working for the Venezuelan Consolidated Oilfields. This was the year that marked the beginning of the Great Depression, which reduced workers' wages and lowered living conditions throughout the colony, and Butler did not receive compensation for his injury. He began to pursue the avocation of Moravian Baptist preacher among the Grenadian immigrants in the oil districts. This brought him into intimate contact with the trials and tribulations of oil workers, which the TWA—renamed the Trinidad Labour Party (TLP) in 1932—seemed unwilling or unable to address. In March 1935, Butler identified with the cause of striking oil workers of the Apex company. Following their dismissal by the company, he joined a " hunger march" of workers from the southern oil districts to Port of Spain, the colony's capital city. They headed for the Red House, the seat of administration in the colony, and Butler was part of a delegation permitted an audience with the governor, Sir Claude Hollis. When it became apparent that the governor would do nothing to assist the workers, Butler fell on his knees to plead their cause, and the Governor relented and promised the workers some financial assistance.

The 1937 Unrest

Butler's encounter with the governor demonstrated the emotional ties he had developed with the oil workers. From then until June 19, 1937, he wrote several letters to the governor and the colonial secretary about the plight of the poor and disadvantaged. He also became more passionate in his public addresses and sermons, usually conducted from dusk into the night, in which he combined biblical invocations, oath-taking, and hymn-singing with bitter denunciation of the colonial authorities and the oil companies. His addresses began to be closely monitored by detectives and spies in the employment of the colonial constabulary. In July 1936, he broke ranks with Captain Arthur Cipriani (1878–1945), head of the TLP, after Cipriani endorsed the disappointing recommendations of a government-appointed committee to review minimum wages in the colony. Butler then formed his own organization, which he called the British Empire Workers' and Citizens' Home Rule Party. At midnight on June 18, 1937, the oil workers—rallying around the one spokesman courageous enough to publicly denounce both the oil companies and the colonial authorities—went on strike.

That strike became a generalized strike throughout Trinidad and Tobago within a week. It was a virtual repetition of the unrest of 1919–1920, but with a greater degree of violence on the part of both the colonial authorities and the striking workers, resulting in several fatalities. Fearing that he would be the object of a revenge killing by the police if he were arrested, Butler went into hiding, only to surrender in September, 1937, when he emerged to testify before a commission of enquiry, the Foster Commission, appointed by the British government. It was left to one of his earlier collaborators, the lawyer and political radical Adrian Cola Rienzi (1905–1972), to rally the workers and consolidate them into a union called the Oilfield Workers' Trade Union (OWTU) during Butler's three month absence. Butler was arrested after his testimony before the Foster Commission, and he was subsequently tried and jailed for two years.

Postwar Career

On his release from prison on May 6, 1939, Butler found the oil workers well-organized and led by Rienzi and the OWTU. He was integrated into the union as General Organizer, a salaried position. But he soon broke ranks with the union and sought to ignite another strike movement. On November 28, he was arrested by the colonial authorities under emergency war regulations and kept in prison for the duration of the Second World War. By the time of his release in April 1945, the British government had decided to concede universal adult voting rights to the colony, and Butler's party began to campaign for the legislative council elections scheduled for July 1946. Butler was particularly hostile to candidates of the Socialist Party, sponsored by the OWTU, which led to their defeat, though he himself was defeated by Albert Gomes in Port of Spain. Butler's party won only two of the nine elective seats in the colony.

Once the elections were over, Butler resumed his campaign to become the leading labor representative in the colony. From November 1946 to May 1947 he encouraged strike action among waterfront workers, oil workers, and sugar workers, causing the colonial government to declare a state of emergency and ban him from entering the oil districts. Officially condemned as an irresponsible leader, he nevertheless maintained enormous popularity among workers and established political links with middle-class Indian politicians. In the 1950 elections to the legislative council, his party won the largest bloc of elective seats, though not enough to form a working majority. The governor did not select Butler as a member of the Executive Council, the de facto cabinet.

From 1950 until his death in February 1977, Butler's star began to wane. The rise of race-based party politics in Trinidad and Tobago in 1956, most clearly represented by the African-based People's National Movement (PNM) and the Indian-based Democratic Labour Party left his party little political space, while his lengthy sojourns to London in the 1950s left it without inspired leadership. He was defeated in the elections of 1961 and 1966, but after his death in 1977 he has remained a revered symbol of heroism and personal sacrifice on behalf of Trinidad and Tobago's working class.