we go to press the U.S Guadalcanal, with 15 helicopters and ona marinesnin board, is steaming cov. ards Trinidad. British rigates, the Sirus and the Jupiter, and five other U.S. warships have aken positions off the coast. The ayana and Jamaican armies are ready for action. Venezuelan carships and planes have been noved to the North East sector. And vernight the US has sold the rinidad Government machine uns. 82,500 rounds of machine gun immunition, 10 81m mortars with 200 rounds of shells and 150 smoke shells.
An independent, revolutionary Trinidad threatens the whole of the Caribbean. The US prides itself on aving isolated and contained the Cuba lies off lorida in the North of the Caribean. In the South, Trinidad lies a •w miles off Venezuela-well placed o run arms into the guerilla-torn province of Oriente, and from there to the whole South American continent. Trinidad's oil would end the petrol rationing in Cuba; Cuba's experience would help make the revolution in Trinidad. And between them lie the West Indies: Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Anguilla, Barbados...
Trinidad is an island divided by Racially 46% are Black, 36% Brown; Economically the Blacks predominate in industry and the oil fields while the Indians are ground down on the Sugar Plantations; Politically the party system is divided on racial lines.
Eric Williams Progressive National Movement has won every election for the last twenty years on the basis of the Black vote. Williams, a progressive bourgeois, is impotent before the power of imperialism. He has sat ineffectually the fence while his ministers proceed with the profitable business of smuggling and land speculation. Just to make sure that it remains in power, the PNM cribes the opposition, and has shipped in voting machines from the United States.
The present crisis began after independence with the reawakening of the labour movement, which has a history of militant going back to 1936. The Unions had been weak and inactive until, in 1961, the massive wage demand. The dock and transport workers unions blacked all oil shipments. The Oil Union had its own reserve, and effectively it ran the country for the duration of the strike, while British warships sat in the bay and the US troops stayed on the alert in their lend-lease base (since disbanded). Eventually the ofl workers won a massive wage increase, and in the wake victory a new progressive leadership was elected in the Union and has led he eVer The old President joined the CIA. The next crucial event was a strike of the sugar workers in 1965. The sugar workers. who suffered appalling working conditions, had learnt from the oil workers and even actively ught their assistance. The reaction the government was swift. A state emergency was declared, the far belt was invaded by the army the strike was smashed. ernment handed the union over t) + gangster, set up a commission abrersion, and in rewriting their and unreported, strikes grew in frequency. Above all, illegal activity increasingly forced the unions political organisations so much so that they now constitute a extra-parliamentary opposition. As discontent among the workers has increased, the militant unions have gained in strength.
Now the workers have started to act, for they have been joined by another the young unemployed.
Unemployment in Trinidad is probably around 25%, and many of these are young people who have benefitted from free secondary education. It is these young people, apparently led by the students, who have constituted the core of the black power movement which has swept Trinidad in the last year. The original inspiration for the movement came from Stokely Carmichael, himself Trinidad born. But in Trinidad black power means, unequivocally, anti-imperialism. It is aimed against the dom nation of Trinidad's economic life by foreign Big Business The last link in the chain is the Indian sugar workers. Faced with worsening employment prospects and working conditions they have been getting increasingly militant. On the other hand they are clearly wary, in country riddled with racism, of black power. The leaders of the progressive struggle realised this and in the last few months they have tried to tone down the blackness of their rhetoric. They now speak of afro-indians. They recently held a march into the sugar belt to recruit their brown comrades, and first reports make it clear that some brown workers have joined the It will be hard to overcome the racial divisions bequeathed by colonialism. It will be even harder to
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Oilfield Union was forced by grass roots pressure to call a strike over a