Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh

In 1927, plans were be­ing made by the Trinidad and To­ba­go branch of the Uni­ver­sal Ne­gro Im­prove­ment As­so­ci­a­tion (UNIA) in an­tic­i­pa­tion of Mar­cus Gar­vey’s vis­it to Trinidad.

On 11 De­cem­ber 1927, the ed­i­to­r­i­al of a lo­cal news­pa­per de­clared its op­po­si­tion to such a vis­it. It al­leged that Gar­vey vis­it­ed British Hon­duras and Ja­maica and made “wild promis­es” and “frothy ut­ter­ances” that he would be the own­er of three hun­dred ships and Liberia would be­come the most pros­per­ous coun­try in the world. Fur­ther­more, the news­pa­per’s ed­i­to­r­i­al ap­pealed to the Gov­ern­ment to pro­hib­it Gar­vey’s en­try on the ba­sis of him be­ing an un­de­sir­able im­mi­grant and opined, “...Gar­vey will need but lit­tle en­cour­age­ment to em­bark up­on a cam­paign for hood­wink­ing the un­in­formed pub­lic for his per­son­al ag­gran­dis­e­ment....”

Work­ing-class re­spons­es, such as a let­ter (signed ‘At­ti­cus’) to the ed­i­tor of the Labour Leader (the pub­li­ca­tion of the Trinidad Work­ing­men’s As­so­ci­a­tion), in Feb­ru­ary 1928, con­demned the ed­i­to­r­i­al as be­ing “...a gross in­sult to the ne­gro race and the em­a­na­tion of nar­row mind­ed prej­u­dice and awk­ward ob­scu­ran­tism.”

In 1928, Gar­vey wrote to the Trinidad Work­ing­men’s As­so­ci­a­tion (TWA), whose pres­i­dent was Cap­tain Arthur Cipri­ani, ex­press­ing con­cern over the fierce op­po­si­tion to his vis­it to Trinidad, “I in­tend vis­it­ing Trinidad to spend about a week on the is­land on my way to Eng­land in the spring. I have learned of the ag­i­ta­tion against my land­ing in Trinidad, but I have paid no at­ten­tion to it be­cause I think the at­ti­tude be­low my dig­ni­ty.”

Gar­vey’s let­ter al­so in­di­cat­ed that he would be sail­ing for Ja­maica in April 1928 and stat­ed, “I hope to meet Mr Cipri­ani there or in Eng­land. I am glad that he is do­ing some­thing for the Ne­gro peo­ple of Trinidad.”

An­oth­er protest against Gar­vey’s vis­it em­anat­ed from the ed­i­tor of the Teacher’s Jour­nal, who crit­i­cised his planned vis­it to the colony. The con­dem­na­tion was pub­lished in the Labour Leader in March 1928, “The blacks form 80 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion of Trinidad, yet the black teach­ers un­der the urge of their em­ploy­ers and so­cial pa­trons, think it would be harm­ful for some­one in­ter­est­ed in the blacks to vis­it the coun­try be­cause it will cause un­pleas­ant­ness among the races.” Sub­se­quent­ly, sev­er­al teach­ers in the colony con­tact­ed the Labour Leader to dis­so­ci­ate them­selves from the con­tents of the ar­ti­cle in the Teacher’s Jour­nal, which was crit­i­cal of Gar­vey’s vis­it.

In 1928, the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil ap­proved the Ex­pul­sion of Un­de­sir­ables (Amend­ment) Or­di­nance. It was ob­vi­ous that the in­ten­tion was to frus­trate Gar­vey’s pro­posed vis­it to T&T. Tim­o­thy Roodal (elect­ed mem­ber for the St Patrick con­stituen­cy and Labour sup­port­er) op­posed the Bill and em­pha­sised that thou­sands would wel­come the promi­nent Afro-Caribbean leader. Fur­ther­more, he in­sist­ed that the Bill was a de­lib­er­ate ef­fort to de­clare Gar­vey per­sona non gra­ta, but the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al as­sured the Coun­cil that the Bill was not in­tend­ed to de­bar him from vis­it­ing the colony. Gar­vey sub­se­quent­ly can­celled his vis­it to T&T.

Al­most a decade lat­er, Gar­vey made an­oth­er ef­fort to vis­it Trinidad. On 21 Ju­ly 1937, while re­sid­ing in Lon­don, Gar­vey re­quest­ed per­mis­sion from Gov­er­nor Murchi­son Fletch­er of Trinidad and To­ba­go to vis­it the colony, “My vis­it will be pure­ly an in­no­cent one with­out in­ten­tion of in­ter­fer­ing with lo­cal pol­i­tics or the af­fairs of the coun­try.…I have vis­it­ed the Colo­nial Of­fice here and have ac­quaint­ed them of my in­ten­tion and have al­so as­sured them of the in­no­cence of my vis­it.”

Gar­vey’s pro­posed vis­it to Trinidad dur­ing Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber 1937 was part of a British West In­di­an tour, in­clud­ing the Lee­ward and Wind­ward Is­lands. The Gov­er­nor of Bar­ba­dos, Mark Young, con­tact­ed Fletch­er re­gard­ing Gar­vey’s vis­it. In Ju­ly 1937, Young sent a con­fi­den­tial despatch to Fletch­er seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion of Gar­vey’s vis­it: “News­pa­per re­ports in­di­cate that your Gov­ern­ment has giv­en per­mis­sion for per­son named to land and to ad­dress meet­ings. Please in­form me whether this is cor­rect.”

On 3 Au­gust 1937, Fletch­er replied to Young’s queries re­gard­ing Gar­vey’s land­ing in Trinidad, “It was re­port­ed to me that there was a ru­mour that he and Cipri­ani were due in Trinidad on the 3rd Ju­ly, and af­ter con­sult­ing the In­spec­tor-Gen­er­al of Con­stab­u­lary I de­cid­ed that Gar­vey might be al­lowed to land. On the 5th Ju­ly Cipri­ani spoke to me about Gar­vey’s in­ten­tion to pass through Trinidad in Sep­tem­ber or Oc­to­ber, and his de­sire to speak on the sub­ject of ed­u­ca­tion.” An­oth­er in­flu­en­tial fac­tor in the de­ci­sion to al­low Gar­vey to vis­it the is­land was Fletch­er’s re­al­i­sa­tion that ex­ist­ing in­for­ma­tion did not war­rant a ban.