Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh

On Feb­ru­ary 23, 1925, Kr­ish­na De­onar­ine (who lat­er changed his name to Adri­an Co­la Rien­zi) wrote a let­ter to the ed­i­tor of the Labour Leader, a lo­cal pub­li­ca­tion, in­form­ing the read­er­ship of a mass meet­ing held on Feb­ru­ary 7, at the Ori­en­tal Hall. The pur­pose of the meet­ing was to pass a res­o­lu­tion of protest and to ap­point del­e­gates to con­vey their dis­sat­is­fac­tion to the Gov­er­nor, who failed to ap­point In­di­ans in the nom­i­nat­ed un­of­fi­cial sec­tion of the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil.

De­onar­ine, an In­do-Trinida­di­an, moved a his­toric res­o­lu­tion that rep­re­sen­ta­tion be made to the gov­ern­ment de­mand­ing the need for more po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty. At this gath­er­ing, del­e­gates were ap­point­ed to in­ter­view the Gov­er­nor and ex­pressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the fact that the ap­point­ment of In­di­ans among the un­of­fi­cial mem­bers in the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil was over­looked. This was one of the first bold at­tempts by an In­di­an to chal­lenge the po­lit­i­cal sta­tus quo.

A brochure, pub­lished in 1993, ti­tled From Rien­zi to Pan­day: 50 years of ser­vice to the Work­ing Peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go 1937–1987, con­tains an ar­ti­cle by Brins­ley Sama­roo.

Sama­roo con­tend­ed, “Rien­zi’s an­swer to this di­vide and rule tac­tic was his ap­peal to African/In­di­an uni­ty on a class ba­sis…. It was this com­bi­na­tion of Afro-In­di­an strength which trig­gered off the dis­tur­bances of 1937 in Trinidad.”

At the found­ing con­fer­ence on Ju­ly 25, 1937, when of­fi­cers were elect­ed to the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU), a sig­nif­i­cant event oc­curred. El­bert Red­vers Blades was in­stru­men­tal in the elec­tion of Rien­zi as its first pres­i­dent gen­er­al.

Blades had in­vit­ed Rien­zi to ad­dress the meet­ing and sub­se­quent­ly nom­i­nat­ed him as a can­di­date for the pres­i­den­cy. EF Shuf­fer, an oil­work­er, ob­ject­ed to Rien­zi’s nom­i­na­tion on the grounds that the po­si­tion should be filled by an oil­work­er and not “an out­side bar­ris­ter- at-law.” Blades dis­agreed with Shuf­fer and, af­ter a lengthy ad­dress, the two oth­er can­di­dates, Caleb Roach and Leslie Nel­son, with­drew from the con­test.

At this his­toric con­fer­ence, there were 150 del­e­gates from fif­teen dis­tricts in the oil belt. Blades would have recog­nised in Rien­zi those rad­i­cal lead­er­ship qual­i­ties re­quired to main­tain the mo­men­tum es­tab­lished by oil­work­ers for bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions.

Rien­zi’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the oil­work­ers and Tubal Uri­ah But­ler’s ap­proval of his role as his me­di­a­tor dur­ing the strike won him the con­fi­dence of oil­work­ers. For the next decade, Rien­zi would in­flu­ence pol­i­tics and trade union­ism.

In the 1938 elec­tions, Rien­zi had a man­i­festo which in­clud­ed self-gov­ern­ment and uni­ver­sal suf­frage. On 8 Jan­u­ary 1938, the ed­i­to­r­i­al of the Trinidad Guardian sought to crit­i­cise his rank­ing of self-gov­ern­ment on the list: “Mr. Rien­zi has out­lined an eleven-point pro­gramme to the elec­torate. At the bot­tom of the list he puts self- gov­ern­ment and uni­ver­sal suf­frage, feel­ing pos­si­bly that it is too im­prac­ti­cal a pro­pos­al to be giv­en a more promi­nent place.” In the elec­toral bat­tle for the Vic­to­ria seat, speak­ers on Rien­zi’s plat­form en­dorsed the can­di­date’s con­tri­bu­tion to so­ci­ety. For in­stance, John Ro­jas, Sec­ond Vice Pres­i­dent of the OW­TU, high­light­ed the fact that Rien­zi played an im­por­tant role in cre­at­ing peace dur­ing the tu­mul­tuous 1937 dis­tur­bances.

In 1941, Rien­zi formed the So­cial­ist Par­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, hop­ing to unite the labour move­ment. More than a decade lat­er, in March 1956, the Amer­i­can Con­sul Gen­er­al in a despatch to the De­part­ment of State (in the USA) hint­ed that Rien­zi might be will­ing to com­pro­mise his sta­tus with­in the labour move­ment: “It has been learned that one of the va­cant po­si­tions may be filled with a Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial. This re­port may re­fer to Mr AC Rien­zi who is present­ly serv­ing as a Crown Coun­sel and is a for­mer pres­i­dent of the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union.

Ac­cord­ing to James A Bain, act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of In­dus­try, Labour and Com­merce, he was giv­en his of­fi­cial job to keep him from be­ing a nui­sance to the gov­ern­ment.” This sug­gest­ed that Rien­zi was not de­serv­ing of his job as Crown Coun­sel. More im­por­tant­ly, this con­fi­den­tial cor­re­spon­dence ex­posed lo­cal and for­eign of­fi­cials who were will­ing to di­vide the labour move­ment and neu­tralise rad­i­cal voic­es.

Sa­hadeo Bas­deo de­scribed Rien­zi as a prod­uct of the Caribbean colo­nial ex­pe­ri­ence and “a pro­gres­sive thinker”. Bas­deo right­ly not­ed that this so­cial­ist trade union­ist “… called for the cre­ation of a new Caribbean so­cial or­der in which the mass­es should hold the reins of pow­er.” In ret­ro­spect, the charis­mat­ic Rien­zi has of­ten been for­got­ten and side­lined in the re­gion’s his­to­ry of trade union­ism.