REMOVE OPPRESSORS’ NAMES AS TRIBUTE TO PROF SAMAROO

IN one of his final public lectures, Professor Brinsley Samaroo spoke stirringly about worker oppression that led to the bloody 1937 labour uprising.

In particular, Prof Samaroo told of the June 22 labour revolt at Rio Claro, where the authorities gunned down five workers who were among protestors marching on tyrannical employer Trinidad Leasehold Ltd.

The energy company was operated by expatriates from repressive South Africa, like Colonel Rolland Beaumont, who were given the run of the country by the colonial powers, including large chunks of prime real estate.

Beaumont and fellow employers of the early days of the domestic energy sector lived in opulence while the working class struggled to make ends meet.

Trinidad and Tobago was defined by lavish lifestyles and dirt-poor drudgery.

The widespread persecution prompted the historic uprising, mainly in the oil town of Fyzabad, loss of lives, and birth of the organised labour movement.

Today, Beaumont’s name is still carried on streets, a Mayaro village, and buildings, a constant reminder of state-backed injustice against the working class.

He was a former cricketer in his homeland, and, until a few years ago, an annual Trinidad and Tobago competition bore his name.

A close relative William Henry Beaumont headed a committee in South Africa that recommended segregating Whites and Blacks by outlining land boundaries for each.

A preeminent historian, Prof Samaroo not only told Caribbean stories with rare insight and passion, but he quietly campaigned for social and economic justice.

He was among socially-conscious academics – at a time when UWI produced such public-spirited personalities – who ventured from the campus into national service.

In government, he appropriately held the agriculture portfolio, in keeping with his abiding affection for both the land and his rural roots (he was born in Ecclesville, off Rio Claro).

He spoke out against economic stranglehold, as in food importation.

“This is also a political problem,” he said only recently, “because the cartel finances political parties, and, therefore, whichever party is in power cannot do some of the things they promised because the cartel won’t allow it.”

He noted, for example, that rice is imported rather than produced in the Nariva or Oropouche wetlands.

His keen insight and quiet courage filled his many timeless books on the Caribbean condition.

In what turned into his final offering, he wrote with typical discernment about Adrian Cola Rienzi, a labour pioneer and civil rights crusader, whose place in history has been downplayed, even by Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union, which he formed.

A repeated Samaroo mantra was that T&T never built on the platform of ethnic unity and class consciousness created by Rienzi and the formidable Tubal Uriah “Buzz” Butler.

Drawing on his extensive knowledge of the country’s history, he was pained that “we are being used as game cocks that have nothing against each other but fight each other.”

He advocated re-education of the society and constitutional reform “to virtually compel the two ethnicities to come together and work in a new political arrangement.”

He linked our historic troubles to our current challenges and applied purposeful solutions.

In Prof Samaroo, patriotism and resourceful were encased in a warm, genial personality, someone who had enduring faith in his country’s potential.

He relentlessly told our stories with wisdom and zeal and was as affable as he was perceptive.

We must ensure that Prof Samaroo remains part of the Caribbean consciousness.

We could start by removing oppressors’ names from public places.