On 16 January 2024, the beloved Antigua Barbuda Trades and Labour Union (the A.T.& L.U.) celebrates 85 years of successfully representing workers in our country, changing the circumstances of work and remuneration following 300 years of exploitation and abuse. The AT&LU created a new Antigua and Barbuda!
This outstanding trade union served as the vehicle that the emancipated people of Antigua and Barbuda established with the objective of riding into the future on a movement to change their circumstances permanently. They succeeded!
That earlier generation, thinking that their children and unborn generations of Antiguans and Barbudans deserved a better life, would sacrifice much in order to make livelihoods and life much better in the unfolding Antigua and Barbuda of 1939. They are a generation that cannot be forgotten.
In the folklore that has emerged in the aftermath of success, they are affectionately called “The 1939ers.” Monuments have been built to celebrate their victory, and books have been written to cement their bravery.
Although housed in hovels made from mud and sticks and stalks, and though facing a lifespan of fewer than 40 years, these brave Antigua and Barbuda men and women were prepared “to eat cockles and widiwidi bush” rather than to endure and bequeath to their offspring a country from which to flee at the first opportunity. They set about to build a new Antigua and Barbuda. Eighty-five years later, the Antigua and Barbuda of 1939 is unrecognizable and but a memory.
In 2024, the average per capita income of the once sugarcane-agricultural economy scaled USD15,000. Tourism dominates the economy. More than one million visitors are expected to land on the country’s shores and at its international airport tarmac, in 2024. The construction sector is bustling, with more jobs and greater demand for building supplies than can be reasonably delivered. More new homes and new apartment buildings are being constructed; more multi-storied office complexes, shopping malls and hotels are being built; improved harbours to accommodate bigger and deeper draughts are being dredged; and, more sailing yachts are entering, and massive aircraft are landing to discharge an ever-increasing number of visitors. For 85 years, the people of Antigua and Barbuda prayed for courageous leadership to build a new country, and there is no doubt that the AT&LU satisfied this cry.
Reginald Stevens and Vere Cornwall Bird, the AT&LU’s first two Presidents, led this institution at its inception, and they guided the velvet revolution to a stage where the take-off could be clearly witnessed during its first 30 years, or by 1969.
The AT&LU Executive made a decision to wrest the legislature away from the colonials so that it could change the labour laws, making them more favourable to workers. The Political Committee of the AT&LU was created on the suggestion of Luther George--the first phenotypically black male to be elected to the Legislature. That 1943 proposal would trigger the first manifesto of the AT&LU on 18th May 1946, when the three-year electoral cycle appeared on the horizon. That organic document contains the basic framework of promises and ambitions for the establishment of a fair Antigua and Barbuda.
The real test of leadership came in 1951 when the sugar workers decided to celebrate Labour Day on 1st May, as was being done by millions of workers worldwide. The Legislature, dominated by unelected officials, refused to make that day a lawful holiday. Two heroines of the Labour Movement were created by the actions of the dominant group. Lucy Ishmael and Averyl Winter showed great courage, followed by the protest modes chosen by the AT&LU that irritated the bosses.
These matters proceeded to Court. The High Court and the Court of Appeals ruled in the owners’ favour. The Privy Council in 1960 ruled that the Union had the right to picket and did not need the permission of the Authorities to so do. It was a triumphant day for the AT&LU and workers’ organizations in the colonies of Britain, when that ruling came down. Absolute control by the owners of industry in Antigua and Barbuda was coming to an end. The judiciary could see through the complex equation on which the rulers had relied in history to exercise control, and the Court signaled that the trajectory of history was at an end.
1960 was also the year in which the United Nations adopted Resolution 1514/XV declaring colonialism unlawful. Steps to free the colonized people were to be undertaken by the colonial powers.
Thereafter came a frenzy of new infrastructural projects, and the emergence of a new industry as sugarcane began its rapid decline after 300+ years of dominance, poverty and want among the majority.
A 1965 power plant to meet the needs of a growing demand for electricity was added to the grid. New roads were constructed to connect the new hotels now dotting the island’s indented, white-sand shoreline near villages. New potable water-producing and water-storage-plants in 1968 and continuing in 1970, to meet the increased demand for potable water, were constructed. The Potworks Dam, capable of holding 1.2 billion gallons of run-off and rain was performing its function even before the work was complete. It remains, 55 years later, an indispensable source of water when droughts end and torrents of rain fall mercilessly upon Antigua. A new deepwater port was opened on 31st October 1968 at Rat Island, Antigua. After months of dredging and piling, a new harbour was ready to receive both cargo vessels and cruise vessels plying the Caribbean. Antigua and Barbuda was on an incline, steep and rapid.
A former British Governor who fought the trade union, returned for a visit in 1969 following the end of his tenure in 1954. He wrote that he could not imagine what the AT&LU was seeking to achieve back then but he can clearly see where Antigua is going. It was he who sent for 300 soldiers from Jamaica to shoot Vere Bird and the Union leaders if they protested, in 1951, and to put the Union back in its place by declaring a state of emergency. He failed and the Union succeeded.
On 27th February 1967, a new relationship was established between the metropolitan power and the emancipated people of Antigua and Barbuda. It was called “Statehood in Association with Britain.” What a day! The new 7-point Antigua and Barbuda Sun rose over the Union Jack and a new national anthem praising the Almighty for liberation was sung. The Union was leading by way of its President, after 28 years of existence.
The first 30 years were glorious. Vere Bird created the Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party (ABLP) on 24 November 1968. He resigned as President of the AT&LU in 1969, bringing a glorious tenure to an end. As the Political Leader of the newly-designated ABLP, commencing in 1969, a twenty-five year period of outstanding performance by the governments which he led, accounted for the modern Antigua and Barbuda that was his vision.
The last 55 years of the AT&LU’s existence is marked by innovation and RENEWAL. The AT&LU reverted to being an organization for promoting workers’ rights, and for ensuring that work provided a feeling of self-fulfillment, not alienation. To enable that outcome, training, skills upgrades, promotions and fairness at work prevailed.
The AT&LU’s focus is also upon ensuring that the political party which it spawned, mothered, and nurtured, continues to win the government in successive elections. A wicked plan was put in place to make the two branches of government workers—established and non-established—become one branch. The 1981 Constitution of Antigua and Barbuda compels the Antigua and Barbuda Public Service Association (ABPSA) the bargaining agent for civil servants.
If that happened, the 8,000 workers employed as non-established employees in the Central Government would no longer pay dues to the AT&LU. It would have been the chokehold of a Cobra around the finances of the AT&LU. That was fought successfully. The AT&LU remains as does the bifurcation of the Civil Service. The ABLP supported the AT&LU and caused the Union to succeed in its drive to maintain representation. The AT&LU is more of a workers’ organization than it has been ending in 1969 with Vere Bird’s departure. Its early history would correctly describe it as a hybrid institution, dedicated to political ends. The country that it once served as a political institution is better off today as a result of its role in displacing the colonials and snatching government, even from those in the population who felt they ought to be the leaders.
Sovereignty and Independence were achieved on 1st November 1981. But the people of Antigua and Barbuda had grown accustomed to making their own decision-making after 14 years of Statehood. Looking at the GDP figures for the years 1976 to 1994, when Vere Bird left office as Prime Minister, any objective observer would conclude that the start which the AT&LU provided after 1939 was most propitious in the building of a new Antigua and Barbuda.
Long live the AT&LU! Long live freedom! Long live justice!