E75: Trinidad general strike, part 1
Working Class History
Working Class History
5.0 • 813 Ratings
🗓️ 20 July 2023
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Part 1 is about the background of British colonialism on the island, the conditions of the working class and poor, racial divisions, and the beginnings of unemployed and worker agitation in the 1930s.
Acknowledgements
- Thanks to our patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jazz Hands, Jamison D. Saltsman and Fernando López Ojeda.
- Episode graphic: public domain.
- Edited by Jesse French
- Our theme tune is Bella Ciao, thanks for permission to use it from Dischi del Sole. You can purchase it here or stream it here.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In 1937, as part of a wave of protest sweeping the Caribbean, workers in Trinidad rose up against the most powerful empire in the world. |
| 0:08.0 | Domestic workers, oil workers, agricultural workers, landless peasants and unemployed people defied their employers, the police, British colonial troops, and even their own union and political leaders, in a self-organized mass strike. |
| 0:22.5 | This is working class history. |
| 0:24.6 | All the matina, just upen alzata, oh, bella, chow, bella, chow, bella, chow, bella, chou, chou, all the matino. |
| 0:46.1 | Before we get started, just a reminder that our podcast is brought to you by our Patreon supporters. |
| 0:51.5 | Our supporters fund our work and in return get exclusive early access to episodes |
| 0:55.6 | without ads, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise and other content. Join us and find out more |
| 1:01.9 | at patreon.com slash working class history. Link in the show notes. This week we're going to be talking about |
| 1:08.1 | the Workers' Rebellion in Trinidad and Tobago in 1937. |
| 1:12.5 | Trinidad is the largest island in the Caribbean country, which is where most of our story today takes |
| 1:16.8 | place. |
| 1:17.7 | Joining us is Ryan Jobson, academic and author of a forthcoming book on the oil industry and its |
| 1:23.0 | workers in Trinidad and Tobago. |
| 1:26.2 | I'm an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago. |
| 1:30.9 | A bit about my academic background, so I actually completed my PhD in African American |
| 1:36.8 | Studies and anthropology from Yale University in 2017. |
| 1:41.5 | And while I was there, I wrote a dissertation on the history and politics of fossil fuels |
| 1:46.0 | and post-colonial state development in Trinidad and Tobago. It also has formed the basis of |
| 1:51.1 | my first book manuscript, which is currently in progress. I conducted research intermittently in |
| 1:58.1 | Trinidad since 2010. That's when I first ventured to Trinidad for my undergraduate thesis research. |
| 2:05.4 | But I lived in Trinidad from 2014 to 2015 when I conducted the bulk of my research in both |
| 2:12.6 | national and trade union archives and also ethnographic research on oil and gas technocrats and also clusters |
... |
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