JNF-The-Working-Class-Struggle-of-Half-a-Century

cultural and Commercial Society, in its role of politics as a sinking
ship, and preferring not to commit the folly of the boy who stood on the
burning deck, have jumped overboard, with greater faith in their individual
strength to save themselves politically. The candidates who were
opposing Labour gave in their manifesto a list of things they stood for.
Among these were the remodeling of the education system, peasant land
settlement and better housing for agricultural workers. They also listed
some other topics of the day which would easily attract current interest.
But the electorate was aware of the record of the Agricultural and
Commercial Society. They looked at the ties between the candidates
and this society. They saw the effects of domination of the country by
vested interests and realised that the future depended upon their votes at
the polls. The rest was left to them
Nevis and Anguilla
What was the reaction of Nevis to the impact of the first election in the
1937 constitutional setting? Why was the position there vastly different
from the political struggle in St. Kitts? The foundation of Nevis’ domestic
economy was based on a sturdy peasantry; while in St. Kitts the
spheres of the trade, industry and public life were dominated by large
land owners and the powerful sugar interests. The average Nevisian
had a stake in his country but in St. Kitts the ordinary man found it hard
to “make ends meet”. In Nevis, the right to vote strengthened the people’s
feelings of pride and self-reliance in the land of their birth; while
its effects in St. Kitts was rather to free the spirit of the masses from the
agency of social and political bondage.
It was no wonder that in 1934 the St. Kitts Workers League had to rely
on the Nevis members of the Legislative Council, Mr. H.B. Henville
and Mr. W.B. De Grasse, for their aid in the League’s final assault upon
the bastions of Crown Colony. These two public-spirited men supported
the move for political reform at every turn. Even when the Council
turned around like a weather-cock, in December 1934 and rejected what
it had agreed to concerning the elective principle at a meeting held six
months earlier, the two men gallantly held their grounds.
When Mr. Henville therefore offered himself as a candidate for
election in the Electoral District of Nevis, it was widely felt that island
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