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

Factory St. Kitts (Basseterre) for canes delivered. It is necessary to emphasis
the fact that for the past six years the price paid to planters for
cane supplied to the Factory has remained at fourteen shillings per ton.
Mr. Manchester, followed up his earlier questions with a mild
query as to the existence of machinery dealing with matters between
employers and workmen. The answer, of course, was that there was no
such machinery in existence. The Government was unconcerned. He
forced the Government on the defensive in his fifth question, which ran,
Iis the government ready to consider the advisability of setting up machinery
in the Presidency for establishing liaison between employers
and employees with a view to avoiding clashes and securing cooperation?
The Government was feeble, defenceless, exposed. Even in the
face of abundant evidence in the country of Labour unrest arising from
wages, even on the heels of loss of life and long-term imprisonment to
struggling workers, the Government was still saying that these things
were not “shown” to the authorities. Could Government have honestly
felt that there was nothing existing in the sick society that needed some
attention, some inquiry, some cure? Did the rulers of the land know
nothing of the chastisement of the factory workers in 1930 when they
went on strike after their pay was reduced by instruction from London?
Had the authorities no knowledge of various injuries and deaths caused
to workers by accident on the job without the employers being required
by law to pay anything on the occasion of such injuries or death? Had
they not heard of the case of the cartman at Buckley’s estate (William
Duggins) who was killed by a factory locomotive in April 1933, when
the employers first question on the hearing the news whether anything
happened to the mules that were drawing the cart?
The Government’s answer to Mr. Manchester was as lame as it
was ludicrous. It was given at the next meeting as follows, The necessity
for the establishment of a means of liaison between employers and
employees has not been revealed to Government. If that necessity were
to be shown to exist and Government intervention were to become necessary,
the question of establishing a ‘go-between’ would be taken into
immediate consideration. For the present, and in the relationship now
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