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

17 THE 1938 ROYAL COMMISSION
The 1938 Commission had been sent by London as a result of the great
wave of industrial upheavals accompanied by destruction of life and
property throughout the Caribbean. This started in St. Kitts in 1935 and
spread right down to Guyana in the south and the Bahamas in the north.
It was a rough awakening but it could hardly have been be avoided.
The suffering of the masses under the social and economic system of
the earlier years was too great to be relieved by anything of a mild nature.
The Commission consisted of eleven members headed by Lord
Moyne. Its terms of reference were to investigate social and economic
conditions in the British Caribbean and matters connected therewith,
and to make recommendations.
The St. Kitts Workers League seized the opportunity to press
further the case for broad reforms in the territory and general advancement
in the West Indies as a whole. In a ten-page memorandum the
League set out the numerous problems facing the country and suggestions
for their solution. Emphasis was laid on the need for federating
the territories and nationalizing the manufacturing end of the sugar industry.
On the lack of industrial machinery, the memorandum said,
The necessity has long been felt for legislation to establish Trade and
Labour Unions in the Presidency, and for their recognition as a mean
of collective bargaining in matters of wages and improvement of the
conditions under which the masses labour. We are of the opinion that
the establishment of Trade and Labour Unions in the islands of this
group will fill a much needed role in the local economic and social order
of things.
The Royal Commission found that the League gave a vivid picture
of community life. Reporting on conditions in St. Kitts, the Commission
said, The average daily wage for a unskilled labourer was one
shilling and two pence (28 cents) a day at the time our visit... Elsewhere
in report it stated, While agricultural employers have effective
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