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

culture and Commercial Society. They argued that the principle of land
settlement was bad and was unsuited to St. Kitts. In the case of Nevis
they felt that land settlement could be experimented on over there. At
the same time a Peasant Settlement Scheme, tried out in Antigua, was
showing good results. Antigua’s 1937 sugar crop (33,000 tons) saw the
yield of 266,000 tons of cane, of which one quarter was produce by
peasants. (In that year the St. Kitts output of sugar was 34,000 tons).
The subject was brought forcefully before the public in the League’s
manifesto and electioneering campaign of 1937. This was the advent of
the first general election in St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla in this century after
the right to vote had been won by the Labour Movement for the people
of these islands.
Relief of the Landless
Sugar estate in St. Kitts came up for sale from time to time during the
nineteen thirties; but the government of that period showed little or no
interest in buying them so as to help the landless masses to get a stake
in their country. An opportunity came for the Labour Movement to
make another bid for the introduction of land settlement when the West
India Royal Commission was sent out from London in 1938 to investigate
social and economic conditions in the Caribbean.
The Workers League presented to the Commission a comprehensive
memorandum in which it stated, It is with considerable reluctance
that we come to the conclusion that there has been some sinister
influence at work by which this proposal has been shelved for a period
of nearly half century... Under this head our proposal affects St. Kitts
only, in as much as a Land Settlement Scheme is already in operation in
Nevis, and in Anguilla there is a considerable number of peasant settlers......
There appears no sound economic reason why this island, the
largest of the group, should remain peculiar with respect to land settlement
... The figures of imported foodstuffs are sufficient to answer
the query that the island, although dominantly agricultural, does not
produce what should ordinarily be its quota of vegetables, small stock,
poultry, milk and eggs, as a result of which the question of under-
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