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

it has proposed to interfere will be nothing short of placing a
gang upon the necessity of the labouring people to unite to protect
and improve their welfare as an entity, and the most important
one, at that, in the industrial structure of the colony’s
like.
We hope that saner judgement will prevail at the Council meeting
and this save the present Administration from going on record as
the enemy of the labouring people of the islands, who now, more than
ever, need protection and encouragement.
In accordance with the tone of this attack upon the Bill, the
Council amended the measure to the effect that the trade unions should
be registered with the Registrar of Friendly Societies, but that the provision
of the Friendly Societies Act did not apply. Even with the amendment,
the law was far from the requirements of the time.
Hostility to trade unions
Showing what was behind the scene and how the hostile attitude was
maintained down the years, the staunch observer stated: In 1917 at the
formation of what is now St .Kitts-Nevis Universal Benevolent Association
Ltd., a tremendous organization in the community having its origin
among planters and those who represented estate interests, because
this association had as its object to “Unionise” labourers so as to place
them in the position whereby they would be able to protect themselves
as such.
The opposition grew to alarming proportions, until the Acting
Governor, Mr. Thomas Alexander Vans Best, visited the Presidency
and passed the famous bill prohibiting the formation of anything even
the appearance of a Trades and Labour union. Planters and Government
officials alike felt that the formation of an association with such
an object meant that their names were ticked off in some Doomsday
book conjured up by their imagination, and that the days of their very
existence were numbered. With this urge all sorts of ‘subterfuges’ were
adopted to malign the movement and to falsify the good intentions of the
organisers.
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