Attitudes to Labour

in the English
Speaking Caribbean
after 1838
Prepared by: L. Levy-Bell
©2020
Introduction
Before emancipation, all territories in the British West Indies could be classified as the same
because they were all plantation economies based on slave labour. After emancipation, island
separateness developed as each island began to take different turns to develop. In other
words, islands developed at different rates. Larger islands had greater labour problems
because they had more land and larger numbers of ex-slaves but few of them were willing
to work on plantations after emancipation.After emancipation, the main concern of the white
planters was to ensure that they had labour for their plantations.
Landowners/Employers
Coercive Attitude

“Many employers made no effort to encourage positive labour relations or maintain a

reliable labour force. The employers did not support the freed people’s right to choose
where they wanted to work, what job they wanted to do, how long they wanted to work
for and for how many days. Landholders could not tolerate this freedom of choice.
Instead, they choose to use different kinds of coercive strategies against their workers
to force them to provide labour on the plantations.”

Beckles and Shepherd, 2006

● Employers used the magistrates and police as agents of labour discipline. Eg.
Anti-vagrancy laws

● Employers were afraid of having to pay high wages to labourers so they tried to trim
wages.

● Many landowners refused to switch the task work system (employees paid based on
the task done) and preferred to stick to the days work system (employees paid per
day).

● Landowners charged workers rent or tools, pasture, houses and grounds.

● Rents were tied to the workers wages and they could be evicted if rents were not
paid.

● Landowners tied workers accommodation on their plantations to actually working there.

This prevented workers from living in one place and working in another.

● Employers tried to bind freed people to their plantations through contracts and the
truck system.
Landowners/Employers
Conciliatory Attitude

Once employers realized that emancipation had come to stay and that they could not prevent
the movement of labourers through negative coercive means they began to look for
alternative solutions. The more sensible planters in the caribbean adopted a more positive
attitude to encourage labourers to remain on the estates.

Beckles and Shepherd, 2006

● Landowners in British Guiana and Trinidad competed with each other in the labour
market by paying the labourers higher and higher wages.

● Landowners imported workers from overseas to help solve their labour problem.

● Employers devised ways of maintaining viability by introducing the use of labour saving
devices such as the steam engine, plough and harrow eg. in British Guiana

● Landowners, especially in the Windward Islands, explored the Metaire/Metayage system

(a system of sharecropping).
Free persons

“The movement of the ex-slaves from the estates was not a flight from the horrors of
slavery. It was a protest against the inequities of early freedom. It is possible that, had the
ex-slaves been allowed to continue in the free use of gardens, house and grounds, and to
choose their employers without reference to that accommodation, there would have been
very little movement of agricultural labour at all from the communities apparently established
on the estate during slavery.”

Douglas Hall, 1978

● Women and children withdrew their labour from the estates.

● Unused land was readily available in the larger territories such as British Guiana and
Jamaica so many ex-slaves choose to settle away from the estates on land that they
purchased or occupied illegally and became peasant proprietors.

● In Antigua, Barbados and St. kitts, as the islands were small and densely populated with
very little available, unused land most of the ex-slaves returned to the estates.

● Ex-slaves in territories such as the Windward Islands went into sharecropping the sugar
cane fields with the plantation owners.

● Freed people left the estates because they wanted to live in their own villages and
offered part-time work on the estates.

● Ex-slaves believed new opportunities and higher wages could be found in the towns so
they migrated from the rural areas.. They were determined to seek a new life outside
of the agricultural sector and turned to other forms of occupation such as higglering.
● Skilled ex-slaves moved to the towns to peddle their trade.

● Some ex-slaves refused to work on non-sugar properties which often demanded

weekend work.

● Freed people migrated from one part of the Caribbean to the next.
fUrther Reading
1. A Post Emancipation History of the West Indies- Isaac Dookhan, pages 10-11

2. Emancipation to Emigration- B. Dyde, R. Greenwood and S. Hamber, pages 87-93

questions
Answer ONE the following questions.

1. You are a journalist who has lived in the Caribbean and are returning to England in 1866.
While in the Caribbean, you had the opportunity to visit Jamaica, Antigua, Barbados, and
Trinidad. You have concluded that employers are still attempting to control labour even
after slavery has been abolished. Citing examples from the islands you visited, examine
FIVE developments that justify your conclusion. (25 marks)

2. You are the Governor of Barbados after 1845. Write a letter to the Colonial Office
describing the attitudes to labour by free persons in Barbados in the immediate
post-emancipation period. (25 marks)