Daily Archives: June 26, 2024

General T&T

Rescuing a hero from oblivion

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 26, 2024

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI first encountered Philip Henry Douglin when I wrote Beyond Boundaries: The Intellectual Tradition of Trinidad and Tobago in the Nineteenth Century (2003). Since then I have been gathering information on Douglin at research centres such as the Watson Collection at Oxford University, the British Archives at Kew in London, and the T&T Archives in Port of Spain. Yet I knew I had to go to Barbados before I completed my biography on him.
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General T&T, Oil and Gas, PNM, Politics, Trade Unions, UNC

Labour Day nostalgia

By Raffique Shah
June 26, 2024

Raffique ShahI must confess that I feel nostalgic every year when Labour Day comes around. I wasn’t there in 1972 when June 19 was first declared a national holiday. The government of Dr Eric Williams had conveniently avoided recognition of the significance of June 19 to the history of labour and the country as a whole.

Most people who know anything about the significance of that date will know it was when Tubal Uriah Butler, who is seen as the father of radical labour, triggered a national strike by asking a large crowd of workers assembled in Fyzabad for a meeting if he should subject himself to being arrested by Police Corporal Charlie King, a powerfully stupid man who brandished a pair of handcuffs and the arrest warrant.
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