Caribbean labour politics in the age of Garvey, 1918–1938

Abstract

This article examines the impact of Garveyism – the political brainchild of Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey – in the articulation of post first world war labour politics in the greater Caribbean region. Garveyism nurtured a platform of race-first, worker-oriented, anti-colonial politics that both gave encouragement to, and provided a language of grievance for, a series of strikes, riots and rebellions after the war. During the reactionary era that followed, Garveyites nimbly scaled back the stridency of their politics, replacing their emphasis on direct action and worker resistance with a labour politics that privileged organisation building and constitutional reform, but which continued to project the implications of the work in global terms, joined to Garveyites’ end goal of African liberation and racial redemption. By the mid-1930s, a new labour politics emerged that both surpassed Garveyist labour organising in its stridency and relied on Garveyist tropes of racial solidarity; one that distanced itself from Garveyist labour organisers while boasting a leadership that had been nurtured within the Garvey movement.

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