Arthur Cipriani

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Arthur Andrew Cipriani (born January 31, 1875 in Port of Spain , † April 18, 1945 in Port of Spain) was a politician and union leader in colonial Trinidad and Tobago . He is considered to be one of the fathers of the Trinidadian trade union system and an early pioneer of the country's independence.

Life

Cipriani was born as one of three sons of Albert Henry Cipriani, a wealthy plantation owner from Santa Cruz, ten kilometers northeast of Port of Spain. The Cipriani family had migrated from Corsica to Trinidad in the 18th century and had a few prominent members. Arthur's father died shortly after giving birth. At the age of six, Arthur also lost his mother Alice (née Agostini) to typhoid fever , which also affected the three brothers, but which only killed their mother. Arthur grew up from then on with a paternal aunt. At the age of seven he attended the renowned Saint Mary's College in Port of Spain. At 16 he left school and initially hired himself out as a rider and trainer of racehorses, an activity that his father had already carried out for Arthur's uncle Joseph Cipriani at times . He quickly owned racehorses himself, which he trained and rode. In the course of this activity he traveled regularly to Barbados and British Guiana . Between races he worked on friends and relatives' cocoa plantations. Before the turn of the century, he completed a law degree and then worked at least temporarily as a notary.

From 1917 to 1919 he took part in the First World War with the rank of captain of the British West Indies Regiment . The everyday racism that his largely black regiment experienced at the front left a lasting impression on Cipriani. After his complaints against the use of his regiment for improper tasks such as latrine work and inadequate supplies were thrown off, he participated in the end of 1918 in the Italian Taranto in the establishment of a secret organization within the British army, the Caribbean League, within which a union of the West Indies and islands Measures against the colonial administration were discussed. The Caribbean League was dissolved before the end of the war, but had a lasting influence on Cipriani. After his return from the war, he invested a great deal of time in Trinidad for disadvantaged sections of the population and for Trinidad's right to self-determination. In 1919 he joined two unions, the Soldiers and Sailors Union and the Trinidad Workingmen's Association (TWA). The former elected him to be its chairman. In November 1919 he successfully called on the dock workers in Port of Spain to the second strike in Trinidadian history (after an uprising by the oil workers in the south in 1917) and thus paralyzed the port of the capital for several days, which came under pressure from the government to negotiate the striked shipping companies and the TWA. His activities as a labor leader earned him more and more popularity, which in 1921 led to his being elected to the Port of Spain City Council. In 1923 he became chairman of the TWA, which at that time, thanks to Cipriani, was already the largest union in Trinidad. By 1928 he expanded the organization from a local group to a colony-wide union with 42 local groups. In 1925 he became mayor of Port of Spain, also with the votes of the colored middle class, which for economic reasons was in opposition to the colonial government. Also in 1925 he won a seat in the first elected (and not appointed by London) Legislative Council of Trinidad. Cipriani strengthened both the TWA's position and his own influence by persuading the only Indian-born member of the Legislative Council, Sarran Teelucksingh, to accept the vice-presidency of the TWA, which won Cipriani the votes of the Indian-born community of Trinidad. In 1925 he traveled to London to exchange ideas with members of the Labor Party there ; since that trip he has described himself as a socialist . During his term of office he campaigned for universal suffrage, the self-government of Trinidad and the idea of ​​a union of Caribbean islands that would later be realized for a short time as the West Indian Federation . Other topics of his administration were minimum wages, the introduction of a pension system, women's rights and compulsory schooling. In 1926 he took part in a pan-West Indian workers' leader conference in Georgetown to network unions in the Caribbean.

His idealism was severely dampened in 1929 when the Labor Party came to power in Great Britain but did not implement any of the ideas of Cipriani and the TWA in its three years in office. His popularity subsequently declined. In 1931 he made a strategic mistake when he voted in the Legislative Council after some tactical maneuvering against a bill for the legalization of divorces. This decision split the TWA and led to a break with the Indian-born TWA members who had voted in favor of the draft. In 1934 he had the bed of the Dry River paved and several slums leveled, which greatly reduced the risk of mosquitoes and other pathogens. At the same time, he had new apartments built for the former slum dwellers. In the same year he formed from the union TWA Trinidad's first party, the Trinidad Labor Party (TLP), which met with some resistance from the TWA members. Its declining popularity was evident in everyday life: strikers in the sugar industry refused to negotiate with Cipriani in July 1934; the strikes turned into riots and involved over 15,000 plantation workers. Cipriani's comrades-in- arms Uriah Butler and Adrian Cola Rienzi broke away from him in 1936 and founded their own parties that had their respective power bases in the south of the island and gradually ousted Cipriani and the TPL. In Port of Spain, however, he remained mayor for eight terms, a record unmatched to this day. He was elected to the Legislative Council for 24 years until 1944. That year he retired into private life. He died a year later. His grave is in Lapeyrouse Cemetery in Port of Spain. Cipriani was never married and had no children.

classification

Cipriani's work fell into the turbulent phase of Trinidad's identity finding and the first steps towards independence, which he himself no longer experienced. Until the end of the First World War, the island was administered centrally from London. The war in Trinidad raised basic food prices by 145%, resulting in the politicization and politicization of the workforce promoted by leaders like Cipriani. In addition, there was growing dissatisfaction with the colonial power of Great Britain, which treated Trinidadian people as second-class citizens during the war and exposed Trinidadian soldiers to everyday racism. The pressure to reform the British government was based not only on the working class, but also on the colored middle class, which for economic reasons demanded more autonomy and a more liberal environment.

From the mid-1930s onwards, Trinidad saw the working class become increasingly radicalized. Cipriani had organized one of the first strikes in Trinidad, but later his compensatory course did not go far enough for his fellow campaigners. Uriah Butler, who founded the Butler's Party in 1936 and primarily addressed the oil workers in southern Trinidad, incited his followers in 1937 to the so-called Butler Riots, which resulted in deaths from police violence, and also Adrian Cola Rienzi's Trinidad Citizens League, which is their stronghold in the sugar cane belt of central and southern Trinidad, participated in violent strikes. Both Butler and Rienzi were once close companions of Cipriani, but were thrown out of the TLP in 1935 because of their radical attitudes. In addition to these developments, black nationalism emerged in Trinidad in the mid-1930s, which withdrew further supporters from Cipriani.

Posthumous Effect and Evaluation

CLR James judged in his Cipriani biography, first published in 1933, "no public figure (have) in Trinidad a higher degree of recognition". The British historian Bridget Brereton identified several factors in Cipriani's popularity. On the one hand, political upheavals in Trinidad in the 1920s and 1930s created the framework for the political rise of a labor leader. On the other hand, Cipriani had two factors that specifically favored him. In addition to his "outstanding gift of linguistic and charismatic attraction", this was his white skin color, since the blacks and people of Indian origin, who by far make up the majority of the population, believed a white person to be more successful in negotiations with the colonial power than one of their own. Brereton concludes that Cipriani ultimately failed, and attributes this to the fact that he did not succeed in sustainably improving the living conditions of the Trinidadian people. The Trinidadian historian Gérard Besson pointed out that in the course of his career Cipriani had been overtaken by the consequences of his own work, as he had given important impulses for the emancipation of Trinidad from colonial power, but was at bottom a loyal supporter of the colonial system and therefore lagged behind the ideas and actions of his companions who were originally inspired by him.

In the center of Independence Square in Port of Spain is a Cipriani statue erected in 1959. The trade union education center Cipriani College of Labor and Co-Operative Studies, opened in 1966, bears his name. Cipriani Boulevard, a main street in the expensive downtown district of Port of Spain, is named after Arthur's uncle Emmanuel Cipriani, who was also the city's mayor several times. In 1971 the Trinidadian Post issued a stamp with Arthur Cipriani as a motif on the ninth anniversary of the country's independence, and in 1985, on Labor Day, one with the likeness of Andrew Cipriani and Uriah Butler.

literature

  • CLR James : The Life of Captain Cipriani: An Account of British Government in the West Indies, with the pamphlet The Case for West-Indian Self Government . Duke University Press, Durham 2014, ISBN 978-0-8223-5651-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paget Henry, Paul Buhle: CLR James's Caribbean . Duke University Press, Durham 1996, ISBN 978-0-8223-8238-6 , pp. 264 .
  2. ^ A b Caribbean History Archives: Independence of Trinidad and Tobago - The Segmented Society. Retrieved January 22, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Michael Anthony: Historical Dictionary of Trinidad and Tobago . Scarecrow Press, London 1997, ISBN 0-8108-3173-2 , pp. 132 .
  4. ↑ a b Bridget Brereton: A History of Modern Trinidad 1783 - 1962 . 4th edition. Terra Verde Resource Center, Champs Fleurs 2009, ISBN 0-435-98116-1 , pp. 158 .
  5. ↑ Michael Anthony: Historical Dictionary of Trinidad and Tobago . Scarecrow Press, London 1997, ISBN 0-8108-3173-2 , pp. 352 .
  6. ^ Gérard A. Besson & Bridget Brereton: The Book of Trinidad . Paria Publishing, Port of Spain 2010, ISBN 978-976-8054-36-4 , pp. 498 .
  7. ↑ Bridget Brereton: A History of Modern Trinidad 1783--1962 . 4th edition. Terra Verde Resource Center, Champs Fleurs 2009, ISBN 0-435-98116-1 , pp. 167 .
  8. ↑ Bridget Brereton: A History of Modern Trinidad 1783--1962 . 4th edition. Terra Verde Resource Center, Champs Fleurs 2009, ISBN 0-435-98116-1 , pp. 171 .
  9. ^ Caribbean History Archives: Party Politics. Retrieved January 22, 2018 .
  10. ^ David Lidman: Stamps . In: The New York Times . October 10, 1971, p. 32.
  11. ↑ IRCP.gov.tt: June 19th, 2015. Retrieved January 22, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Cipriani, Arthur
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cipriani, Arthur Andrew (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Politicians and union leaders in colonial Trinidad and Tobago
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Port of Spain
DATE OF DEATH April 18, 1945
Place of death Port of Spain