By Kennedy Earle Clarke — 9 February 2022
“Any Black man who works for the white oppressors of the working-class, cannot turn around and form a political party to defend the rights and dignity of those same oppressed working-class people, while still in the employ of the oppressors of his people. His sole intention in forming such a political party would be to divide his working class brothers and sisters, thus ensuring that they never again pose a mass threat as they did in 1935 and 1948.”
Dear reader, there are a lot of brothers and sisters out there in the workplaces, who are totally unaware of the struggles of the working-class from slavery in the 1670s to 1838, when we were so-called emancipated. Despite being declared free men and women, we were forced to continue working under the same slave-like conditions for our former slave masters. Nothing really changed except the chains and shackles were taken off our hands and feet — but we were still slaves. It was only after the 1935 Buckley’s Estate Uprising, some 97 years after so-called emancipation, that we received a certain degree of freedom to form and join Trade Unions and Political Parties, along with the 8-hour work day, holidays with full pay, workmen’s compensation, and the abolition of the breach of contract law.
In 1932, Mr. Thomas Manchester, a mulatto sugar estate owner who empathised with the sufferings of the Black working-class, formed the Workers League. For founding that League, he was completely ostracised and forced into bankruptcy by his real white fellow estate owners, who lobbied Barclays Bank not to extend loans to him to prepare his crop. In 1965 when PAM was formed, it wasted no time in dividing the working-class. PAM came up with the degrading word ‘Labour Dog,’ meaning that those who supported the Labour Party were dogs to be kicked away. PAM warned its supporters not to invite any “Labour Dogs” into their homes at Christmas. This was the deliberate division of the working-class. History class is over, until next week — God’s willing!