(Excerpt from A History of Antigua (c)2023, by Brian Dyde)
“One member of the statutory board appointed to run the newly nationalised concern was McChesney George who, on orders from Bird ‘told the board’s chief accountant to cut wages by thirty percent across the industry.’ This was done, much to the chagrin of the rest of the board, who were not consulted; greatly to the distress of the workers, many of whom then left the industry forever; and to the fury of Walter, who at the beginning of May was accused by Bird of disloyalty at an emergency meeting of the union’s executive, and dismissed as general secretary. His main supporter, a union field officer named Donald Halstead, was fired at the same time, and another field officer a day or so later.
Their dismissals caused more consternation among the union’s rank and file than Bird, as its president, or any of the other members of the executive, could possibly have imagined, and all three made the most of the opportunities this presented. On 9 May, four days after their expulsion, they gave their version of events at a public meeting, laying much stress on the conflict of interest which resulted from the fact that the Premier and his ministers all belonged to the AT&LU. Eight days later, at an even bigger outdoor meeting, Walter dwelt on this at length, finally ending his discourse by stating that if Bird ‘and all the members of parliament do not resign from the executive of the AT&LU, I will form a new union in Antigua.’
Safe in the knowledge that such resignations were not going to take place, he lost no time in putting his promise into effect, and the Antigua Workers’ Union (AWU) was formed a few days later with Walter as its General Secretary. Within the space of two months, the AWU was claiming a membership of three to four thousand, and even if such figures were an exaggeration, this gave both the AT&LU and the Government cause for concern. The majority of the non-established government workers and the employees of the sugar industry, who together formed the largest section of the island’s workforce, knew on which side their bread was buttered, and remained loyal to the AT&LU. This left the AWU to concentrate on recruiting from among hotel, construction and waterfront workers. In no time at all, with one union battling to retain its supremacy by victimising workers who showed signs of disloyalty, and the other endeavouring to poach from its rival, or to unionise workers previously ignored, a deep and lasting division had been made in the entire Antiguan labour force.
Matters were made worse by the positions adopted by the Government, the Employers’ Federation, and by Bird himself. While the Government, the Federation, and other employers who did not belong to the latter all refused to recognise that the AWU now had the right to represent some or all of their workers, and so added to the discord, Bird’s supine attitude and seeming inability to appreciate the harm being done to the new State puzzled both his enemies and his supporters. ‘Bird withdrew into himself’, one of the latter recorded. He was inwardly hurt, and saw before him workers for whom he had spent all his life to help, and a country whose economic development and social uplift came about through his efforts and the efforts of his colleagues, turn ungrateful and were won over by deceit.
Whether ingratitude and deception were involved or not, Walter’s efforts to increase the AWU membership led to a series of disputes, strikes and marches lasting until March 1968, when they culminated in a call for a general strike. The strike began on Saturday 16 March, and involved all those who had joined the AWU – hotel employees, shop assistants, airline staff, and the core of the union’s support, the waterfront workers. Nothing particularly untoward happened until the following Monday when members of the Defence Force, who had been called out over the weekend, were discovered attempting to discharge the cargo of a schooner. This was soon brought to a halt by Walter and a gang of strikers who afterwards, in order to protest the use of such ‘Government-backed scabs’, organised a march on the Premier’s official residence. Beating up a member of the Defence Force they came across on the way, the marchers arrived at the residence to find it under armed guard, and access denied to all but a small delegation with a petition demanding full recognition for the AWU.
Having delivered this and received the Premier’s assurance that the situation would be resolved, the demonstrators dispersed, returning to their homes by early evening just in time to hear that a state of emergency had been declared.” (The publisher of this book, A History of Antigua, grants permission for this excerpt (pages 272-274) to be published as a Big Issues column, authored by Barbara Arrindell)