British wartime defence regulations suppressed Caribbean radicals with Anglo-American intelligence cooperation.

Evidence

“In the Caribbean colonies, a clamp was placed on radicals. Butler spent much of the war locked up. In Jamaica, Bustamante was also interned for a while under the wartime defence regulations. Despatches from the American Consul in Kingston tell how the Colonial Government, in the face of local reactions, took advantage of the power vested in it by the Defence Regulations to detain persons who were noted as ‘bitter critics’ of British colonialism. One of those detained was Wilfred A. Domingo who was described as ‘a native of Jamaica who for some years has been resident in New York from which place he has taken an active part in Jamaican politics.’ He was removed from a ship taking him from the United States to Jamaica before it actually docked at Kingston and placed in an internment camp It is not inconceivable that the news that he was on his way to Jamaica was sent to the British authorities by the American and British intelligence networks in the United States. Intelligence was one facet and an important one of the developing Anglo-American wartime collaboration in Caribbean defence, with the Americans in the senior role.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2391

Categorization

• XREF: The wartime internment and US-UK intelligence collaboration against Caribbean radicals parallels American surveillance and suppression of Black radicals at home, a comparison worth exploring.