Early West Indian labor organizing demanded social reforms and elective self-government simultaneously.

Evidence

[T]he Trinidad body emerged as one concerned with both trade union and political pressure group functions. It was founded just before the visit of the 1897 Royal Commission, sent to the British West Indies to examine the seriousness of the sugar depression and to recommend measures for bringing relief to the colonies. The Association’s first president, Walter Mills, a pharmacist, gave evidence before the Commission… . Mills complained against the insanitary conditions of the colony’s towns, dwellings and estates … press[ed] for a reduction in taxes, especially on foodstuffs and agricultural implements used by the labouring people … better transport facilities, the setting up of minor industries, the introduction of Savings Banks and the further opening of Crown Lands. In addition, the Association was strongly opposed to state-aided Indian immigration which, Mills claimed, increased the competition for the “starvation wages paid on sugar estates.” … Above all, Mills said, the colony should be granted elective government. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1181

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Concrete content of the first wave of Black working-class political demands; useful for the reader’s origin mapping.