Background
Arthur Andrew Cipriani was born in Trinidad and Tobago on 31 January 1875. From a white landowning Trinidadian family of Corsican ancestry.
government official politician
Arthur Andrew Cipriani was born in Trinidad and Tobago on 31 January 1875. From a white landowning Trinidadian family of Corsican ancestry.
He emerged the unlikely leader of the predominantly black and East Indian masses during the 1920s and 1930s. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 he enlisted in the British Army and was placed in charge of the West Indian Regiment. With a regiment that was predominantly black, he found himself embroiled in constant conflict with the War Office over its humiliating treatment of the soldiers under his command.
Cipriani was a Fabian Socialist strongly committed to the tradition of the British Labour Party. His union and political activities catapulted him into successive electoral victories as an independent member of the Trinidadian Legislative Council, where he served continuously between 1925 and 1945. He also served an unbroken spell in the Port of Spain City Council between 1926 and 1941 and was mayor of Port of Spain for eight terms.
In the Trinidad Legislative Council and the City Council, Cipriani carried on a constant struggle for labor and social legislation. However, given the relative weakness of labor laws eventually passed in 1932, and in view of his growing belief that political agitation and reform had to take precedence over labor agitation, he refused to register the TWA and its two affiliate unions in 1932. Instead, he chose to concentrate on political activities and changed the name of the TWA to the Trinidad Labour Party (TLP) in 1934.
This was a time of increasing labor discontent in the face of growing economic woes that came with the worldwide Depression. Always a constitutionalist and opposed to the use of violence, Cipriani opposed direct action as a strategy. Moreover, the TLP remained a loosely organized body. His inability to share leadership compounded his problems. In 1936 he was deserted by his major lieutenants. Tubal Uriah Butler and Andrian Rienzi. Butler, with his willingness to employ direct action to confront the colonial system, quickly replaced Cipriani as the champion of the people. Although Cipriani retained political office until 1945, he was relatively ignored during the last decade of his life.
He became a hero and an idol among the members of the regiment forUpon returning to Trinidad, Cipriani soon became president of the Soldiers and Sailors Union and later of the Trinidad Workingmen’s Association (TWA), which, under his leadership, would become the most important working-class organization in the country. This era was dominated by strikes and demonstrations in the face of a postwar economic decline. Between 1919 and 1934 Cipriani forged the TWA into the leading left-wing movement in the entire Caribbean. By 1930 it boasted 42 affiliated sections in Trinidad and 13 in Tobago and a total membership, by 1935, of 130,000. Cipriani’s slogan “Agitate, Educate, Confederate” became the rallying cry of the masses for the whole generation that he was the effective political leader in the colony.
