Background
George Weekes was born on 9 March 1921 in Trinidad and Tobago.
George Weekes was born on 9 March 1921 in Trinidad and Tobago.
Left school at the age of 14. After leaving school he went to work on his father’s small farm, at the beginning of World War II he joined the West Indian Regiment and was trained in the United States.
After the war, Weeks joined the party of Tubal Uriah Butler, became active in the Oilfield Workers Trade Union (OWTU), and was elected Executive Council member and then vice president and president of the union’s most important branch. He soon gained full control of the branch. He attacked the national leadership of the union for conservative pro-company sentiments and undemocratic practices.
Weeks was instrumental in forcing the union to call a strike in 1960, out of which came large wage concessions and greatly increased benefits. He was elected president general of the OWTU in 1962.
In 1970 the Black Power Movement emerged primarily as a result of Weeks’ union action. At its height, the movement involved massive demonstrations, strikes, civil unrest, and an army mutiny. Weeks and two officers of the OWTU were among the first to be detained after the government declared a state of emergency on April 21, 1970. He remained imprisoned for seven months.
The ULF contested national elections in 1976, capturing 10 of 36 elective seats in Parliament and becoming the official oposition. George Weeks, however, was unable to win a seat because he failed to galvanize black unionists against the predominantly black PNM. However, Weeks was appointed a senator and argued for a revolutionary transformation of the country’s political economy, particularly nationalization of foreign investments.
Unable to overcome ideological and racial divisions within the ULF leadership, the radicals, led by Weeks, resigned their positions in 1977. Weeks, however, continued working through his union.
Weeks used the union as a base for forging a political alliance between the black and East Indian workers. In 1965, as president of the National Trade Union Congress, he was instrumental in mobilizing support for a strike by sugar workers. The government immediately declard a state of emergency and implemented an Industrial Stabilization Act which Weeks strongly opposed.
Weeks led in the formation in 1975 of the United Labour Front (ULF), an alliance among unions and parties representing the predominantly East Indian sugar workers, the OWTU, and the Transport and Industrial Workers Trade Union, a radical union with close ties to Weeks. A month after its formation, the ULF leadership staged a march for “Peace, Bread and Justice” which was broken up by the police. Weeks was again arrested.
While in Newport News, Virginia, Weeks became sensitized to racism, especially the U. S. variant. Later, his sense of racial injustice was deepened by de facto segregation between the British Regiment and troops from Britain’s colonial possessions.
