Background
Albert Gomes was born in Belmont on 25 March 1911.
Albert Gomes was born in Belmont on 25 March 1911.
Returning to Trinidad after spending 1928-1930 in New York as a student, he began to publish a magazine, The Beacon, which became the center of radical activity. It took up the cudgel for the lower classes, attacking the privileged on a number of issues.
In 1937 Gomes decided to enter politics at the behest of a close acquaintance, Quintin O’Connor, an erstwhile follower of Arthur Andrew Cipriani, and leader of the Federated Workers Trade Union. Gomes and O’Connor mounted a cam¬paign that brought Gomes’ election to the Port of Spain Municipal Council. In 1941 Gomes became the principal spokesperson for the left in favor of universal adult suffrage, which he was largely responsible for winning in a new constitution in 1946.
In elections in 1946 Gomes won a seat in the Legislative Council. The next year he was nominated to the Executive Council. Gomes then became decidedly more cautious. He argued for gradual political change to avoid “dislocation, recantation, and remorse” in making a “fetish of democracy.” This seeming ideological about-face cost him his seat in the capital city’s municipal council which he had held since 1938, serving three times as deputy mayor.
Gomes was again elected to the Legislative Council in 1950, under a new constitution which he had helped prepare, providing a ministerial form of gov¬ernment. He became minister of industry, labor and commerce. For the next five years, he dominated the politics of the colony. Gomes, de facto head of the five ministers, began attracting foreign investors to the colony, keeping tax rates and social overhead expenditure low. He also successfully fought to retain im¬perial protection and preferential prices for the country’s agricultural staples. Finally, he set the stage for a program of industrial diversification. He mediated between employees and employers and kept strikes and work stoppages to a minimum, by forcing unions and employers to make concessions before industrial disputes went out of control.
By 1955 Gomes, as one of the leaders of the Party of Political Progress Group, dominated by the country’s conservative white businessmen, contested elections which were to usher in responsible government for the colony. They suffered a severe defeat by the newly formed Peoples National Movement headed by Dr. Eric Williams. After participating in opposition politics. Gomes retired to Great Britain.