Background
Theophilus Albert Marryshow was born in Grenada on 7 November 1887. He emerged from extremely humble surroundings.
Theophilus Albert Marryshow was born in Grenada on 7 November 1887. He emerged from extremely humble surroundings.
Was apprenticed to a carpenter, after leaving primary school before reaching seventh standard.
Marryshow’s political education and career in journalism began at 17 when he joined the staff of The Federalist and Grenada, a newspaper edited by William Donavan, a radical advocate of West Indian nationalism and the rights of black West Indians. Marryshow soon developed an intense commitment to the cause of self-determination for the West Indies and to the idea of a West Indian federation. In 1909 he became editor of St. George's Chronicle and Grenada Gazette, which was then the oldest newspaper in the West Indies, and in 1915 he helped to found The West Indian, dedicated to popularizing the twin causes of representative government and federation for the West Indies. Marryshow eventually acquired sole ownership of the paper and continued as its editor until 1934.
Marryshow was elected to the Legislative Council and served as an elected member for 33 consecutive years, until his death, including service as a member of the colony’s Executive Council. 1942-1954, and deputy president of the Legislative Council, 1951-1955.
In 1914 Marryshow founded the Representative Government Association, with its immediate goal being to end the system under which all members of legislative bodies were nominees of the governor. The association fought tor representative elected government with the ultimate aim of an independent West Indian federation. Not content with confining the association's activities to Grenada alone. Marryshow actively participated in the formation of similar bodies in other islands of the Anglophone Caribbean. In 1921 he took the fight to Great Britain, paying his own expenses on a one-man mission, and convinced the British government to send a commission to inquire into constitutional reform for the West Indies. As a result of its report, the legislative councils of the Windward and Leeward Islands, including Grenada and Trinadad, were made partially elective in 1925.
Marryshow founded the Grenada Workers’ Association and presided over it during the second decade of the century. During the 1920s he also began intense efforts to establish a Caribbean-style labor movement, helping to organize the British Guiana and West Indies Labour Congress, which was later renamed the Caribbean Labour Congress. This body, of which Marryshow was elected president in 1946, became a major instrument in the fight for a federated West Indies and for national self-determination.
Marryshow played an important role when final plans tor the federation were formulated in Jamaica in 1957. With the inauguration of the West Indies Federation in February 1958, he was appointed to the federal Parliament as a senator from Grenada and served until his death in October of the same year.
