Fascinated by the way history repeats itself, particularly when you pick up a newspaper and see that what goes round comes round, I watched as trade unions were encouraged to join in a request for what was once perceived as a socialist government, or what appears to be an appeal for a political structure of democratic socialism.
The pictured masses of working people were marching against not only the Prime Minister but, if I understood correctly, against the entire political structure for which he stands.
And I had a flashback to a similar time, as recorded by Industrial Court judge and author Dr Zin Henry, to an organisation formed in 1897, by a man called Walter Mills, a pharmacist.
It was known as the Trinidad Workingman's Association (TWA). It was not a trade union as we know it now: it was just what it said, an association of working people, men and women, drawn up to formally protest to the colonial government over their impoverished living conditions.
It took almost ten years, as it slowly grew for a chemist - what we now would probably refer to as a pharmacist - named Alfred Richards to take it over and impose some structure to it.
He gave it a motto: Agitate, Educate and Confederate.
If that sounds familiar to those who followed the Movement for Social Justice's leader David Abdulah's Labour Day speech last week, it sounded familiar to me as well.
As I went back in time to the TWA, I remembered its early demands, asking the Colonial Office - at that time TT's governing body in the UK - for shorter working hours, overtime pay, sick leave with pay and free medicine.
These were demands regarded under the "agitate" motto as being revolutionary at the time.
Current demands by those marching over Labour Day under the "agitate" rubric veer more towards implementing past negotiations that state enterprises agreed to long ago but no longer have the income to pay. These include, but are by no means limited to T&TEC, fire services, daily-paid workers, TSTT, UWI, UTT, NP, Powergen, National Quarries, NTA, prison officers, police, coast guard, regiment, port workers, nurses, doctors, medical workers, teachers, PTSC.
As in most socialist countries, Government employs a substantial number of citizens in essential services. Many of them are going past just agitation for increased income, even as they did back in the days of the TWA, but also for the reformation of labour laws that some stakeholders in industry feel need upgrading and, more importantly, agitation for change in the structure of the system itself.
As for education, the TWA struggle for universal education to provide knowledge that will lead to skills appropriate to the job market of the time now faces a reversal in the diminution of GATE and scholarship funding, limiting the places available in specialist medical fields that are priced out of the reach of most young adults.
Despite the almost 200-year gap, that is not much different from what the TWA agitated for.
When the TWA began to gain momentum, to the m
