DR RITA PEMBERTON

From 1838-1848, freed workers and their planter employers in Tobago were presented with difficulties.

While workers expected their freedom, the economically challenged planters made no attempt to liberate the workers. Instead, they operated as they did during the period of enslavement, causing tensions between the two groups. The planters labelled it 'labour problems.'

The planters were also dealing with the crippling effects of the 1846 Sugar Duties Act, which removed the protection Caribbean sugar had long enjoyed on the British market. This was followed by the devastating hurricane of 1847 and the financial crisis in Britain, resulting in the failure of 13 merchant houses that serviced a number of Tobago estates.

With the outlook for the sugar industry offering little hope for improvement, and because plantation owners were unable to influence any of these other factors, their emphasis was on reducing their labour costs. The planters' determination to control versus the freed African workers' determination to become independent led to an intensified struggle between them for the second half of the 19th century.

Planters used their influence in the administration to obtain approval for strategies to deal with what they described as a 'labour shortage' on the island. Among these was the passage of a number of restrictive laws intended to force workers to accept low wages and poor working conditions and permit planters to remain in full control of labour. It was the attempt to implement one of these laws that resulted in an explosion in Scarborough in 1852.

Planters became concerned when there was an exodus of workers from residences on the estates in 1848. This meant a change in their status as located labourers whose wages were lower than those workers who did not live on estate property. Planters, who could not accept the reality of losing control over their workers, reacted by imposing taxation directed at reducing earnings outside of plantation labour and undermining the ability of workers to become independent.

In 1849, a tax of five shillings ($1.20) per acre was imposed on provision grounds, the source of food and extra incomes for the workers. Given that the standard wage on the island was eightpence (16 cents) per day, the earnings of nine and a half days would be required to pay the tax, leaving little to support the workers and their families.

One of the survival strategies used by the freed Africans was to engage in a number of arrangements that provided them with access to land. They rented estate land as garden plots and received provision ground plots as a part of their labourer and metayer agreements with the estates, usually at several different locations. When totalled, the acreage of land to which they had access could be considerable and the tax burden would be onerous.

The Land Tax Act of 1852 followed, bringing further impositions on the workers. A tax of four shillings (96 cents) per acre was imposed on cultivated land, and sixpence (12 cent