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ADRIAN COLA REINZI:
The life and times of an Indo-Caribbean Progressive
The trade union movement in the Caribbean has, since the Nineteen Thirties, played a major role
in the development of the region. Faced by the suppressive efforts of an entrenched colonial elite, determined to squelch all workers’ movements, trade unionists fought a long and hard struggle for recognition. In this struggle, Adrian Cola Rienzi, formerly Krishna Deonarine, was a pioneer who
abandoned a promising legal career to create Tribago’s first trade unions, the Oilfield Workers’
Trade Union and the All Trinidad Sugar Estates and Factory Workers Trade Union. He was the
first President of both. Working together with the charismatic oil-worker, Uriah Butler, Rienzi
provided the legal enablement and patient negotiating skill which sustained both the unions and secured recognition by the state and the employers. His emphasis on seeing the struggle in class terms rather than in a race context, earned him the “Communist® label which was used to block
his struggle at every point in his life. At the same time he was proud of his Indian ancestry which
he re-enforced through the study of history and his two visits to India to promote commercial
contracts and to successfully facilitate the entry of Caribbean students, Afro and Indo, to Indian
universities. That system has continued into our own time.
Perhaps his major contribution to national development was his persistent campaign to undo the colonial policy of Divide and Rule by constantly stressing the urgency of common struggle by Afro and indo workers for the betterment of their condition. The Rienzi / Butler combination of the Thirties was the first successful effort to unite the major ethnic groups and lay the foundations of the trade union movement. This narrative recounts the trials and the triumphs which laid the foundations of our modern state.
Brinsley Samaroo, retired Professor of History, has had a long career in academia and politics
over the past five decades. After studies in History at Delhi and London universities, he taught New World and South Asian History at the University of the West Indies and was later appointed Senior Research Fellow at the University of Trinidad and Tobago. At the political level, he was Leader of the Opposition in the Senate from 1982 to 1986 and elected member and Minister of Government from 1986 to 1991. Among his publications are “The art of Garnet Ifill: Glimpses of the Sugar Industry (2003 and 2014 reprint) Hansib, London and “The Price of Conscience:
Howard Nankivell and Labour Unrest in the Caribbean” (2015), Hansib.